LISTENING TO LEAD
MILLENIUM SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL Tech leader revolutionizes the beauty industry BY ANGELA MUNIZ
J OHN HARMS HAS has learned many things in his more-than-30 years in the salon and beauty industry, but perhaps the most important has been the act of listening. It’s a skill the tech founder has integrated into the foundation of his company and the software it created. Millenium Systems International (MSI) has its roots in the early days of computing. It started in the 1980s as Harms Software when a then-16-year-old Harms was building real estate software in his Pennsylvania garage. When a client talked to her hairdresser about Harms’ work during an appointment, the beauty shop owner listened. The rest, as they say, is history. Soon, Harms was putting his automation skills to work for the salon industry. He quickly discovered it was a business with needs and processes even he underestimated. Unfamiliar with the space, he learned by watching. He saw the layers that went
into scheduling appointments: booking in quicker services during gap time on longer procedures, accommodating schedule changes, and more. From his observations, Harms created the first digital appointment booking system dedicated to the beauty business. It was a breakthrough for the industry and MSI soon went from a handful of clients to thousands. “What I think made us successful was [being] focused on listening rather than telling [clients] what they needed,” he says. “I just watched, and I saw. You can’t just assume an appointment book is an appointment book.” Finding solutions Harms says the appointment book put MSI on the map, but it was also just the beginning. Now known as Meevo, the MSI software provides operating
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IN YOUR CORNER ISSUE 17 | 2024
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