OptimIT History
OptimIT is an IT enterprise based in a small city called Touggourt in Algeria. It was officially started in 2015. Before that and exactly by the end of 2012, it was just an idea to give people something to manage their businesses, started with a small retail store management software for a neighbor, to pharmaceuticals wholesale, who needed special software to organize his inventory, knowing that pharmaceuticals have a special management system like the same product can be bought or sold with multiple different prices and also for tracking sold units and expiration dates …, no one engaged to create that system, the only possible solution was too expensive. Also, all available solutions were so old and ugly with gray buttons, featureless, and like win98 style (that was in 2013).
So, in 2013 the founder LARABA Mohammed Seddik had developed two modest software (oMagasin for sales and stores management and oGrosPharm for pharmaceuticals wholesale). In the same year, he managed to sell about 10 copies of oMagasin, and only one copy of oGrosPharm, he had his ears wide open to the client’s feedback, made every feature request possible, and shipped the new features about once a week. People started hearing about that new easy-to-use, beautiful local software, so they were approaching that tiny office to request a demo or buy a copy of the software, things were moving too fast, and client number was incrementing every day.
By the end of 2014 the number of clients was too high for one person to handle, and knowing the lack of experience in small business management by the founder, the software was a onetime payment, clients had to pay for new features, there were no technical support fees, that blocked the business from rolling sometimes, but as all the clients loved the software they didn’t stop coming. Now we had to hire someone to help in the development and client support, so we hired a modest engineer who helped the business a lot and freed the founder to concentrate on improving the software platform.
In 2015 a friend approached a school and gave them our contact telling them that we can create a school management software for them. We went there and nailed the project then realized it perfectly, the school owner was very happy, and used every inch of the software, which had more than 35 modules. Since that success we had more clients buying our software, or asking for a new type of software, before 2016 we had about 11 different software management systems, all based on our own developed framework we named it OptimIT Core, in 2016 it was the second version of OptimIT Core2.
After that and exactly in 2016, we had more office space, about four times the old office which can have about 14 employees, but we were just two, a founder and an employee. In this year we had discovered a lot of challenges, everyone in our city like to work in the petrol field which pays a lot, so any engineer goes to big petrol companies, none can help us to grow the business, we searched and searched with no luck, the second challenge is we didn’t have a manager nor a consultant, so we were just selling software and spend the profit, that’s all no strategy, no marketing nothing at all, if people stop buying the software, we are broke 😀 , the third challenge was we were two and we had too many software types for different fields, so it is so difficult to handle all things by two persons, especially for urgent bug cases, anther challenge we had a new pharmaceuticals wholesales client, this one is about 20 times bigger than the old one, he had more than 20 network computers, all working with our software, so we had to optimize every request, and everything, so we had a lot of work to do, with this client, the money was not a problem, the client request was the main problem, you have to fulfill them all.
By the mid of 2017, the business had a good stable revenue, but the founder couldn’t handle the business anymore, too many client requests, no one to do the marketing and sales, in our small city we didn’t find any qualified manager/consultant to help us organize things, we couldn’t hire anyone outside because it was too pricey. So, an idea of an associate popped up, the founder encountered a friend HADRI Oussama, who just finished his engineering studies, and proposed to him an association, they came to an agreement, and from there started the real thing.
Oussama was an ambitious person with high-level technical skills, not in programming but all computer stuff other than programming, he knows how to fix every bit of the Operating System (Windows), repairing Computers (Desktop and laptops), he had a talent in sales and a unique way in talking to people and to understand their needs, he was indeed the perfect fit as a partner. So, they split everything into two, sales, clients, hardware, and financial things are for OUSSAMA and development for SEDDIK.
After few months of working, profit was increasing and clients were coming more and more, things were easy and comfortable at the start, but later the two weren’t capable of handling all client requests, so they had to recruit a simple developer, he wasn’t that much of help, but they needed someone who at least support them, at least in picking up the phone or receiving the clients, soon after that they needed another developer, they found another one, which was too not that much of help, SEDDIK was doing 85% of the work, the other was there just in case, as motioned earlier, the city is too small, in the southern or lower half of the country we couldn’t find any skilled developer, even the isn’t any IT development business, also in the whole country we don’t know any hi skilled agency that does IT and software development the right way, not in that time, everything was old and ugly, so you have to work with what you have, even if you give them courses, nothing made them any better, we couldn’t use freelancers, because the kind of code or software is not ready for sharing outside the office.
In about January 2018, an investor came to us, helped us to eliminate our financial issues and to buy a car, in exchange for a portion of our profit, that had two sides, we had no financial issues no more so we concentrated on sales and development, the second side we had to pay him back his investment after three years, so the end of the contract, we have to work so hard in order to create an acceptable profit, and to collect the payback money, so that was too hard for us.
After about a year (July 2018) and because there were too many errors in products, we fired all the members of the dev team, we recruited a new engineer (SOUMIA), a brilliant one, she didn’t know anything about development, we invested in her and trained her, after few months she started to be productive, the development logic wasn’t that much for her, she had the skill of problem-solving, she was so serious she learned everything fast, and became after about a year the main technical engineer, in that year we recruited another developer (ZAKI) and two other members to give support for OUSSAMA in client calls, install our software and hardware repair. ZAKI and SOUMIA they get the job done, but the support team was useless even with the training they were so weak and all the work goes back to OUSSAMA or SEDDIK, we have changed employees a lot,
In the same year and as SOUMIA helped and took almost all software development from SEDDIK, a company from FRANCE contacted OptimIT for subcontracting, they needed Android(Java), iOS (Swift), Xamarin Form(C#), and Laravel (PHP), and as we master only C# and never worked those field, SEDDIK has engaged on those project, knowing that he is a very high skilled senior developer, he masters any technology is one or two days, and in the right way not just patching codes, he had gained a lot of experience during the creation of OptimIT Software Framework, he creates well-formed, well-architected & structured, encapsulated code, we finished all those projects, knowing that they were for other countries like GERMANY, FRANCE, FINLAND … the clients felicitated us for our modest work, SEDDIK didn’t stop there, he started learning in deep (JAVA)Android, and (PHP) Laravel, for his next projects, our Subcontractor gave us more projects for the next one or two years.
In 2019 we had a bit more stability we recruited two support members, they lack some technical qualities, but we are training them, we are investing in everyone in the office, because we believe that we won’t find anyone like OUSSAMA or SEDDIK self-formed, SEDDIK is doing subcontracting stuff for Europe, SOUMIA is doing all the software stuff in the office, she is handling about 5 different software types all by herself, Zaki handles Lightweight and WordPress websites, (JAVA) Android and (PHP) Laravel, OUSSAMA is the commercial director, he does sales and marketing, he nails any project he wants, and started to bring more big and profitable project. SEDDIK and OUSSAMA put sales and marketing strategies together every about two months, and studies market needs and the clients amount willing to pay to acquire our services and try to make it possible for all people, because in other countries software costs fortunes and isn’t affordable for everyone,
