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Year 13 lucky for growing Synergy Controls

By CRAIG GILBERT Greater Sudbury – After growing from a two-person operation 13 years ago to a company with offices in Greater Sudbury, Timmins, Sault Ste.

By CRAIG GILBERT

Greater Sudbury – After growing from a two-person operation 13 years ago to a company with offices in Greater Sudbury, Timmins, Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay and Toronto, Mike Gribbons and Synergy Controls are expanding outside the province.

Synergy Controls Corp. owner and president Mike Gribbons stands with a piece of Endress+Hauser equipment and some of the accolades his company has accumulated in its 13 years.

With its head office in Sudbury, the instrumentation and controls engineering firm is expanding to serve new markets in Manitoba.

Gribbons takes pride in the way he and his staff have managed the steady growth and success that has led to this latest expansion. The company has been profitable every year since inception, and has won a most valuable representative award from one of their major suppliers, Endress+Hauser, in 11 of the last 12 years. The company has also maintained a positive cash flow, something Gribbons says can make or break any company.

“You can be profitable, but without positive cash flow, you can still die,” he says.

For example, Gribbons points out that the rep he lost the above-mentioned award to in his second year went bankrupt a few months after getting it.

“If you grow too fast without having the proper financing, you could be in trouble.”

Once a company is up and running, the founder needs to refocus his or her energy.

Designing a different dynamic

Gribbons knew he wanted to get it right the first time. While bills were piling up and friends and colleagues were calling him crazy, he spent the first two months of his business’ life developing the systems that keep it running smoothly today.


“When I was ready, I contracted out the sales and did all of the promotion of the business myself.”

Synergy is a pro-active engineering product, service and systems firm. Its sales associates don’t focus exclusively on filling product orders from clients. An engineer by trade, Gribbons is able to visit an industrial operation, have a look at a given system and sell the owner a product, series of products or a whole new system that will improve the process, not just replace what’s already there. It can be a tougher sell sometimes, but in the end it usually pays off for both parties, he says.

“As an engineer, I can lay it all out the way they want to see it,” he says.

Synergy has grown 33 per cent in the past 12 months, increased its profits by about 40 per cent and maintained that positive cash flow. Synergy grosses several million dollars in total sales each year.

The company has been busy in particular over the past three years, as the mining boom has grown sales in that sector from a fraction of its total business to over half. Mining is so big these days it is basically skewing his sales pie chart, Gribbons says.

Water maintenance systems, since the post-Walkerton Safe Drinking Water Act came into effect, have grown that sector of his business from one per cent of total sales five years ago to about 16 per cent today.

“For three years, it has been absolutely chaotic, no breaks,” Gribbons says. “We’re so busy, it’s getting harder to close the gap. There’s no time for follow-ups.”

Or is there?

Re-engineering the sales process

A newer part of the equation that has led to the rampant but controlled growth the company has experienced is a semi-automated e-mail-based proposal and quotation system and a fully automated order entry server.

“This makes me money,” Gribbons says matter-of-factly. It isn’t hard to imagine how or why.

Designed and built in-house, the Synergy e-mail system allows Gribbons and the rest of his sales staff to produce proposals, quotes and follow-up schedules for clients they are bidding to work for or sell parts to.

It’s a massive time-saver, eliminating what used to add up to hours of paperwork with a few clicks of a mouse.

“It allows us to focus on what’s important.”

Gribbons can be talking to a client on the phone and have a complete sales proposal on their desk before he hangs up.

The system could be fully automated, but taking away the human element and level of control would basically turn the proposal generator into a spam factory. The “noise” of the automated messages would run the risk of being lost in the glut and dumped into the recycle bin.

A given message will include a complete deascription of the product in question as well as any component parts it includes, the price, pictures and any other promotion materials they want to attach.

The power of e-mail was further demonstrated by a pair of trade shows, in Timmins and Sudbury, Synergy organized for their suppliers in March of last year.

“We had 450 people there in two weeks’ notice without making a single phone call. None.”

Live and on the air

Another big change for Synergy is the very recent installation of a new remote and wireless software program that allows employees in the field to access not just their desktop but the entire network from wherever they are.

It’s what allowed Gribbons’ employees in Manitoba to be up, running and filing orders from customers, before they even had an office set up. The worker just logged on to the server from his hotel room as if he were down the hall at their Kelly Lake Road office.

“We can support each other from just about anywhere.”

www.synergycontrols.com