Our guest speaker in Midwest Entrepreneurs class last Thursday was Roger Well, a 1986 graduate of Monmouth College who is currently the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of ENFOS Inc. (http://www.enfos.com/), a global leader in commercial software designed to help heavy industrial companies and governmental agencies manage environmental risks and liabilities. The company is based in Silicon Valley in San Mateo, CA. Roger, however, works out of the firm’s Midwest office in Naperville, IL. ENFOS also has an office in Bejing, China.
Mr. Well was on campus as part of Monmouth College’s Alumni Distinguished Visitor program. His youngest daughter, Madison, is currently a Monmouth College student and sat in on her father’s presentation.
The student blogger for Mr. Well’s visit to class is Alex Padilla. His account of Roger’s fascinating journey from Monmouth College to Silicon Valley—and China—and back follows below.
Prof. Gabel
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Roger Well is a 1986 graduate of Monmouth College, with a degree in geology. He was born in Alton, IL, near St. Louis, but grew up just west of Macomb in Lewistown. He is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) and was part of the founding management team of ENFOS Inc. (http://www.enfos.com/).
Roger Well has never backed down from a challenge. In fact, the harder the challenge, the more he seems motivated to succeed!
While a student here at Monmouth College, Roger ran track as well as played football. He noted that he was a captain of the 1985 conference championship track team that started the track and field dynasty here at Monmouth. Could that have led to the motivation and drive he needed to build a business dynasty that ENFOS appears destined for?
After graduating from Monmouth College Roger went on to receive his Masters in Geology from Toledo and an M.B.A. from the Keller Graduate School of Management in Chicago.
Prior to helping found ENFOS in 2000, Roger was the regional VP of Handex, an environmental consulting firm based in New Jersey. Roger tried to tell the CEO of the company that they needed to sell software and not just “time” (meaning services billed by the hour). The CEO disagreed and informed Roger that their clients did not want to buy software and that their company would not diversify. Roger, being the man he is and never giving up on a challenge and going after what he believed in, looked for help to realize his vision. Roger knew enterprise software held potential for changing the industry and generating large profit margins in the environmental services industry.
Roger met up and teamed with his former boss at Handex, Craig Modesitt. Craig also shared this company and software vision. So in the fall of 2000, the company was started in San Mateo, CA. According to Mr. Well: “Once Craig had the business running, it took me a couple of months to unwind an employment agreement with my previous company. When that completed, I was able to join Craig and the software engineering team in January 2001.”
Craig and Roger were on the right track. They had a world class engineering team as well as no debt since they started with private investment by an angel investor and founder. They have built a successful tech startup without the need to incur debt or venture capital. Building a company like this with no venture capital or loans is called “bootstrapping.” With this approach, you grow the company off of profits raised through operations.
Craig and Roger are trying to build this company called ENFOS, but what is ENFOS?
This took me a while to understand.
ENFOS is a company that offers software services to companies who hold a potential risk to the environment such as gas, oil, chemicals, manufacturing, and rail companies. In the United States we are at the point of having good environmental sustainability, but it could be better, and this is where ENFOS comes in.
ENFOS offers companies SaaS (Software as a Service) cloud management on per year subscriptions that are on a three to five year basis. The software helps manage environmental liability. When a customer has a subscription there are module tabs on the software cloud product that offers services such as finance management, compliance management, environmental data management, and geological management.
Everything is all online through the ENFOS website. There are NO software downloads needed to use ENFOS services. The SaaS may be thought of as “configurable” software, but it is more of a “COTS” product. Custom software gives the intellectual property to the client. COTS (commercial off the shelf software) is the same product for each company that uses the clients info that is used to help manage many aspects of the client company and is configured to each client. Using COTS, intellectual property rights stay with ENFOS (a major issue when it comes to holding on to a competitive advantage in the marketplace).
Going back to the beginnings of ENFOS…
As a young company with only six employees, Roger and Craig were able to land their first customer. This took almost two years but it was a BIG first client. This customer was one of the largest Global companies; British Petroleum (BP). After landing BP in 2002, ENFOS was able to land Conoco Phillips and later old GM (RACER Trust) and Pacific Gas and Electric. This started many successes for Roger and Craig.
ENFOS has been able to grow at 30% a year or more. The revenue that ENFOS sees is used for reinvesting, potential hiring, and implementing new projects for customers. With growth ENFOS is looking to move into other markets. Right now Roger and Craig are in the process of moving into China in a big way. China will be the largest growing market for environmental services and software and ENFOS hopes to capitalize on this.
Through hard work and determination, Roger Well was able to help create something larger than life that Roger hopes will become a huge multinational company. Roger has a passion for industry and environmental protection and is on the right track to changing the world and pushing for greater environmental sustainability!!
