Several years ago David Mackie was working in a high-level team of network designers dreaming up strategies and architectures for large government departments - large, high-impact projects with long price-tags attached.
But the project "half-way to a data centre" eventually collapsed under the weight of politics surrounding vendors, products and end-user needs.
"Large environments are like aircraft carriers, they can't come about in their own length," says Mackie. "I have spent large slabs of time working in teams to deliver solutions which could effect huge change only to have them still not be realised after four years."
The experience motivated Mackie towards his "dream mission" of building an SMB integration and support services provider covering regional ACT including the Eden Monaro and Riverina districts.
And so in 2002 Synergistic Network Solutions was born, partly as a company for Mackie's contracting to the Federal Government but also as an SMB-focussed reseller working on competent design, deployment and support.
"in SMB I saw the opportunity to solve business problems for companies where we were dealing directly with the owners and truly solving the problems they have, not the ones we hoped they had," says Mackie.
"Synergistic was not an accidental name and the management buzzword was not my intent. I really do believe that we build better networks when the customer participates even if they are just thinking honestly about their actual requirements."
The dream has proven harder to realise, partly because government work has been such a lucrative and easy distraction.
This may be about to change thanks to the Gershon report, which has had a profound effect on the business - seven of his 11 staff have converted contract roles to public service jobs.
"So perhaps it really is time to focus effort on our commercial opportunities, but it is so hard not to take the easy sale and have that certainty of revenue [from government]," says Mackie.
While SMB managed services could eventually provide the same level of certainty as contracting to the government, the first step was working out how to get there.
Synergistic's customers are used to too high a level of service for the price they are currently charged, according to Mackie.
He used his background as a systems designer to set up his customers' PCs to refresh to a standard image every time they have a problem, which has sharply reduced the number of persistent issues and consequently call-outs.
"You can't justify a contract to manage an environment costing between $5000 to $12,000 when they are accustomed to stability and high levels of availability for say $2000 to $3000. Moral to the story - you need to either have high volumes of clients or strive for mediocrity."
Mackie has concluded that he can only sell a recurring revenue managed services contract to a new customer, but this just presents another dilemma - how to make the sale.
"I'm curious [as to] how you get people to sign a managed service contract initially. You're expecting a guy to spend tens of thousands of dollars with a guy they've never met who doesn't have a [known] track record."
The easiest way to build trust is do a couple of break-fix jobs, and that puts you back in the conundrum surrounding your old customers.
Now that the Gershon report has whittled away at his full-time staff, it is even harder for Mackie to give up his own contracting work - he is currently playing a leading systems design role for a large department.
"I've painted myself into a corner again," he says. "I think we are in the same boat now as we were" when Synergistic was founded. But this time round, Mackie is making a concerted effort to improve the business on several fronts with a business plan - of sorts.
"Since I don't have all, well actually any, answers my plan is to work hard to continue to over-service our current clients, build the cash reserve so I can devote time to build sales and train up staff in our own brand of service delivery."
The first priority is trying to wind back his contracting to three days a week, and hopefully down to one.
Instead of expensive hires he wants to bring on apprentices who don't already have a fixed way of doing things and are open to adopting the family-business culture, of which Mackie speaks passionately.
Mackie is also "McDonaldising" and writing out all the processes that until now were in his head so the company can add staff without needing to micromanage them.
The company's sales pipe has relied on word of mouth, but this year it is trialling Yellow Pages online and the print version in Canberra.
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