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For the past 20 years, Branham has tracked the Canadian ICT Industry and the leading companies that comprise it. As part of Branham’s ongoing efforts, we speak with leading executives from across Canada to gather first-hand insight on current trends and recent developments within the Canadian ICT Industry. 

Recently, Branham sat down with Hees Ham, Owner of ExitCertified. The following statements summarize some of the key points that Mr. Ham would like to pass along to the Branham300 community. Alternatively, listen in on the conversation between Branham and Mr. Ham in its entirety here.

Branching Out and Starting-Up a Business…

At the end of my first year at Queens, I actually ran a College Pro Painters franchise, so that was probably my first official step into entrepreneurship. I also grew up with self-employed parents, so I had really been exposed to it all my life. I think I always knew I was going to start my own company, but what I didn’t know was the type of business I was going to get into.

After Queens, I joined a large organization and while it was great from a development perspective, I always new it wasn’t for me. I left after a year to join a small technology training company and stayed on board there for about five years.  After the owner of that company sold to another buyer, I felt it was a great opportunity to go off on my own, so that’s when Tim Mabey and I started up ExitCertified.

Company Vision and Philosophies…

From the beginning our vision was to try and become the largest technology training organization in Canada, but it wasn’t something that was always at the forefront for us. When we first started out in business, I think we were very much focused on survival, and managing growth as effectively as possible. Now that we’re more established and have a more secure foundation, I think the long-term vision is now starting to come up a lot more in our discussions. We’re really proud of the fact that we have been able to stay focused on what we feel we do very well, which is managing all facets related to technology training for customers. 

From the get-go, we have always had a strong philosophy about good partnering, and ensuring that we partner with trust, respect and open lines of communication. We have taken that philosophy or approach and applied it with our employees, suppliers, vendor partners and a variety of other areas within the business. We believe it has worked effectively for us, and it’s an approach we will continue to use moving forward.

Transitioning to the Next Stage of the Business Life-Cycle…

We surpassed the $20M mark this past year, and technically I’m not sure at what point you’re considered a medium-sized organization, but I think for us the next major challenge that we're working on is transitioning the business to the next stage of its life-cycle. We’re effectively transforming ExitCertified from operating like a small company to more of a medium-sized organization. In order to do that, I think it requires a shift in thinking. While at the base level what made us successful as a small company needs to continue, the complexity of the business changes as you get larger and therefore I think it requires more of a strategic approach.  When we were smaller we could almost react to day-to-day activities, now I think we have to be a lot more strategic and proactive about how we go about things.

Competing in a Market Dominated by Large Players

In the beginning, it was challenging to convince customers to trust their training needs with a new organization that had limited brand recognition. As the business started to prove itself in the marketplace and grow over the years, it became much easier for us to compete with a lot of the bigger players in the market. I think what really helped us get to this point, in addition to the approach that we take to business, was our ability to not only understand customers’ needs, but react to them in a very timely and efficient manner. I think this is one of the benefits of being a smaller organization, and it’s also something we don’t want to forget as we make the transition over to being a medium-sized firm.

Adapting to Emerging Trends in the Technology Training Market…

The most dominant trend within the technology training market in recent years is the acceptance and adoption of distance learning, that being defined as training happening virtually and not in a traditional classroom environment. Since our business has been primarily about delivering training in a traditional classroom setting, we’ve had adapt to this change. While some believed that this trend would completely replace classroom training, I think that we’ve now seen that both forms of training are going to co-exist into the future and it’s really going to come down to the learner and what kind of training is best suited to their needs and style of learning.

Reacting to Declines in Corporate Investments…

The market in Canada has been extremely challenging and unpredictable over the past couple of years. Business owners have been forced to decide whether they are going to insulate their business and shed costs, or make the riskier move and further invest. I think that Canadians in general are more on the conservative side, so the decline in investment in research & development, sales & marketing and general & administrative doesn’t surprise me that much, but they do concern me, particularly around the R&D. Although it isn’t as applicable to our business, it concerns me because I worry about the level of innovation happening in Canada. I think that the responsible move that Canadians are making might help in the short-term, but when market conditions improve, I really worry about Canada falling further behind in terms of innovation.

Entering the US and Major Differences in Canada-US Market Dynamics…

The unknown of operating in a foreign market was scary to us. One of the biggest challenges that we faced was actually around corporate culture and trying to figure out how we were going to sustain what we built in Canada in our expansion efforts. Obviously there are general differences between Canadians and Americans, but for us it was more of a distance issue than anything else. Our first expansion in the US was in California, which is a long way from Ottawa, so it was challenging to easily expose our US-based employees to our culture and how we do business.

The magnitude of opportunities, the size of deals and the pace of business are major differences when comparing the US market to Canada. We can close a $100K deal with a US client quicker than we can close a $10K deal in Canada, and I believe that there are just as many of those $100K deals to be had in the US as there are the $10K deals in Canada.

The other main difference that we see, particularity in the technology training market, is that the market in the US is a lot more fragmented than in Canada. What I mean by this is that in Canada everybody is going after the same large customers, whereas in the US, while it is arguably a lot more competitive with a lot more players, it amazes me the number of opportunities that we bid on where we don’t run into competition.

Outlook on the Technology Training Market…

The training industry seems to operate in its own style, and so while I try and look for macro indicators that would help us predict where our business, either in the Canada or the US, is going, I’ve learned over the year’s that reading the headlines isn’t a great indicator for what our business is going to do. Overall, I can say that our market conditions have improved, but I think most of that has been driven by the US, and not the Canadian side of our business. Our Canadian business has actually been undergoing softness for a couple of years now, and we are not really seeing any indicators that suggest it is improving or will improve in the near term.

Parting Advice…

For me, I’d have to paraphrase Steve Jobs’ Stanford address – simply love what you do. I feel very fortunate that for the past ten years that when I get up in the morning, it’s never occurred to me that I have to go to my job. I go to work every day and I look forward to it because I love what I do. There are obviously good days and bad days, but I cannot say that this has ever felt like a job to me. I think to have that is a true blessing and I would hope that everybody can strive to find that because I think it makes a huge difference in one’s overall happiness.