SGF invests $7M: Abilis Solutions becomes a member of Québec Inc.
SGF invests $7M: Abilis Solutions becomes a member of Québec Inc.
Montreal, Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 - The president of Abilis Solutions, Eric Le Goff, is pleased to announce an investment by the Société Générale de Financement du Québec (SGF) in the Company. This investment of $7 million will significantly contribute to the acquisition plan being pursued by Abilis.
"This signal of confidence from SGF is an endorsement of the strength and soundness of our present business model. Having a major Canadian institutional investor will increase our visibility and standing in the marketplace," said Eric Le Goff.
It is mainly through its turnkey approach that Abilis has distinguished itself from other companies in the delivery of IT projects.
"To be able to deliver fixed-price projects, we had to rethink how large IT projects are typically managed and delivered," said Eric Le Goff. "We developed our own, unique, proprietary project management method. Our approach ensures that we deliver high-value solutions that meet the expectations of our customers, on budget and on time. It is the secret to our main competitive advantage," added Le Goff.
This innovative approach, stretching back more than 10 years, is continuing to reap rewards. In a highly competitive market, where outsourcing projects to India or China is the norm, Abilis fulfills the majority of its contracts from its Montreal Innovation Centre, keeping high-value IT jobs here in Montreal. Over 75% of Abilis' clients are located outside Québec, and most are within the United States.
The new investment from SGF confirms that Abilis is within a select group of emerging companies. In the May 2010 edition of the Journal Les Affaires, Abilis was rated amongst the top five SMEs experiencing the strongest growth through 2009, according to its list of the top 300 SME's in Québec.
"If Abilis was formerly the best kept secret in Montreal, this investment by SGF in our business will certainly see us emerge from the shadows, and this will be for the benefit of our employees, our current and future customers and also our new shareholder", concluded Alain Elbaz, co-president of Abilis Solutions.
About Abilis
Founded by Eric Le Goff and Alain Elbaz in 1996 under the name CMTek, Abilis specializes in the development of distributed systems, secure transactional solutions and in the integration of different technologies. It designs, manufactures and implements turnkey software solutions and delivers specialist integrated information systems. Its headquarters is located in Montreal and the company now employs over 160 people, the majority working from within its Montreal Innovation Centre. Abilis also has offices in Neuilly-sur-Seine (France), Albany (New York State) and Portland (Maine).
| Source : | Abilis Solutions | ||
| For more information : | Virginie Biel | Gabrielle Ghillany | |
| Abilis Solutions | Abilis Solutions | ||
| 514 844 4888 Ext. 316 | 514 888 4888 Ext. 320 | ||
| vbiel@abilis.ca | gghillany@abilis.ca | ||
| www.abilis.ca | |||
(29.06.2010)
ExportWise article about Abilis' Offender Management System
Read this article regarding the implementation of Abilis Solution’s Offender Management System at the Virginia Department of Corrections that appears on the ExportWise.ca web site.
ExportWise.ca is Export and Development Canada’s Online Magazine for Canadian Exporters.
Abilis Solutions
Pre-fixed prices win contracts for prisoner management software firm
Prisoners have been good to this Montreal firm specializing in systems and technology integration and customized applications development.
June 2010 • Danny Kucharsky
Prisoners have been good to Abilis Solutions, a Montreal firm that specializes in systems and technology integration and customized applications development. Indirectly, that is.
It was a hard-fought contract for the Offender Management System, a prisoner management software program for the state of Virginia that gave the firm its major entry in the United States. Sales south of the border now account for 60 per cent of the company’s business.
Virginia’s Department of Corrections was seeking to replace 16 mainframe systems with one centralized system in the 1990s. A large German supplier was hired, but abandoned the project 18 months and several million dollars later. A Bell Canada subsidiary took over in 2000, but also ran into problems. Finally, Abilis won the project in 2007 after guaranteeing a fixed price and delivery date. EDC followed suit with a letter of guarantee worth USD3.6 million – the penalty that would be imposed if the project was not completed on time and to customer expectations. “We needed a letter of credit based on performance to insure the risk,” explains Abilis president Eric Le Goff.
Not to worry: the project was finished on time and on budget by Abilis. Through its software program, Abilis now manages more than 35,000 prisoners incarcerated in Virginia as well as more than 100,000 people who have passed through its prison system. After acquiring the intellectual property for the program last year, Abilis has gained similar contracts in Maine and New Hampshire and is eying contracts from additional states and provinces. In fact, in February CORIS (Abilis’ Offender Management System) became the largest correctional integrated software in production in North America.
Abilis was founded in Montreal in 1996 by Le Goff and his partner after original plans to set up shop in France fell through because no one in that country would provide financing. (French-native Le Goff completed his engineering training in Paris.)
The firm now employs 160 people and has sales offices in London, Paris, Portland, Maine and Albany, New York. Most of the work is conducted out of Montreal.
The company’s key to success is a business model that establishes a pre-fixed price for projects – something that is markedly different from most of its competitors, who charge by the hour. “It forces us to be efficient, innovative and ultra-productive. We’re able to take risks, including penalties for late delivery.”
