Running a small business at the turn of the century was no easy task...
It's worse when your technology partner disappears.
That was the case for the founders of Serenity Business Services. Like most industries, we were undergoing rapid change a few decades ago while we moved our accounting, inventory, and customer maintenance functions over to computer systems. It was a long process, and we all had other, more important jobs to do day-to-day. But, with the help of a technology partner we were managing to drag our 1970s business into the 21st century.
And then disaster struck. Our partner disappeared.
We had a minor computer problem one day, called our support number, and found that there had been an unfortunate accident. Our partner was no longer available, and when his company sent someone out to help us, we found that he hadn't done such a good job of documenting his
work. Even the people at his own company didn't know what he had done.
Software licensing was a mess. We had no idea what we owned and what we were just renting. Hardware was worse. Nobody had a way to configure our routers and servers. We'd lost the passwords to our legacy systems. We were sunk.
So, like a lot of small business owners, we rolled up our sleeves and got to it. We rebuilt our IT department from scratch, using open software wherever possible to avoid the constant drag of licensing fees. We documented everything to avoid the manager-gets-hit-by-a-bus problem. And we managed to create systems that secured our networks, kept our employees informed, and established solid lines of communication with our customers.
We tripled the our business revenue, doubled our workforce and our fleet. And then a national company came knocking. That business was acquired in 2020, so we set out to do it again...this time for other small businesses.