Success Stories
A Thunder Bay Region Success Story
Sencia Canada Ltd.
Two local techies turn the dot.com bust into a boom for Thunder Bay
Web development experts Irene P. Kozlowski and Joe Quaresima turned bad luck into a booming local business — Sencia Canada Ltd. 
When the dot.com bust hit in 2001, both Kozlowski and Quaresima lost their jobs developing custom software for a large U.S. firm. The customers of their former employer were left hanging — they had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on software that was still unfinished. So, they tracked down Kozlowski — after calling every Kozlowski in the telephone book — to complete the job.
Irene P. Kozlowski and Joe Quaresima
— founders of Sencia Canada Ltd. —
Kozlowski joined forces with Quaresima — along with three of their former co-workers — to take care of these clients. With that income flowing in to keep them going, they decided to combine Kozlowski's skills as a project manager and human resources professional with Quaresima's technical expertise. They invested just $20,000 each in the potential of a completely new area of business at the time — Software as a Service (SaaS). They incorporated Sencia Canada in 2001 to develop software products and lease them out, for an annual fee-per-user.
For the past 10 years, Kozlowski (President and C.E.O.) and Quaresima (Vice- President and C.O.O.) have helped customers around the world by continually innovating and adapting their products to solve specific problems and serve their clients better.
Informetica is a learning content management system that allows companies to train staff and customers online, tracking all training including testing and certification. SIMS (Sencia’s Internet Management System) is a content management web development application that enables companies to create and maintain their web pages themselves — without need for technical expertise. Both solutions are branded to look and feel like the client company’s own. In addition, Sencia customizes each solution and integrates it with various databases to streamline and offer further efficiencies to their customers.
To develop their client base and keep their customers year after year, explains Kozlowski, "we make sure our products are superior to competing products in the marketplace. We continually develop to further enhance our systems and adapt them to meet our various clients’ needs. To do this, our staff must not only excel technically, they must also be able to listen to the business needs of our customers in order to provide them with the most effective and efficient solutions.”
In addition to employing 17 local people, they give back to their community by sharing their expertise with budding entrepreneurs. They sit on committees for Ontario's Small Business Enterprise Centres , and provide "boot camps" for businesses at their local Northwestern Ontario Innovation Centre (NOIC) — a member of the Ontario Network of Excellence (ONE) .
The NOIC, says Kozlowski, "has been a godsend to Sencia. In our first five years, they were there for us to bounce ideas off. They also mentored us, helped us write proposals, introduced us to other business people, and were key to helping us look for federal sources of funding such as FEDNOR and the National Research Council Industrial Assistance Program . Most important of all, they gave us the confidence to compete in a global market.
And Sencia continues growing, with sales around the world and revenues already in the seven figures.
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