“People say, ‘Look, I’m a contractor. I work in the field, I know how to do that,’” Coyle said. “Or, ‘I’m a business executive. I know how to do that part of my job, [but] I’m not an expert in databases. I’m going to use Excel.’”
So Event1 developed a software solution of its own, Office Connector, which would make it easy for non-programmers in the construction world to get the information they needed from complex databases into understandable Excel spreadsheets.
“We went to conference with this product, hoping to sell six or seven packages, and sold to 40 companies in less than two hours,” Coyle said.
Office Connector was so successful that Sage North America, the vendor of construction software, approached Event1 about adding the tool to its own product line. As of November 2011, Event1’s software is now known as Sage Timberline Office Connector, and is available through many Sage vendors. Each time the product sells, the Vancouver company gets a cut.
“Even though the visibility of our technology increased, the people who were willing to spend dollars decreased,” because of struggles in the construction industry, Coyle said. “We grew by 15 or 20 percent, when a lot of people out there were going out of business.”
Event1 Software could grow even bigger and faster with the help of other products the company has developed. As Coyle pointed out, there’s strong demand for making it easier to get information out of complex databases and into Excel.
Today, Event1’s challenge is deciding how to grow while staying true to its roots. The company could customize products for other business niches, and could seek outside funding to fuel a sales and service push. Coyle said he has talked to a venture capitalist, but is unsure about accepting venture funds when advice may be all the company needs. He and his business partners are not interested in giving up ownership of the firm they’ve built, he said.
“We’re going to grow,” Coyle said. “We just have to think about how much additional growth we are going to do.”
Event 1 Software Inc. 3305 Main St., Suite 303, Vancouver Founded: 1998 Employees: 11 www.event1software.com
