EVOLVE Business and Professional Magazine November 2016 | Page 16

COVER STORY SKY’S The the Limit for CompuSys by Carrie B. Chambers I t’s hard to imagine our world without personal computers, smartphones, tablets, or the internet. But when Mahyar Okhovatian, owner and CEO of Compu Systems, Inc. seemed, was providing the consulting and training users needed to fulfill its true potential. (CompuSys), started computer consulting in the late 1970s, Pilot Program business with a fax machine was considered “high tech.” For started CompuSys in his garage, manufacturing IBM compatible transformed business, all while building his own one-man computing world up to smaller businesses, users faced a people still sent mail via the US Postal Service, and a small almost four decades Okhovatian has watched as technology operation into a full service information technology (IT) firm. What is his secret to success? Keeping a flexible business model and a strong, intellectually nimble team whose number one focus is customer service. Ready for Take-Off Iranian-born Okhovatian’s first love was aviation, and he came to Daytona Beach in the 1970s with a scholarship to pursue In quintessential high-tech pioneer fashion, Okhovatian personal computers (PCs). Although the PC opened the steep learning curve. Unlike today’s computers, the PC of the 1980s lacked the graphical user interfaces of Windows® and Apple® operating systems; learning MS-DOS or Linux was like learning a foreign language. Without properly trained users, businesses would not reap technological benefits, and IT investments could quickly become cost centers built on frustrated promises. It was 1982, and while many others in a degree at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU). It was the computer business were focused on of computer technologies, telling him he was gifted. Through his on the other side of the technology an ERAU professor who first noticed Okhovatian’s ready grasp professor’s connections, Okhovatian soon had a lot of side work developing custom software for area businesses. Unfortunately, political unrest in Iran led to a loss of funding for his scholarship, and Okhovatian had to drop out of the ERAU program. “I was left to figure out how to support myself,” he says. The turning point for him was when a Daytona Beach-based business contacted ERAU in a panic. The troubled company had invested heavily in a computer system, but, more than a year later, they were still struggling to make it work for their business. They hired Okhovatian to help. Within a couple years the company completely automated their systems, and, as a result, became very successful. When the business was later sold, Okhovatian was again out of a job, but he had a revelation. The world was on the cusp of a technology revolution, and no one, it | 16 | EVOLVE BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL MAGAZINE making a sale, Okhovatian focused equation—the users. “I refused to sell computers as standalone merchandise. Instead, I offered only customized hardware, software, and training packages—everything that my customers needed to successfully integrate technology in their businesses.” Okhovatian and his wife, Shirley, a CPA, met with every customer, probing to find ou t how they