Page 114 - A Life - my Live - my path

My career - CASE line

Synon-2 was a development tool that significantly increased
a programmer's productivity in a conventional RPG or
COBOL development environment. Synon-2 was based on
the principle of automatic generation of source code on the
basis of screen descriptions and pre-established functional
parameters. It also offered the major advantage of
automatically generating documentation for the programs
developed.
It was an immediate success. IBM had organized well-
orchestrated marketing campaigns for its agents and major
customers. Representative customers included
Volkswagen's Coordination Centre in Brussels, Barclays
Bank in Paris, Renault Portuguesa in Lisbon, Groupe
Boulanger in France, Scania Belgium, Nike, Neste Oil and

others.
We sold user licenses as well as a full range of services to
support customers in their transition phase. The company
quickly grew from 4 to 10 people. In the first year, we made
a profit of over 3 million Belgian francs (€75,000), which
surprised the chairman of the IBS Group so much so that
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he came to Brussels to see me. In the meantime, for internal
strategic reasons, IRE had sold its shares to IBS.
What surprised the chairman was not the financial result
as such, but rather the quality and the big names of the
customers. He asked me how I'd been able to convince them.

96 Staffan AHLBERG
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