January 2022: Seishi Sato, CEO/President

Our Vision For 2022 – A Word From The CEO

Thirty four years ago, I was working on an expansion project for a bank looking to establish themselves in New York City. Technology at the time was nothing like today’s, and it required a significant number of hands-on people to run the day to day operations of the expansion’s IT needs. There were numerous vendors and contractors there to handle the tasks that needed to be done, but things weren’t getting done.

Another person may have recommended restaffing the project with new vendors and hoping they would be better, but I took an extra moment to try to understand why things weren’t getting done. I came to realize that the problem wasn’t that we were asking too much, or that the people on the ground weren’t capable. There simply were too many moving parts and no one tasked to manage them.

Instead of finding new vendors, I found project coordinators and got them hired onto the project. While it wasn’t the solution the company may have initially preferred—I was spending more money to fix a project they believed was already funded—in the end, it was the best path forward. The project caught up and finished on time, and I continued to manage IT needs for the bank’s expansion for another nine years.

At a certain point, I was providing the company with so many project coordinators that they insisted I form my own firm and become a vendor myself. So in 1990, I founded SYSCOM GLOBAL SOLUTIONS (prev: SYSCOM (USA) INC.). In the thirty-two years since then, this company has stayed true to its roots of being not just a vendor, but a partner to every client we take on and in everything we do.

And with the initial shocks of the pandemic behind us and 2022 before us, we’re on track to continue doing the same.

Where we’ve been

2021 and its paradigm shifts hit us like it hit everyone else; we were forced to adapt or sink. The entire world changed how it does business, which means we had to change how we do business. Our clients’ needs changed overnight, but we were more than ready to accommodate them.

Digital Transformation has been important for years, but 2021 made it absolutely vital. The world’s first full calendar year of working remotely required more accurate management and accounting figures to make the shift successful. Many clients immediately signed onto Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) services like Microsoft Dynamics 365, taking their first steps on their Digital Transformation journeys.

The companies and firms that had already begun their Digital Transformation journey were able to pivot and adapt to this new reality quickly. We saw that while the best time to prepare for a world-changing, once-in-a-century event is yesterday, the second-best time is now. It wasn’t just work that went remote: the way we managed our money, consumed entertainment, shopped, and even learned went online.

While the supply chain disruptions, chip shortage, and the rest of 2021’s obstacles struck hard, they also provided new opportunities. Our ERP business, fueled by large investments in Microsoft Dynamics 365, ended up doubling our initial forecasts. This ERP growth provides a foundation for even more growth in our Digital Transformation business in 2022.

Where we are

Data center inquiries skyrocketed in 2021, and we’re projecting the business will contribute as much as 30% of our overall sales in 2022. All businesses require a data center now: the customer service firms taking calls, the banks processing transactions, the gaming companies hosting game nights, the ecommerce vendors protecting financial information. Everyone needs Digital Transformation, whether they think they do or not.

We are incredibly well-poised to help our current clients manage their evolution and secure even more clients starting their Digital Transformation journeys, which we expect 47% sales increase this year. No other firm can support a global ERP and Digital Transformation rollout at the scale we can, in as many countries as we can, while also remaining as agile and responsive as we are. We keep our clients compliant and tax-friendly in markets around the world, while also offering the hands-on, personalized experience bigger firms can’t.

ERP has continued to be a major driver of business for us in Japan, with our Japanese business projected to grow by 27% in 2022. As Japanese/Asian-owned businesses expand globally, a cloud-based intelligent business application like Microsoft Dynamics 365 is vital to managing their growth. Its relatively inexpensive price point (less than half the leading competitor) and our proven track record with it positions us to seamlessly take on international growth. We plan to own this market via our strong command of Microsoft Dynamics 365.

What’s next

In the United States, we’ll increase our client share even more by building on the brand awareness campaigns we did in 2021. America knows we’re here—now, we plan to grow.

However, we don’t plan to do this by being the leading vendor in the US. That’s because we don’t settle for being a vendor—we strive to be a partner. A vendor sells you an answer to a problem, while a partner seeks to understand why you have the problem in the first place. We’ll only grow our own client base when we focus on growing our clients’ businesses.

In 2022, we’ll grow our American business through technical services, mainly through our System Integration Solutions group. As Japanese companies expand into America, they’ll come to expect the same level of service we’re renowned for providing. And as American companies learn more about our long history of service and industry-leading client retention rate, we’ll secure more partnerships through the same strategy.

Our partnership-focused strategy—as opposed to being a vendor—works better for everyone. For clients, they get an informed partner that understands their issues and can find solutions, instead of a series of vendors they have to keep shopping around for every time there’s a problem. And for us, it’s always better to maintain long-term clients eager to continue our working relationship.

Through our outreach to American companies in 2021, we’ve learned that the majority of inquiries have been around security. Nearly all enterprise customers use cloud services, either from third-party vendors like Amazon Web Services or their own internal solutions, and require round-the-clock monitoring 365 days a year. While most of these security operations can be monitored by AI, human oversight is still mandatory to ensure compliance and safety. As a reseller and MSSP of Crowdstrike, we implement its EDR solution, while also providing our Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service to ensure the necessary oversight, and our trusted techs and engineers stay on after implementation to help maximize benefits to our clients.

Our final key advantage in the American market is our size. Many of our prospective clients have between 100-500 cases—far too small for larger MSPs that look for bigger whales, but the sweet spot for a midsize company like us.

Think local, act global

As we boldly make our way forward into this year, we’ll double down on our company philosophy of “think local, act global.” In truth, it’s a concise way of restating our core strategy, one that we’ve had since our very earliest days. We don’t set out to be a vendor—we strive to be a partner.

To help our clients, we have to first consider the immediate, local context they’re operating in. We have to understand their day-to-day needs and what their eventual ideal end state is. We need to know why they’re encountering issues and what’s preventing them from reaching that end state.

To truly partner with our clients, we also have to understand the broader, global context their company does business in. Locally, we connect them with the solutions they need to surmount the obstacles in their way. And once we establish trust, we leverage it into future business as those clients expand globally. As they have new needs, we’ll build upon our foundation by offering more services.

I know this is the future of this company, because it’s the soil this company initially grew from. It’s how we continue to grow because it’s how we were born in the first place. And if we stay true to it, who can say what heights we’ll reach?

As we boldly make our way forward into this year, we’ll double down on our company philosophy of “think local, act global.” In truth, it’s a concise way of restating our core strategy, one that we’ve had since our very earliest days. We don’t set out to be a vendor—we strive to be a partner.

To help our clients, we have to first consider the immediate, local context they’re operating in. We have to understand their day-to-day needs and what their eventual ideal end state is. We need to know why they’re encountering issues and what’s preventing them from reaching that end state.

To truly partner with our clients, we also have to understand the broader, global context their company does business in. Locally, we connect them with the solutions they need to surmount the obstacles in their way. And once we establish trust, we leverage it into future business as those clients expand globally. As they have new needs, we’ll build upon our foundation by offering more services.

I know this is the future of this company, because it’s the soil this company initially grew from. It’s how we continue to grow because it’s how we were born in the first place. And if we stay true to it, who can say what heights we’ll reach?

Executive Message
& Employee Spotlight

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