Has a list of potential clients in U.S. Healthcare specialist sells software that manages staff scheduling at CLSCs
The Gazette, Business, pages B1 et B7, November 23, 2004, by François Shalom

Nicolas Bastien, now 35, is the kind of guy bosses take to.

“I knew at 16 I’d be in business. I set my course, and I never strayed from that path,”said Bastien, founder, president and 94-per-cent owner of Qualicode Software, which employs 16.

The company has become a key presence in many healthcare establishments across the province.

Its Horaire Plus software program is used in nearly all the large Quebec CLSCs, as well as clinics and hospitals. The health centers use Horaire Plus to manage the schedules of the roughly 8,000 people who tend daily or weekly to homebound patients, overwhelmingly the elderly.

And that’s quite a feat, managing the constantly changing daily or even hourly schedules of 8,000 auxiliary home-care staff, including holidays, sick days, shifts switched with colleagues and many other variables.

Suzie Larrivée, systems manager at the Mercier-Est/Anjou CLSC, said Horaire Plus has spared her a lot of grief.

“Before March (when the program was installed), all that was done by hand,” Larrivée said.

“Then we had to transfer the data to the province-wide integrated program. Now it’s all computerized, which makes it all much clearer. And transferring all that is easy, too.”

She said its too soon to quantify the savings, but added: “It definitely saves on time and labour.”

Bastien’s first full time job 14 years ago mutated, via a circuitous route, into Qualicode.

“I got my DEC (high-school diploma) in computer programming from Collège Bois de Boulogne, and set about finding a job in that field,” Bastien said at Qualicode’s offices, set back and to the side from the end of a cul-de-sac in St.Léonard.

He found one in 1990 at a company called Forgestik, whose two partners promptly feuded and split. He followed one of them, who started another programming firm, called Développement et Formation Informatique (DEFI).

“I began as a programmer, then became analyst, team leader, company manager, and finally vice-president. ”

By 1993, his boss was spending two months a year in Florida, leaving him in charge of his company – and sold it to Bastien in 1993.

From then until 1999, the company was another computer-programming consultancy.

But that year, about to pass $1 million in annual sales, Bastien decided to pull the plug.

As a part of its business, Qualicode had had to conduct many training sessions for employees, and it became obvious to Bastien there was a glaring need for better management of planning and staff scheduling, especially the auxiliary staff who visit the home-bound infirm and elderly to provide basic care.

“You’d be amazed at how many people that includes – and with the boomers aging, it’ll grow by 10 per cent a year for God knows how many years.”

“About 25 per cent of work schedules change on a regular basis,” said Bastien, which can be very costly financially and in terms of quality of care.

In 1998, itching to get back in the programming mode, he had started to develop a software program that addressed the problem, which typically keeps one to three CLSC administrators busy on a full-time basis.

Bastien took a risky decision, getting out of consulting


In short order, he realized he could not keep out both ends up, so he took the very risky decision to jettison the consulting part – essentially starting again from scratch.

That single-mindedness has yet to cover him in gold and glory. For the year ended June 31, Qualicode was back up to $620,000 in revenues, with a good profit – about $50,000.”

But that dicey change in direction has given the company a more solid anchor. It’s now known as a leader in its field – competitor Scripto Centris, also of Montreal, is a distant second.

The firm is expanding its basket of products and services, like keeping an inventory of all the equipment home caregivers must ferry around or keep at particular homes.

And perhaps more crucially, Bastien is about to find out if the strategic decision five years ago will bring major growth.

He has signed with California-based Sphere Health Systems Inc., a major player in its field – similar to Qualicode’s, but for the huge U.S. market.

“They’ve given us a list of (client) prospects in the Bahamas, California, Ohio, Kentuky, places like that.

“But that’going to be a whole new ball game for us, ” Bastien said. “The people we’re going up against now are the big boys. But I don’t thnk we’ll do too badly. You know, I’ve compared our (programs) very carfully with the competition, and we’ve got absolutely nothing to be ashamed about.”

The program, which costs between $20,000 and $25,000 here, goes for about $50,000 U.S. south of the border.

“We do have to pay a 40-per-cent fee to the distributor, but on the other hand, there’s no sales staff to pay, no other costs. So you’re left with $30,000 U.S. That’s very, very interesting.”

fshalon@thegazette.canwest.com