SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2016
Multidev Technologies Inc.
By David MacDonald W hen we first spoke, I asked Joseph Amzallag a question that wasn’t on the script, so to speak. I had to. The day before, I had absorbed myself in the contents of a Dropbox deposit of research notes on Multidev and it occurred to me that I had on the phone a man whose business acumen wasn’t the only story.
I asked him, “Have you always been a problem solver?”
He laughed and then he did what leaders do.
“We all consider ourselves part of a big family at Multidev. We couldn’t do what we do without the input and support of every team. Sales and administration, development, professional services and support, it’s all one team, really, one big family at the end of the day. Many of these people have been with us since the
beginning, and many more for 10 or 15 years. We don’t have contractors. Everything is dead-locked, sold, implemented, and serviced out of our facility in Montreal, so you can imagine that a lot of hard
work goes on here. That’s why it has to feel like home. Every workplace should, as much as it can,” Amzallag explained.
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He’s a man with a knack for prognostication. Well, that seems to sensationalize things a bit.
His is largely a learned skill and it’s worthy of far more than a checkout aisle glance. He holds degrees in Business Management
and Economics from The Université de Montréal. In fact, as a graduate student
there, his work focused on developing software that created economic forecasts. He was, for a time, a banker and financial consultant for popular retail chains by day and a software developer by night. He became fixated on providing management solution tools with the simplicity of Lotus 1-2-3 fueled by the wherewithal of someone in the retail world. In 1997, he started Multidev
Technologies Inc. in Montreal, Quebec. Nearly twenty years later, his Enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for retailers, e-tailers, and wholesalers have changed – and in a lot of cases shaped – the way many apparel, department store, footwear, home décor, jewelry, specialty, and sporting goods companies do business across North America. Bloomberg’s most recent snapshot of his company lists him as Founder and President, but when you hear the conviction in his voice when he talks about the development of and his confidence in his flagship products, ChainDrive and e-comDrive, you think Chief Engineer.
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OCTOBER 2016 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS
of constantly creating spreadsheets in cluttered desktop folders and struggling to balance information between different programs and systems. Many of our original cus- tomers were retailers with wholesale divisions and Chain- Drive meant they could leverage both inventories at a single glance – which was revolutionary in a lot of ways.” When e-commerce came into its own, Multidev was faced with a dilemma: Reinvent the wheel, or adapt the Chain- Drive model. Amzallag and colleagues noted that while more and more companies were completely skipping the brick and mortar model, they still needed to leverage inventory over multiple channels. “So our approach had to reflect this,” Amzallag said. E-comDrive “is a complete and fully-integrated Back-Office System exclusively designed and developed for the web retailer. E-comDrive’s com- prehensive suite of solution components offers all of the visibility and functionality required to manage and grow a successful e-commerce business within one system. It’s a robust, reliable and revolutionary system that caters to the unique requirements of today’s web retailer, offering the most all-inclusive advanced e-commerce software on the market,” according to Multidev.com. Catering to these divergent off and online clients isn’t the juggling act you’d imagine. “While the customers and their needs vary a lot, we mostly focus on a few verticals: apparel, department store, footwear, home décor, jewelry, specialty, sporting goods. We remain within those verticals because of the volume of business we enjoy by specializ- ing. We have a lot to bring to the table in those verticals. We’re a smaller company, so digging our heels in to a certain niche or two is our best practice,” Amzallag said. It’s a strategy that’s been working for Multidev through three decades of economic and technological change. “Each year, Multidev grows upwards of 25%; last year we achieved 25% growth,” he said. “We were able to do that because we diversify within the seven verticals we operate in. We have customers all across Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean and when visions are more dynamic than others, we meet the challenge. Meeting client’s needs grows the brand and that makes it easier to sit through the cycles of the economy. The
999 Boulevard de Maisonneuve O – a five minute walk from the Montreal Eaton Centre – is like a second home to Multi- dev’s family of 50. “In our nearly 20 years in business, we’ve always been located in downtown Montreal – we’ve moved a few times, but we’ve never left downtown,” he said. “We pride ourselves on our beautiful and spacious offices, our fitness centre, and the many services we offer our employ- ees. We try to find balance in everything we do here.” “We’re a smaller company, so digging our heels in to a certain niche or two is our best practice.” In a way, what they do at Multidev is bottle up their balance for retailers, e-tailers, and wholesalers. ChainDrive, as described at Multidev.com, “is a complete end-to-end scalable, fully integrated omni-channel retail management solution that enables retailers to gain greater control over all of their business processes. From point of sale to opera- tions and web order fulfillment all the way through to finan- cials and more, the ChainDrive Platform delivers all of the functionality required to become a retail success.” “When we started, we always envisioned software that encompassed everything in one database,” Amzallag recalled. “This, our thinking was, would allow managers to instantly leverage information. It would mean the end
the difference between a big-box store that has a generic portfolio of products versus a boutique that caters to specific needs. We’re the boutique. We’re going to cater to their individual systems rather than offering them mass solutions. Our industry is a service-based industry, so you have to go that extra distance to show customers you care. We service the employees of our cus- tomers with the highest courtesy. Our personnel are trained to listen to their particular needs and to be able to respond to those needs as fast as possible.” Multidev Technologies will be cel- ebrating its 20th anniversary in spring of 2017. “We’re preparing a series of activ- ities, including a reception, for our customers, partners, and every Multidev team member who makes what we do every day possible. It’s going to be a special event.”
reality is we are a service-oriented company and we follow the needs of our customers. The more we do that, the more we build our reputation as having the ultimate knowledge in those business sectors.” “It’s also important moving forward,” Amzallag continued, “for us to always remember that the variety and reality of the market has changed a lot. There has been a lot of consolidation – and of course the major competitors are the big software companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP because they have products similar to ours. The difference between them and us is essentially
many thanks to our advertisers
www.chaindrive.com
Mutlidev Technologies Inc.
999 de Maisonneuve West, Suite 1100 Montreal, Quebec H3A 3L4 514.337.6465 • 1.800.820.1412 • info@multidev.com
www.mutlidev.com
www.multidev.com
as spotlighted in the OCTOBER 2016 issue of SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
www.spotlightonbusinessmagazine.com
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