Lone Wolf History

Lorne C. Wallace, the founder of Lone Wolf, began work for Ernst and Whinney, a chartered accounting firm, in July of 1984.  The second week of his employment, staff unpacked the firm’s first IBM XT computer and Lorne realized that he would have to become involved with these “things”.  After staff spent the week installing Wordstar V1.0 and Lotus V1.0, among other programs, Lorne accidentally reformatted the hard drive late on a Friday afternoon.

A manager at the firm, Deryck Williams, had the idea that if the firm could get involved in developing software for clients to use that the firm would have clients wrapped up tightly.  Given that both their software and their accounting came from the same firm, it would be hard for a client to leave.  This became the genesis of the concept behind Lone Wolf  (Lone Wolf Principle #1:  Engage your client from different directions and they can’t run away from you).  During the next three years, Lorne became in charge of computer training for the staff at the firm and became proficient on all of the programs in use at the firm.

After leaving the CA firm along with the managing partner who went to be CFO of a stock brokerage, Lorne began a new career as a roving controller for companies that the stock brokerage had invested in.  One of these, Seaborne Marketing, which was doing counter trade with China, had a customized order entry/inventory program that had been developed for them.  After realizing that the programmers had no concept of what the company needed to run their business with (Lone Wolf Principle #2:  If you don’t see what your client sees, you don’t hear what your client is saying) Lorne hired a close friend, Peter Reilly, to write the order entry/inventory/accounts receivable system for him.  This code became the original version of Lone Wolf and went live April 15, 1987.

With the collapse of the stock market in October 1987, the investment climate changed and there was a change in priorities at the stock brokerage.  Lorne joined a customs brokerage house as their controller with the mandate to develop an in-house software solution for their needs.  During this period, the G/L module was developed.  By the end of the year, the Lone Wolf program consisted of modules for inventory, service, order entry, accounts receivable, accounts payable and general ledger.  Lone Wolf Corporation was incorporated to hold the assets that were being developed.

Lone Wolf Corporation began full time operations January 1, 1989.  The concept was that Lorne would develop his accounting practice in conjunction with the software company, using each facet of the operation to complement the other.  Lorne moved in with Clonetech Computers with the agreement that they would sell hardware to their clients and Lorne would sell software to his clients and they would then cross-market to each other clients.  The programming occurring at that point was continued development of the generic accounting modules, which now included payroll, along with customized programming for clients.  The accounting practice also began to grow as the symbiotic nature of the business began to show its potential.  Several clients who purchased Lone Wolf software in 1989 continue to run it to this day, including two clients that Lorne is still the accountant for.

During that first month of 1989, Des O’Kelly and his partner arrived at the store to purchase a computer network for their real estate office that they were setting up.  Lorne and Des met and became friends immediately.  During the course of 1989, while Des’ office was growing from scratch to over 50 agents, Des and Lorne worked at developing the accounting tools that Des needed to operate his real estate office with.  By the end of 1989, that office, Countrywide Professionals, had a Novell Network installed, a centralized modem pool and centralized laser printers.  Every agent had a desktop computer with a dot matrix printer.  They would come into to their office, turn on their computer, retrieve messages that the front desk had taken for them, exchange internal mail with other agents, prepare offers on their computer and print them on the laser printer, connect to the real estate board and have access to other software tools.  This office was so far beyond state of the art it was unbelievable.  Unfortunately, the real estate market collapsed in 1990 and the lack of capital caused the office to close.  Des then joined Lorne at Lone Wolf.   During the year, presentation packages had been created and distributed to the other brokers in the franchise system that des belonged to.

Several brokers in the Countrywide system (subsequently purchased by Prudential in Canada) purchased the first commercially available packages of the Lone Wolf Real Estate Brokerage Management System.  Massive numbers of changes were being made to the system throughout the year and more clients purchased the system and their feedback was implemented into the system (Lone Wolf Principle #3:  Your clients will help you improve your product, for free, if you just listen to them).  With Des joining Lorne in a sales capacity, the ability to expand operations was created.  In December of 2000, with the collapse of Clonetech Computers, a new company was formed, Penderis International Inc..  The assets of the software company and the hardware were rolled into Penderis and the ability to offer a turn key solution to our clients was developed.  Now we could sell them their software, their hardware and perform their accounting services.

The Lone Wolf Front Desk System was developed which performed the following functions in a real estate office:  Taking of messages at the front desk and paging to the agents; Arranging showing appointments; Managing listing activity.  This along with the offer writing program, were the first attempts at creating a platform of products  (Lone Wolf Principle #4:  Sell to them once, then sell to them again).

