This year’s Free Enterprise Honorees, part of the U.S. Chamber’s DREAM BIG Small Business of the Year Awards program and sponsored by Sam’s Club®, were selected among hundreds of applicants for their vital contributions they make to economic growth and job creation.
“These small businesses were celebrated for their strong business practices and contributions to our nation’s economy-Smartware Group, Inc. is no exception,” said Thomas J. Donohue, U.S. Chamber president and CEO. “The selection committee was impressed with Smartware Group’s application and many achievements, and we are proud to have this opportunity to recognize their business’s success story. The company should be very proud.”
“We are honored to be recognized by the U.S. Chamber, and are staunch supporters of free enterprise,” said Paul Lachance, president of Smartware Group. “Were it not for free enterprise, we would not be accountable for product stability and availability.
“In our society, if your product performs poorly or is not competitively priced, people will buy from another supplier. The free enterprise system drives us to deliver an excellent product at a fair price and inspires happy customers to sell the value of our products and services to their peers.”
Employing their own Yankee ingenuity, Lachance and co-founder & CFO Dave Peelstrom launched Smartware Group to solve maintenance management problems with its flagship product Bigfoot CMMS(computerized maintenance management solution). Today the New Hampshire-based company is known as a premier provider of CMMS products.
Smartware Group emerged after Lachance and Peelstrom’s previous company was acquired and later jettisoned by the purchaser due to a change in product direction. The two partners bootstrapped the fledgling software business by creating a home for the “orphaned” customers from the acquisition, focusing on retention, and using earned income to finance growth, ending 2011 with 36 percent growth in revenue.
About Smartware Group, Inc. & the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Smartware Group, Inc., headquartered in Center Harbor, N.H., develops and sells Bigfoot CMMS (computerized maintenance management software) for a variety of business environments, from manufacturing plant floors to convention centers and stadiums.
Since 2002, Bigfoot has helped more than 1,400 customers worldwide improve facility and equipment maintenance operations with advanced capabilities that include preventive maintenance (PMs) and predictive maintenance, work order scheduling, maintenance requests, asset life cycle management, parts replacement inventory, and built-in reporting. Bigfoot CMMS’s native functionality paired with its intuitive design allows maintenance professionals to implement the solution and get results quickly, often in a matter of weeks.
Bigfoot is quick to implement, quick to learn, and quick to deliver results. For more information visit: http://www.bigfootcmms.com.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the world’s largest business federation representing the interests of more than 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions, as well as state and local chambers and industry associations. To learn more about America’s Small Business Summit where Dream Big Award winners and honorees will be celebrated, visit http://www.uschambersummit.com.
