A Short History of iSupport Software

iSupport Software is the oldest, privately owned, continually operating company in the help desk/customer support market. Founded in 1992 as GWI Software, our goals have always been simple and consistent: Customers, Company, and Community (the three Cs). By focusing on these three principals in that specific order, we have overcome numerous obstacles to remain a company that grows both its customer base and its feature set year after year. Privately owned and operated by Daren Nelson, iSupport Software has an unprecedented track record of over 75 profitable quarters. Only a handful of companies in any industry can claim the financial discipline and continued reinvestment that has been a hallmark of iSupport Software.

How It Started

In 1994 while doing an email deployment of Lotus Notes for a large insurance company, Daren Nelson was asked to write an IT help desk application to be used while the company was spending 18 months deploying a much larger solution. A year later Mr. Nelson took that application and released it as a commercial solution called Help! for Lotus Notes. At the time it was the first shrink-wrapped software solution of any kind for the Lotus Notes platform.

In 1997 GWI Software was also highlighted in InfoWorld Magazine with a new product called Help! for the Web. At the time of release Help! for the Web was the first 100% browser-based IT help desk solution on the market. Help! for the Web was a watershed moment for the support industry as it signaled the shift from client/server-based applications to web-based solutions.

In 1998 Help! for Lotus Notes was surprisingly named the Best Help Desk Solution by InfoWorld Magazine in a comprehensive review of the three leading solutions at that time. Whereas all three solutions are still available today, Help! for Lotus Notes (or iSupport as it is known today) is the only one that continues under the same ownership. This consistent vision has always been a competitive advantage for us; later in 1998 Lotus Notes was named an InfoWorld Product of the Year, and in the accompanying editorial Help! for Lotus Notes was the only application singled out to demonstrate the type of added value Lotus Notes provided to businesses.

In 1999 we released Collaborative Front Office, a solution that included sales, support and marketing applications. Again we were one of the first companies to have a full suite of products that would define a market we know today as CRM.

Company Growth Years

Our growth continued through the late 1990s with GWI Software being named to the prestigious INC. Magazine's list of 500 Fastest Growing Companies in both 1999 and 2000. We were also named to many local lists such as Deloitte & Touche's Fastest Growing Tech Companies and the Portland Business Journal's Fastest Growing Private Companies during the same timeframe. Mr. Nelson received many awards for his management of GWI during these fast growing years.

With the Internet and browser technology coming of age and the slowing growth of Lotus Notes as an application platform, in the early 2000s we focused on again revolutionizing our software. c.Support ('c' for "collaborative") was developed using the latest technologies at the time, the Microsoft .NET framework. Again iSupport Software showed its leadership by shipping one of the first commercially available .NET solutions in any industry. During this time we also continued to develop functionality that today we take for granted; end user support portals, live chat, email ticket processing, load-balanced and skills-based routing, knowledge management, and change management were all features that were either introduced by iSupport Software or significantly advanced by our R&D team.

With the collapse of the .com market in the early 2000s, it became clear that we needed to focus even more to continue the success of iSupport Software. Around 2002 we stopped development of our sales and marketing applications and solely focused on providing the best shrink-wrapped IT help desk and customer support solutions. Around 2004 when we saw the end of the .com disaster, iSupport Software was one of only a handful of companies still around - still profitable and still under the same ownership.

Mr. Nelson likes to point out that he believes his refusal to take venture funding was a key to keeping the company on the right track. "We were able to listen to our customers, not our sources of funding, and do what they needed from us," said Mr. Nelson. When asked about his exit strategy, he responded, "I never had one because I believed in what we were doing and knew that I would always run this company."

iSupport Software Today

Today we see many of our competitors repeating the same pattern of large outside investment, promising transformative products but delivering feature-poor solutions, with profitability that is years away. "It's the model they teach you in business school of how to build a successful business, but successful for who?" asked Mr. Nelson. "All too often companies that structure themselves this way are great for the early investors, but in the end it's the customers who pay the price when the company is sold or goes public. Once you give up ownership of your idea, the ability to continue down your original path becomes very, very difficult. The landscape is littered with companies that had great promise but never produced results; however, there are only a handful of companies that have survived almost 20 years providing solutions to timeless problems such as customer support."

In 2010 GWI Software changed its name to iSupport Software after securing the rights to the iSupport.com domain. "I kind of look at it as the third version of the company," commented Mr. Nelson. "We continue to provide on the premise that our customer support solutions are best in class, and see no reason after all these years to change that focus. Technology will change but I don't think in my lifetime we will ever run out of customers to sell our solutions to, as long as we keep refining our product and finding new technologies we can integrate with. April 1st, 2012 will be our 20th anniversary, but more likely it will be just another day at iSupport Software…one filled with sales calls, R&D meetings, and customer support calls. If we're going to be around for another 20 years, we can't take too much time off or the competition could figure out that we might just be onto something here."