Proactive Technologies' Latest Initiative Is Living Up To Its Name

Proactive Technologies attributes its success and place among this year's White-Hot Performers to being, well, proactive.

When multicore processors started to become available, the Dallas-based Intel Premier Provider didn't wait for its ISV customers to come to them to figure out how to use the additional horsepower to boost the performance of their software, said Kenny Kremm, president of Proactive.

Rather, Proactive decided to work with its OEM software partners to run benchmarks and fine-tune its systems to run their software.

Proactive got NFR copies of their customers' software and began working with a number of different configurations of processors, memory and disc drives to design machines specifically optimized for each of its big customers' software.

And the success of this initiative is what Kremm says is responsible for Proactive's solid growth—1,700 units sold in 2006, a 66 percent jump over the 1,025 units the custom systems builder sold in 2005. Nearly 80 percent of the units were servers.

"We're in a niche market, and it's a value-add we can offer our customers," said Kremm of the new initiative. "I would say it's the No. 1 reason for our increase in sales from 2005 to 2006."

Proactive, a nine-year-old company with 12 employees and 2006 sales of $6.9 million, focuses exclusively on the printing and publishing industry vertical market.

The company sells direct to some customers and software vendors but also has developed a channel through which 60 percent to 70 percent of its sales flow. Its customer list includes printing and publishing software vendors such as Fujifilm Graphic Systems, GMG Color, ONYX Graphics and Artwork Systems.

"They all need servers as the engine to drive their processes," Kremm said, "and they have never tested to determine how much horsepower they really need."

Next: The New Initiative

Previous to this new initiative, Proactive was simply building the fastest boxes it could, Kremm said. "But in some cases that was overkill. You don't need a Ferrari if you can only go 55 mph, and in other cases, you don't want a Volkswagen when you need a Ferrari."

Now, Kremm said, "our benchmarking provides [customers] with actual performance data as justification for why they've selected a certain hardware design to run their software on."

But when Proactive set out to customize its systems for customers, it didn't stop there. In addition, the system builder went the next step and added various third-party software bundles to enhance system and application performance for its channel partners, Kremm said. These software bundles, combined with the benchmarking performance testing, provide a real value-add to their customers, he said. "It is what sets us apart from our competitors and adds some mystery to their configurations," Kremm said. "And there is margin in mystery."

Now companies like Fujifilm, the system builder's largest ISV customer, have a choice of entry-level, midrange or high-performance systems, depending on their customers' needs.

"What's really important is having hardware that is rock solid and very well supported," said Bryan Hughes, product marketing manager at Fujifilm Graphic Systems, Hanover Park, Ill. "Proactive does that for us. Anybody can take the pieces—the components—and put together a box to do the job. Proactive goes way beyond that."

Hughes said Proactive has been critical to helping Fujifilm close sales by doing things like sending a tech on-site to train customers on new systems. And if, say, a week later, there's a problem that might be on the software or hardware side, with Proactive, "it's just done," he said. "You don't get lost in, 'You've got to have a P.O.' or some such thing; it's just, 'Let's solve the problem, serve the customer and then work the other stuff out.' "

Marc Welch, vice president of sales at printing software company GMG Color, Hingham, Mass., said the reason his company works with Proactive is simple: "We put in Proactive boxes, and we don't have to hear people complain."

For GMG Color, Proactive created four systems covering more than a half-dozen configurations that the software vendor's customers can buy. GMG Color has worked with Proactive for almost three years, Welch said, because the system builder can be relied on to keep them updated on what's happening on the hardware side and what impact it'll have on GMG's software.

Overall, Kremm said it's important that Proactive differentiates itself from Dell and also from other custom systems builders. And the new initiative has done that in spades, he said. "It's been a huge investment in time and manpower," he said, "but it's paying off."