Interview: Talking workforce management and business efficiency with Jon Holttum, co-founder of fissara

Software development company fissara is the creator of a digital platform that allows businesses to manage their workforce, processes and stocks.

Efficiency sits at the heart of the Manchester firm’s eponymous management system, which can help organisations improve productivity, cut costs, make environmental savings and enhance customer service.

fissara appeared on my radar earlier this year when it moved to a new office in Wythenshawe, then again after securing a £200k funding boost through UK’s government’s Chinese investment programme.

I caught up with director and co-founder Jon Holttum to discuss his growing software business.

“I started my working life as an apprentice for British Telecom in the City of London and spent six years learning how electricity made mechanical things work,” he told me. “In a way this started my fascination with electronics.

I became involved in developing platforms and business functions for some really significant companies

“I found myself following a path that led me to working with software platforms in the telecoms industry. With the advent of mobile phones and then smartphones, I soon found that people were considering me to be somewhat of an ‘expert’, and I became involved in developing platforms and business functions for some really significant companies.”

Jon said that as he moved higher up the management chain, he came to realise two very simple but incredibly significant things.

He explained: “One, software is digital; it either works or it doesn’t, full stop. The second realisation was that when corporations pay vast amounts of money for business software from giant international vendors, the high price doesn’t mean that it’s any better than any other software.

Image: Jon Holttum, co-founder of fissara

“The inflated price tag reflects the fact that they are paying for 30 consultants from around the globe to sit around a table for four weeks, working out how much they can get away with charging!”

These two factors, Jon explained, are the main reasons fissara exists today.

“I wanted to turn the provision of software into a service industry and provide an extremely flexible product – one which operates on an entirely different business model to how software is traditionally sold.”

Our conversation turned to fissara’s beginnings. Jon and the firm’s original directors decided on the principles and objectives of the technology they were preparing to build, and after a year they came up with a solution they were confident would transform the market.

Jon continued: “Following a lot of late nights and weekend meetings I had a meeting with two guys from Germany at Heathrow who were on a three-hour stopover from the USA to Dusseldorf.

“At the end of the meeting they effectively tore up the contract they had just signed with a very large and well-known US Corporation and decided to give us a shot.

We ploughed everything we could into the research and development of what is now fissara

“That was just what we needed to kick off the business and we officially launched the company early in 2013 from a tiny serviced office near Manchester airport. We were really careful with that revenue, and ploughed everything we could into the research and development of what is now fissara. The rest, as they say, is history.”

I wanted to know more about the benefits fissara can offer for a business and its workforce.

“Cost is a key benefit,” Jon said. “The traditional business model for selling operational software is to sell an enterprise license for a very large capital sum, throw in a 20% annual maintenance fee, then charge customers an inflated price for every change they subsequently need.

“This model can be very lucrative and most of the big names in the industry do exactly that to a mainly captive customer base. But we do not, and that is the very reason why fissara is so different.

“We decided that there would be no large capital outlay or annual maintenance fees. Companies pay a monthly subscription for each user of fissara, which makes our solution the most commercially flexible on the market.”

fissara functions an integrated collection of modules for customers to pick and choose as necessary.

Our customers can realign the software to their business in hours rather than months

Jon said: “The modules are configured by our customers, so in effect they carry out their own mapping of fissara to support their unique business requirements.

“Because this is easily done through ultra-modern web interfaces there is very little cost to change something. Our customers can realign the software to their business in hours rather than months. This is one of the reasons why fissara has been winning such significant contracts with companies like O2, AMCO Engineering and Telefonica.”

Another benefit, Jon said, is that as there is just the one version of fissara, customers benefit from a continual product improvement program.

He continued: “If they subscribe to a module then functions are automatically updated, there is no extra training as every element is designed to be totally intuitive.”

The same version of fissara is now used across a range of sectors, including telecoms, civil engineering, utilities and property management. More recently, care home providers have begun using it.

Jon added: “It’s the same system but just configured differently by each customer.”

The company’s own research has found that the platform can boost productivity for a service business by around 20%, reducing its carbon footprint by cutting the need for paper and forms entirely. It can also slash travel times and put an end to wasted call outs.

Companies can potentially double their revenue with the same number of employees

In some cases, the firm has seen users’ admin costs fall by up to 50%.

“By using just one management information system and one set of operational tools companies can potentially double their revenue with the same number of employees.

“Some companies we talk to have six or seven different systems running which is not only costly, it’s also probably not delivering the efficiencies they think they are achieving.”

I asked Jon what he felt was fissara’s biggest achievement in 2016.

“It’s hard to single out just one achievement,” he said. “But I think getting the funding we needed after a year of hard work was certainly a high point, as it allowed us to build a great team and focus our sales activity.

“Winning a number of significant deals with O2, AMCO and Clarke Telecom was also a massive achievement as we were up against giant multinational competitors.”

Jon said that potential obstacles are always around the corner – it’s the nature of running a small business.

“It may be a tight deadline, a difficult technical challenge or government policy change which often seems intent on stopping entrepreneurs helping to bolster the economy. You get used to it, and develop your coping mechanism.”

Ongoing challenges, he explained, include attracting staff with the right skills and attitude, and reaching the decision makers – those who will understand his proposition and choose fissara to help take their business into its next stage of growth.

Jon added: “Our high conversion rates show that once we are in front of those decision makers and demonstrating fissara, the hard work is done.”

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