News
EISI President Mark Evans, Ph.D. awarded Entrepreneur of the Year 2004
Manitoba Business Magazine, which is devoted to raising the profile of Manitoba business people who are a great credit to free enterprise, has awarded Entrepreneur of the Year 2004 to business leader Dr. Mark Evans, President and CEO of Emerging Information Systems Inc.
In its May issue, Manitoba Business Magazine devotes a five-page spread to Evans and his company. Called "King of Smart Software", the article recognizes EISI's NaviPlan as being the number-one financial planning application in North America.
Evans says of his company's success: "We are good at what we do and we never lay back. That's a credit to everyone here. At EISI, we are able to understand what is needed by the client and based on that we have built several levels of financial planning software."
The article describes the modest beginnings of EISI when the company was no more than a six-month research project commissioned for a Winnipeg financial planning firm that wanted an expert system to calculate financial planning projections.
Once the term wrapped up, the firm sponsored Evans and a few of his IT colleagues from the University of Manitoba, the institution where he achieved his Ph. D. in Computer Sciences and was an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, to come up with a project.
As the project developed, Evans enlisted three of his colleagues to develop a five-year business plan to commercialize the software.
From a $40,000 investment shared by Evans and his three partners in 1990, EISI has evolved to be the market leader in financial planning software with over 70,000 professionals and more than 40 of the top financial institutions in North America using NaviPlan.
"This will never be a company where people sit back on their laurels when we sign deals with groups like Morgan Stanley and Prudential," says Evans. "To me, that just raises the bar. We will always strive to push the envelope."
