|  By
Joseph Braud
What
do you do when you realize there is more to life than eating Chelokabab?
Interview with Mahmoud Nazzari - Systems Group CEO:
How
can thirty Iranian partners get along doing anything?
We had
been at the airport for over two hours waiting for the others to
arrive. The conference guide that met us, using the few English
words he knew, somehow managed to communicate that we had to wait
for a large group from Iran before he could take us to our hotel
in downtown Moscow. I was anxious to get to the hotel and check
my email as I had left Atlanta with a long list of half finished
business. In addition, I had promised Susan, the editor of SiliconIran
that I would write an article about a successful Iranian high-tech
company operating in Iran. The deadline was coming up fast. A CEO
of one of the companies I had contacted had said "yes"
to cooperating on the article in the customary Iranian fashion.
He really meant "no" but could not bring himself around
to actually telling me that. I had not heard back from any of the
other companies.
Half an hour later I was delighted by the sight of a group of women,
among them one I recognized as Sussan Tahmasebi, the Science and
Arts Foundation (SAF) board member in Iran. After a Herculean effort,
she had managed to qualify and organize over seventy teachers from
SAF-supported schools and establishments in Iran to bring them to
one of the most prestigious educational conferences in Moscow organized
by the International Education And Resource Network (IERAN www.iearn.org).
Standing left to right: Homayoun Hariri (Co-founder & Chairman),
Mahmoud Nazzari (CEO), Mahdi Ansarian (Board Member)
Sitting left to right: Nader Hariri (Board Member) , Shahriar Rahimi
(Co-founder & Board Member) , Esmaeil Kamali Roosta (CEO of
Panah group the company in charge of after sales activities)
Many
years ago I was in Moscow for a day when our plane brok down in
route to London. The only thing I could remember about that short
stay was the monolithic, drab buildings and the stern looking people
around them. It seemed like nothing had changed.
After arriving at the hotel, my first order of business was to figure
out how to connect my laptop to the Internet so I could check my
emails.
A thousand messages had piled up during the week I was in Moscow.
Among them was an email from Susan. She suggested that I contact
an Iranian technology company called Systems Group for the article.
Coincidentally, I had actually talked by phone with Nazari Nazari,
the president and one of the founders of Systems Group, a few months
earlier. He was looking to market one of his software products in
Canada.
For a while I wondered how a high-tech company could function in
Iran given the preconceptions I’ve had about doing business
there. I decided to place "on hold" the idea about the
teachers and technology in Iran and instead managed to track down
Nazari in England. I talked to him by phone several times for this
article. He was more than happy to share his story.
 Nazari,
more than anxious to leave the academic world, had started a small
financial company in the 1980s after finishing his studies at Tehran
University. A few months later he met Homayoon Hariri, a computer
instructor at Sharif University, and Shahriar Rahimi, a Mathematician
and a savvy marketer from Tehran University. Once they realized
that they could all get along with each other, they decided to form
a company.
At the time, most technology businesses in Iran were concentrating
on large computer mainframes. Nazari, on the other hand, saw a future
in smaller, less expensive personal computers (PCs), which were
just beginning to show promise as serious business machines beyond
the exclusive realm of hobbyists and computer geeks. He decided
to develop custom software exclusively in this area. The first problem
they had to overcome was that, to build software for PCs, they had
to actually purchase a PC. The price, at the time, for an IBM PC
was about 1,500,000 Rial - money that they did not have. They managed
to convince their first customer to purchase a PC for them and leave
it with them until the project was completed. They worked day and
night for three months using GWBasic (some may still remember what
I am talking about) to develop a financial software package for
their client. In the beginning they had familiar start-up problems
as they tried to build credibility without customer references or
even an office since they were working from home.
Things are different today. Systems Group has about 350 employees
with over 160 software engineers. Headquartered in Tehran, the company
has offices in many cities. From the looks of some photographs of
the company, it could rival any start-up in Silicon Valley.  What
I found interesting was the picture of the Ping-Pong tables and
the employees enjoying themselves at work. Some years ago I realized
that there are two areas that many Iranian companies have problems
with. First, the relationship between employer and employee is often
more like that of master and slave. Second, Iranian managers have
a tendency to micromanage as we feel nobody can do a job better
than we can. I was interested in knowing how Nazari felt about these
issues.
Early on, Nazari realized that the company’s internal infrastructure
had to be strengthened. Further, employees were the most important
element and foundation of the infrastructure. That’s where
he started placing emphasis five years ago. Ahmad Kiarostami confirmed
the employee-centric atmosphere that Nazari has created at Systems
Group. Kiarostami’s company, Negah Multimedia, another successful
company in Iran specializing in computer graphic design, was a target
of an acquisition by Nazari. Ahmad Kiarostami finds him an incredibly
capable manager, something lacking in most organizations in Iran.
Nazari told me, "The most important asset of the company are
the employees. One of the programs we have instituted encourages
employees to start their own businesses within Systems Group."
Now Systems Group has about 16 business units that act as autonomous
companies with thirty partners, operating under a holding company.
 The
first time Nazari told me that they have thirty partners I thought
I had misunderstood. How can thirty Iranian partners get along doing
anything? "The cornerstone of our success is consensus building,"
Nazari said. "We have six meeting rooms and they are constantly
being used by the partners and employees to make sure everybody
is on the same wavelength or at least agrees on the general direction."
After forty-five minutes of talking to Nazari I could have been
talking to one of the progressive CEOs in Silicon Valley. He went
on to talk about their emphasis on management training and how important
customer satisfaction is to the success of the business.
A few years ago Nazari realized that in addition to making a profit,
his company also had a social responsibility. As he put it, "there
is more to life than eating Chelokabob and Ghorme Sabzi." Under
his direction, the management instituted an entrepreneurship program
that encouraged employees to form their own companies with Systems
Group’s financial backing. Nazari calls this "his way
of outsourcing the company’s projects to employees turned
business people." This management style has greatly contributed
to the success of the company. Systems Group is now the largest
software company in Iran with over 2,400 customers and growing fast.
"The business circle in Iran is a small and everybody knows
each other," Nazari says. "If you fail, everybody will
know about it and nobody will give you another project. You only
have one chance."
Recently, Systems Group opened an office in Canada under the name
of Systems Group North America (http://www.sg-na.com/), concentrating
on outsourcing and marketing several solutions for the financial
sector. Another subsidiary, Sgnetw@y provides solutions for manufacturing,
banking, and government sectors targeted at European and American
customers.
Nazari recognizes Systems Group’s shortcomings too. "When
it to comes to the management of large projects and technology trends
we need help," Nazari says. This is where he feels the expatriates
can play a great part. He would like to create an environment where
they can act as coaches and advisors. With the vast number of Iranians
abroad in various technical fields, Nazari should not have any problem.
Looking back at the achievements and enthusiasm the Iranian teachers
exhibited at the Moscow conference and some of the ideas I heard
Nazari espouse, I think something positive is beginning to happen
in Iran that many of us have either overlooked or written-off. I
know I have been away from my homeland too long and I share some
of the same distorted images of Iran that many here may have. We
need to learn from Nazari. We too have a social responsibility.
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