During this year, the first sale to a RE/MAX office was made.  With RE/MAX being the acknowledged leader in real estate in Canada, this provided Lone Wolf with more credibility in that system.  That first sale quickly translated into a number of others.  A reorganization of the corporate structure resulted in the departure of one shareholder from Penderis International Inc. and a new company being formed, Penderis Computers Inc.  with Lorne Wallace being the sole shareholder.  This is the corporate entity that exists to this day.  Lone Wolf Software is a trade name used by that company.

Several strategic decisions were made during this time period.  First was to get out of offer writing business.  A number of programs had come on the market that printed the offer on blank paper, a superior method to our fill in the blank version which required alignment of the forms.  Second was to get of the front desk business which involved a technology, paging, that the company was not proficient in.  This also allowed us to stop competing with another company in Ontario which then allowed that company to get out of the accounting field and stop competing with us.  Consequently, both companies became the largest in their respective fields, the front office and back office.  Third was the decision to stop selling computer hardware.  While being able to provide a complete turn-key solution had been useful in prior years, the continuing commoditization of the hardware industry meant that profit margins did not make this a worthwhile (Lone Wolf Principle #5:  Take one small step back to take one giant leap forward!)

With the addition of our first large real estate office, one of the RE/MAX top twenty multi-branch operations, the program needed a complete re-write of the code.  Learning from what our clients had difficulty understanding, what we had difficulty explaining, and the limitations that had developed in the system over the last five years, a dramatically enhanced version was developed.  By investing time and funds into this endeavour, we were able to make a leap in the distance between us and our competitors.

Sales continued along steadily with Lone Wolf focusing more and more on the real estate industry.  Lorne became the accountant for several RE/MAX brokers and this allowed him to start attending RE/MAX broker/owner meetings.  While going as a software developer might have been frowned upon, attending under the accountant umbrella was perfectly acceptable and this is where the relationship with the RE/MAX regional office in Ontario was first begun.  By attending the same meetings that the brokers were attending, Lorne was able to determine what direction the franchise was going in and make sure that the software followed if not led.  For example, when RE/MAX wanted to separate residential and commercial transaction information, brokers called in that February in a panic.  But the Lone Wolf system already supported this since the update that January had this breakdown built into it.  This arose from attending a meeting the previous fall where RE/MAX announced it for the new year  (Lone Wolf Principle #6:  If you know more about your client’s business than they do, they will look to you for guidance).

At this point, Lone Wolf had developed into the premier accounting software program for real estate brokers in Canada.  Through judicious use of marketing, continued program feature development and customer support, Lone Wolf had surpassed all competitors in the Canadian marketplace.  The decision was made to expand operations to the United States.  Through a fortuitous meeting between the regional director from the Ontario region and an associates of the largest RE/MAX office, which was based in Atlanta, Lone Wolf was introduced to the United States.  Subsequently, the product was introduced to the Mega Broker group in RE/MAX and sales were made in Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Denver, etc..  RE/MAX International was made aware of our presence in the marketplace but we focused on getting as many of their large brokers signed up onto our system before approaching them for approved supplier status.  To date, 19 of top 20 RE/MAX Multi-office brokers and 31 of the 50 largest offices use Lone Wolf

Starting in the summer of 1999, the development of the Windows version of Lone Wolf was begun.  After attempting to have the work performed through outside developers, staff was hired internally and total control over the project was brought in-house.  While Lone Wolf was probably the last developer to bring out a Windows  version of their program, we were able to learn from the mistakes of our competitors.  The last DOS version of the program was sold in the summer of 2001 and the Windows program was launched.

An OPE (Opportunity for Product Enhacnement) system was implemented whereby suggestions from clients for product changes are gathered by staff, both internally and in the field, categorized into the system and reviewed, and then authorized for development.  This system has been spectacularily successful in enhancing the program and showing to clients our willingness to work with them (Lone Wolf Principle #7:  We sell a relationship, not a product).

Concentrating on building the infrastructure of the company, several important changes were made during this year.  The company invested in Webex technology as a means of extending it’s reach to current customers and potential customers.  As opposed to the old PCAnywhere program that the support department was using previously, the Webex internet based program allowed the department to become more efficient and reach client’s computers easier.  This lead to increased customer satisfaction.  The other technology that was put in place was Salesnet, a web-based contact management and process monitoring tool.  By having all of the saleperson’s leads on the internet, Des O’Kelly is better able to manage the salesforce and monitor their activities, as well as making sales forecasts.  The process monitoring has also been implemented for the installation and training of the software, allowing for monitoring of what stage a client is at in their implementation.  This contributes to a better experience for the client.

The company is reviewing several internet based programs for the customer support department.  By summer, a program will be in place allowing for the web-based monitoring of service with the goal being to have better turnaround time on client enquiries and more consistent information flow between the field reps and the office staff.