While 'Brand Jamaica' impresses the international market when displayed on products like food and beverages, the experience of SymSure, a successful Kingston-based software company, is that to succeed in so-called knowledge industries, local entrepreneurs may have to market themselves as anything but coming from this island.

SymSure took the step of marketing itself overseas via partners in order to avoid any negative perception of software made in Jamaica. In fact, visiting the company website, www.symsure.com, you will be directed to their Canadian office. This is a necessary business strategy to compete in that market, explained founder and chief executive officer Andrew Simpson whose software SymSure Monitor provides a framework enabling users to detect and manage risk.

SymSure at a trade show held in San Francisco, United States. (Photo: SymSure)

Marketing as a Jamaican software company would be "suicide", said Simpson.

After two years in business, SymSure products have won respect against international competitors and won contracts with a wide range of clients ranging from the local financial sector to an Australian gold mine. His company specialises in software that enables clients to detect and manage risks including telephone network bypassing and money laundering (see related story in news section).

"The predominant perception of Jamaican software companies is 'What the hell is that?'. However, some of our partners are companies that I have known for years through previous business relationships," he said referring to his longer established firm, Symtai Consulting. "So by the time we started to approach others directly we could refer to other customers' experience."

He reasoned that Indian software companies used the same tactic before their products gained sufficient respect to stand alone in the North American market.

Don Gittens, senior consulting officer for investment promotions at Jamaica Trade and Invest (JAMPRO) said he sympathised with SymSure.

"There is a vibrant software industry in Jamaica and the universities do produce programmers but they tend to go into networking. It's going to take some time before the industry can win that respect but people like Andrew show that it is possible in Jamaica," said Gittens.

A second improved version of SymSure Monitor has just been released and has been well received by clients, said Simpson.

"Our ultimate target is to develop software that will not allow activity like fraud to go undetected and uncontrolled. When we (the software) detect something, it sends the information to you which is displayed as a dashboard on your computer and opens up for your action and there will be a deadline for you to action upon it. If you don't act upon it the report gets escalated - so we are not running a system where people can ignore or not notice what has been done," he said.

The company is only now receiving interest from local investors, having launched with capital from a Trinidad-based venture capital fund, he said. Local lenders need to improve their support for the growing software sector by allowing developers to use their Intellectual Property as collateral, said Gittens.

Meanwhile, local developers like SymSure must compete against multinational companies and even start-ups in countries where significant funding can be sourced without finished software, complained Simpson.

He said that a further challenge remained in retaining talented developers who could be tempted by offers from larger United States-based companies. To diminish this risk staff have been issued with equity shares to ensure that they have a vested interest in the company.

Despite launching its Canadian office SymSure developers will remain headquartered at the current location on Half-Way-Tree Road, St Andrew. This ensures that the software will continue to be developed in Jamaica.

"The plans for the next two years are clear-cut. We are looking at expanding what we do here into a development centre and at least looking to be increasing the people here to 30 in the next two years," said Simpson.

Meanwhile, the market for SymSure products is
growing worldwide.

"In the first year Jamaica was about fifty per cent of our business and we expect that it will be less than five per cent in less than a year and in two years it will not figure in our business plans. We will still have local clients but in our sales and marketing plans you will not see any mention of Jamaica and the Caribbean," he said.

SymSure has also recruited marketers from leading software companies to staff its new Toronto office; and after much persuasion, a former senior vice-president from software giant Oracle has been recruited to serve as chairman of the company.
"These guys are intended to focus entirely on the North American market and to try and get us our fair share of Fortune 500 companies."

SymSure clients include:

Jamaica:
GraceKennedy
Jamaica Money Market Brokers (JMMB)
Sagicor/Life of Jamaica (LoJ)
National Housing Trust (NHT)
COK Co-operative Credit Union

Caribbean:
Butterfield Bank
CL Financial Group
TSTT

Australia:
Fox Television
Lihir Gold
Victoria Police Department
Health authorities
Hunter Water

Latin America:
Banco de Costa Rica
Credit unions in Peru

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