American software licence provider ASAP Software has opened a second Canadian sales office in an effort to better service its customers on both sides of the border.
The Buffalo Grove, Ill.-based company opened an office in Vancouver last summer — through which it services client PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) globally — and recently added a second office in Mississauga, Ont.
“We weren’t able to serve our Canadian customers and our American customers with Canadian subsidiaries as completely as we would have liked without a bigger presence in Canada,” explained ASAP president Paul Jarvie. “It all started with having a handful of U.S.-based organizations saying, ‘You’ve really got to help me out here.'”
ASAP hired on former IBM Canada executive Les Rubenovich to head up the Mississauga office and has a five-member sales and marketing team in place. Rubenovich spent some time in the U.S. head office to familiarize himself with the company, then returned to Mississauga to hire a sales force, said Jarvie. The new office will likely expand, and more Canadian offices may open, depending on the performance of the Mississauga location.
In addition to serving its existing Canadian customers, and the Canadian subsidiaries of its American customers, ASAP aims to further penetrate the Canadian market, said Jarvie. “Our market worldwide is medium and large corporations and government agencies — the same thing is true in Canada,” he said.
Mississauga appealed to the company as another Canadian location because its sister company, office supplier Corporate Express Inc., maintains a Canadian office there, said Jarvie.
ASAP has also relaunched a Canadian version of its e-business application E-Way, which allows customers to place orders for software licences and related products, access the eSmart suite of asset management and compliancy tools, and place requests for support.
The Canadian E-Way presented a challenge to the company, since it involved rewriting portions of the American system to understand Canadian currency, said Jarvie.