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