*Photograph by Shane Van Boxtel, Image Studios
Javad Ahmad, COO and president of Smart IS, leads international teams that leverage technology to solve business problems.
Javad Ahmad has built a career on his talent of creating something from nothing. “In my career, something that defined me was my ability to start new practices,” says the Smart IS International president and COO. “And that’s exactly what I came [to Smart IS] to do.” In its simplest form, Smart IS International is an IT consulting organization that works with national and international businesses to develop, implement and manage technology initiatives that solve problems. What that translates to is extraordinarily diverse, from managing warehouse applications for Amway Corporation to leading the shared services team for a consortium of three Wisconsin technical colleges.
After a brief stint with Smart IS in the early 1990s, Ahmad rejoined the company in 2001 with the mission of launching its PeopleSoft practice, offering support to clients in campus solutions, human resources, finance and customer relationship management. Currently he is focused on establishing Smart Marketing Group, the company’s new marketing division that will eventually become an independent operation.
“It’s a challenge to start something from nothing and have no idea where it’s going to go, but I enjoy doing that,” says Ahmad. “This to me is the biggest challenge right now, but it is the most fun I’m having as well.”
Family ties
Growing up in Pakistan among a family of doctors, it was always assumed Ahmad would pursue a career in medicine while his two brothers, Khurram and Saad, would become engineers. Ahmad didn’t question what seemed to be his predestined path.
It wasn’t until he was two years into his pre-med studies that Ahmad knew he needed to make a change and follow his heart’s calling in business — while simultaneously following Khurram, who was attending the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, to the United States.
“The opportunity I saw was to go to school for a business degree in the U.S. With my brother here, I saw that as a possibility. Until then I didn’t think it was,” Ahmad says.
The med school dropout has certainly redeemed himself academically. He now holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration from UW-Oshkosh, and he is even toying with the idea of pursuing a doctorate.
Ahmad and his brothers continue to influence one another. Today they own and operate Smart IS as equal partners.
The company was originally founded in Naperville, Illinois in 1988, but with its DNA in manufacturing and supply chain (Oshkosh Corp., Plexus and many Fox Valley paper mills were among the company’s original customers), the decision was made to relocate to Oshkosh in 1994. Formerly known as Oracular IS, the company was rebranded as Smart IS in 2019.
Since its inception, the business has evolved and so have its clients. Smart IS still has a strong supply chain discipline including warehouse management, transportation and labor management. It also continues to support many clients in the higher education and government sectors using PeopleSoft, the software Ahmad was brought on to launch. Custom development and e-commerce solutions remain strong areas of focus as well.
Each of the partners has his own specialty within their business practices, Ahmad says.
“We have very different personalities and different backgrounds. We kind of do three different aspects of the business. We collaborate, but don’t step on each other,” he says.
Khurram and Saad focus primarily on the implementation of the packaged application BlueYonder, which helps clients optimize supply chain planning and logistics. This makes up more than 50% of Smart IS’s business, Ahmad says. Ahmad manages custom development projects, e-commerce and process improvement projects.
“We figured out a happy medium for all of us which allows us to simultaneously go into multiple directions,” Ahmad says.
One of those directions has been the development of new product lines, a deviation from their service-based business. Smart IS is in the process of developing several new products that Ahmad hopes can be brought to market in the near future.
“We have been in this space for 30-some years; we have always developed solutions but never marketed them. We develop a solution to solve a specific problem but then we give it away,” he says. “We aren’t looking at it from the perspective of reusability or salability. What if we can identify the gaps we have already filled, package it and bring it to market?”
One of Smart IS’s active development projects is a GPS-navigation and transportation mobile app that would allow parents to track their child’s school bus departure and arrival to better coordinate travel. The product would be marketed to school districts and busing companies, Ahmad says, but that’s just the beginning.
“That is just the wrapper we are putting around it. In reality, it’s a GPS-based tracking solution. So if we do that, we can do anything, from buses to ambulances,” he says. “The return is phenomenal if we can do it successfully because you will have an annuity style business. You can continue to generate revenue on efforts you’ve already built.”
Between two offices — one in Oshkosh, the other in Islamabad, Pakistan — Smart IS employs roughly 90 people and generates between $6 and $8 million in annual revenue. Despite constantly exploring new disciplines, growth at Smart IS has been steady and strategic.
“When we started this company, it was never, for us, a growth thing, more so that we could have jobs we enjoy,” Ahmad says. “Whereas I like to create new things, we always kept it at a very manageable level so we could remain intimate with the business, our customers and our teammates.”