The strategy is attracting attention. “The fact we can set pre-fixed prices and deliver on them is becoming more and more attractive to clients.”
Several Fortune 500 companies have hired Abilis, as have European clients like Banque de France, London stock exchange and Toyota Europe. Home heating oil firms have hired Abilis to manage their oil delivery systems, while New York State’s Office of the State Comptroller engaged Abilis to manage retirement plans for its bureaucrats, firefighters and police.
Le Goff says Abilis was barely touched by the recession. The firm won several multi-year government projects before the crisis hit. Although some clients delayed certain projects, there were no cancellations.
Abilis’ growth strategy is now based on acquisition. Le Goff is looking to buy niche software firms and says it’s a buyers’ market. He expects sales to grow by about 30 per cent this year, largely driven through acquisitions.
Being innovative has allowed the company to be competitive and successful, he says. “We’re competing worldwide with companies that are sometimes 1,000 times bigger, with much more means. They can produce at lower cost than us at their overseas facilities, but despite that we’re able to compete with sharper and flexible solutions.”
Le Goff refuses to believe the future for software consulting firms lies in low-cost countries like India. “We’ve shown from our sales volumes that you can produce in Canada, employ staff at market rates at our Montreal Innovation Centre, and still be competitive as an exporter.”
Read this article on the ExportWise.ca web site: http://www.exportwise.ca/article135
(23.06.2010)Appointment of a New Vice-President and General Manager, Info-Sys Solutions
The Abilis group is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Christian Turcotte as the new Vice President and General Manager of Info-Sys Solutions.
Les Affaires Video Interview of Eric Le Goff, President, Abilis Solutions
The business magazine Les Affaires did an interview of Eric Le Goff, President of Abilis Solutions as part of the classification of the top 300 SMEs in Québec (3:41, in French).
http://www.lesaffaires.com/dossier/300pme/solutions-abilis-viser-la-croissance/514902
(26.05.2010)ETS Scholarship Ceremony: Abilis Solutions encourages innovation and supports tomorrow’s engineers
On March 31, 2010, Abilis Solutions awarded two scholarships, worth $3000 and $2000 to students of l’École de Technologie Supérieure, which is among the top three engineering schools in Canada.
Kien-Van Tram and the Walking Machine Club were the happy recipients of the two scholarships. They were chosen by an internal committee for their ingeniousness, their motivation and their creativity, as well as their tireless application of what they are learning in the classroom to their personal and professional endeavours.
Kien-Van is the creator of Vanro, a web-based video game which allows him to play with other gamers from around the world. Interested by artificial intelligence, Kien-Van is also perfecting voice recognition software which allows him to use voice commands to perform simple information searches.
The members of the ETS Walking Machine Club, represented by their captain Alexandre Gagnon, are just as passionate about their club activities as they are about their studies. Club members are building a robot that must pick up different objects along an obstacle course in under 90 seconds. The robot will compete against the robots of other clubs from around the world. The competition will take place in France and in other places in Europe and their scholarship will help fund this contest. The ETS club members are determined to win, even if this requires several all-nighters to perfect their prototype.
Abilis Solutions’ ETS scholarships give students an opportunity to learn about the company and also to establish a relationship with the ETS faculty. Close cooperation between the private sector and the academic world is essential to meeting the requirements of future employers and preparing students for the challenges of tomorrow.
Abilis Solutions places innovation at the centre of its priorities and is proud to be among the generous donors of the Fond de Développement de l’ETS and to support these young adults and their fertile minds.
Virginie Biel
Abilis Solutions
vbiel@abilis.ca
514 844 4888
Green light for P3R1!
We are really pleased to announce that on Saturday 20th February a new major release of VirginiaCORIS, named 'P3R1', went live across the Commonwealth of Virginia. The release marks a major milestone in the lifecycle of the program. In particular it has created the following key benefits to the Department of Corrections in Virginia:
- introduces the system for the first time inside Virginia prisons
- extends the number of CORIS users in Virginia from 1,300 to 4,000
- provides new modules including drug screening, offender grievance tracking, offender bed allocation (housing), job assignments, segregation (keep separates) and prison transfer functionalities to users
- allows the DOC to retire a major existing mainframe system saving huge recurring maintenance costs
- for the first time allows prison staff and probation and parole officers in Virginia to access and maintain a single source of offender data in real-time.
The release was delivered on time and on budget and is making a difference to the lives of prison staff in Virginia. This has been a big success for the DOC and an important step forward for CORIS and Abilis.
Congratulations to the team for all the hard work done during the past months.
With this release CORIS becomes now the OMS (Offender Management Systems) with the largest production operation in North America!
Eric Le Goff, President of Abilis Solutions
For more informations, please contact:
Virginie Biel
Abilis Solutions
vbiel@abilis.ca
514 844 4888
Abilis Solutions and its employees raise $6850 to aid Victims of the Haitian Earthquake
On January 12, a massive earthquake struck Haiti and Abilis Solutions and its employees began a collection to aid the victims of the quake. Immediately, the management team pledged to double all donations made by employees.