Chief Executive Officer / Canada
What we chose to promise, and what it cost
- Recognised company revenue
- C$88m
- 2025, after the planned resale exit
- Colleagues
- 620
- June 2026; seven executive direct reports
- Contracted organisations
- 64
- Canadian regional public-service clients, June 2026
Decisions & consequences
01Pricing the six weeks nobody had owned
During a review of recently completed transitions, I found that our teams continued to answer substantial client questions after the formal project period ended. The requests were often reasonable. A permanent employee had not attended the demonstration, a local exception had been omitted or an incoming support colleague could not find the basis of a decision. The commercial model treated those calls as occasional goodwill, although the same pattern appeared across several engagements.
In 2022 I asked our transition and commercial leads to price a defined six-week support period for a twelve-engagement pilot. The sales director argued that clients would compare our explicit charge with competitors who appeared to include the work. I accepted that risk and required the offer to describe the actual availability, response boundaries and material that would be maintained. It could not be a charge for correcting defects already covered by the original agreement. We also offered a smaller option where the client's own team could demonstrate that it would assume more of the work.
Nine clients chose the full period, two chose reduced arrangements and one postponed its transition. Those choices did not prove that every future client would pay. They did show that an explicit discussion could reveal different needs before the transfer date. We assigned one transition owner to each selected arrangement and reviewed the unresolved questions at the end, instead of treating the last calendar day as evidence that the receiving team was ready.
The pilot made previously hidden work easier to plan and made the price comparison less comfortable. I would improve it by involving the client's permanent service owner sooner. In two engagements, the procurement contact understood the option but had not brought the receiving team into the choice. A clearly priced obligation is still poorly designed if the people expected to use it have not helped define it.
Replacing a reassuring total with an uncomfortable roster
In 2018 our operations report showed 47 colleagues with bilingual support capability. That number reassured managers who were negotiating a wider evening service. A roster review told a less comfortable story. Two proposed weekday windows would depend on one experienced specialist each, and neither had a reliable replacement with the same technical and language competence. We had enough people in aggregate and insufficient coverage where the promise would actually be made.
As chief operating officer, I asked the service director to separate routine requests from specialist escalations and map both against the proposed hours. He favoured launching the wider service immediately, arguing that the two specialists had covered unusual requests informally for years. Our people lead objected to turning that voluntary flexibility into a permanent obligation. I supported a slower start: recruit for one window, train a second colleague for the other and retain the previous service hours until those arrangements had been demonstrated.
The extension began ten weeks later than the sales team had proposed. We spent C$190,000 on recruitment, training and temporary overlap during that financial year. Two clients accepted the revised start; a third chose another provider for its evening work while retaining our daytime support. I reported that lost scope alongside the new coverage, rather than describing the delay as a success without a price. During the first six months after launch, both windows operated without a planned shift depending on either original specialist alone.
That result established a more resilient roster; it did not establish how quickly every future incident would be resolved. Some complex requests still required escalation outside the window under an agreed process. I would have involved the commercial team in the first roster exercise, before it discussed a start date with clients. The lesson was not to stop offering broader service. It was to establish whose working life would make the promise possible before presenting it as available.
Choosing a smaller revenue line that we could explain
In 2023 the board asked why licence resale remained prominent in our growth presentation when service managers struggled to fund improvements in knowledge transfer. The activity generated substantial invoices, but most of that money passed to vendors. After administration and client obligations, one group of arrangements contributed only C$420,000 against C$11 million of annual resale revenue. It also occupied commercial attention that was not visible in the contribution estimate.
I proposed allowing those arrangements to expire over two renewal cycles, without withdrawing related technical support where clients wanted to retain it. One founder opposed the proposal because purchasing volume had helped secure vendor attention and introduced several longstanding clients. The sales lead worried that another reseller would gain the opening to replace us entirely. Both were credible risks. I asked for a client-by-client plan and a forecast that showed lost contribution, remaining support revenue and any deterioration in purchasing terms separately.
By the end of 2025, the identified C$11 million of annual resale had left our revenue base. Eighteen of the 22 affected organisations retained some support work with us; four moved that work as well, removing a further C$1.3 million of annual service revenue. We recorded those losses plainly. Commercial capacity released by the exit helped us pursue new transition engagements, but I did not attribute every subsequent contract to the decision. Our C$88 million of total 2025 recognised revenue includes the remaining business and should not be compared with the old total without explaining the changed mix.
I would have negotiated the support continuation earlier for the four clients that left. We had assumed they valued the separation between licence purchasing and service delivery as much as we did. The decision still clarified where we intended to invest, but the client interviews showed that administrative convenience can be worth more to a buyer than a vendor's carefully argued specialisation.