Custom solutions
In 2014 Smart IS launched its custom development practice, and Ahmad says this is one of the most exciting services the company offers — allowing his team to flex its creative muscles the strongest.
“A lot of businesses come to us saying they haven’t found something off the shelf to solve a problem or that nothing on the market fits them perfectly,” he says. “In that scenario, we develop something unique and custom.”
Jean Hermann, senior accountant at H.J. Martin and Son, was exhausted when she reached out to Smart IS in 2019. She was searching for a digital one-stop shop that would streamline timekeeping for employees at job sites while allowing for more effective communication between office and field employees.
“We have eight different divisions, so it’s very hard to find any sort of canned software to fit every department’s needs,” she says. “We were sick of running in the same circles.”
After listening to Hermann’s challenges, Smart IS developed a custom web and mobile app called Smart Time that allows employees to take progress pictures at job sites, reserve equipment, submit work tickets and change orders, update daily logs and even submit job applications. Hermann says they are currently working on adding a tool tracking function as well.
“The hours we will save in this streamlined process are going to be astronomical,” she says. “And it’s all in one place so our foremen can focus on doing their jobs effectively and accurately, and spend less time on their phones doing paperwork.”
In this way, the custom Smart Time app has numerous productivity advantages.
“We can track and reward our installers for meeting budgeted hours for a job. And if they fall behind, we can more quickly get a handle on it because it’s done in an app that reports to us every day. That was huge,” Hermann adds.
While the outcomes have already been successful beyond what she had hoped, Hermann says the collaboration process of working with Smart IS has been one of her favorite parts of her job.
“Working with Javad gave the process that feeling of being family owned because the owner takes pride in everything, all the way down to the nitty gritty of not liking how a calendar button works,” she says. “If it’s a big deal to us, it’s a big deal to Javad.”
Hermann especially appreciated the Smart IS team’s ability to educate her, a relative tech novice, throughout the development process so she could become a confident expert on the app for her colleagues.
“They are always a great resource to bounce ideas off of,” she says. “If you have a problem that needs to be streamlined with technology, they bring you the solution.”
Global company, local commitment
Smart IS is a global company with a strong commitment to its local community.
Ahmad, who currently serves on the Oshkosh Chamber of Commerce board and is part of its executive committee, is a founding member of Amplify Oshkosh, a program of the Oshkosh Chamber. Amplify Oshkosh was started in 2013 with the goal to build a strong local tech hub and raise awareness of tech opportunities in Oshkosh, from job openings and business showcases to trends and news. This is done through events like the Ideas Amplified speaker series, member mixers and an annual conference.
Rob Kleman is the senior vice president of economic development at the Oshkosh Chamber of Commerce. Kleman, who will become the organization’s next president and CEO Jan. 1, says Amplify Oshkosh has held close to 60 events since it started and much of the program’s success is thanks to Ahmad.
“It’s hard to sustain these types of efforts, so we wouldn’t be where we are today without Javad’s leadership, support and engagement,” Kleman says. “Javad’s a coalition builder. He’s such a critical thinker and outstanding leader. It shines through everything we do, not just with Amplify Oshkosh, but also with his customers, his colleagues and his staff.”
Smart IS provides in-kind IT and social media management to Amplify Oshkosh, in addition to being an annual platinum sponsor of the program. Ahmad himself has been a presenter, and Kleman says the energy he brings to Amplify events is palpable.
“The meetings aren’t the same without Javad there,” Kleman says. “He’s the idea guy, and he brings that out of other people.”
Ahmad serves on the boards for Fox Valley Technical College and Evergreen Retirement Community. He also serves on the executive committee of the NEW Digital Alliance alongside Kleman, who says Ahmad’s far-reaching point of view is a valuable one for the tech community in the New North.
“Javad brings a global perspective because of their office in Pakistan,” Kleman says. “That brings ideas and talent that become accessible to us here in Oshkosh and Northeast Wisconsin. It gets us thinking outside of the box about how to be successful with remote work.”
As it turns out, thinking outside the box is Ahmad’s specialty. It’s a founding principle on which Smart IS, and Ahmad’s community involvement, is built. And when the going gets tough — because even when you’re passionate about work, it does — the high of creative thinking and making digital magic drive Ahmad forward.
“What keeps us here is when we get to solve a problem and have the ability to innovate with a customer to come up with an idea that wasn’t in either of our minds before,” Ahmad says. “Every single time we do that, we are re-energized and want that again and again.”
