‘We are on the world stage’: How John Sicard built Kinaxis into a global software leader

Rising up in a navy household, John Sicard lived in 15 completely different locations.

In the present day, OBJ’s 2020 CEO of the Yr credit that nomadic life-style with educating him the way to adapt to altering circumstances on the fly, an formative years lesson that’s served him properly within the topsy-turvy world of tech.  

“Each two years my father would come residence and say, ‘We’re shifting.’ We’d say ‘When?’ He’d say, ‘Monday,’” he recollects. “I’ve all the time grown as much as be hyper-resilient. I lean in. When somebody says that’s inconceivable, I say, ‘That’s a name to motion. Problem accepted.’”

As the corporate’s monetary prospects started to brighten, the rising government famously advised a reporter that Kinaxis was on its approach to eclipsing one other well-known Ottawa-based software program agency that had annual revenues approaching $1 billion.  

“He mentioned, ‘Sometime we’re going to be value greater than Cognos,’” says former CEO Doug Colbeth, who now runs a health-tech firm in San Diego known as MedCircle. “He was not intimidated. I believe our market worth at the moment was perhaps $100 million.” 

Exhibiting his trademark willpower, Sicard continued to work his approach up the company ladder. He excelled in each C-suite position Colbeth may provide, together with chief working officer, chief technique officer and, finally, chief product officer. 

In 2014, Sicard helped pave the way in which for Kinaxis to go public, criss-crossing the continent with Colbeth and chief monetary officer Richard Monkman in an effort to win over generally skeptical buyers. In the long run, the agency had one of many greatest Canadian tech IPOs in years, promoting greater than $100 million value of inventory on the TSX.

Sensing that Kinaxis wanted a brand new chief to take it to the subsequent stage, Colbeth determined to maneuver on. Surveying the company panorama, he had little question who his successor ought to be.

‘Extraordinarily well-organized’

Sicard, he says, is a uncommon breed: a frontrunner who sees the massive image however doesn’t overlook any of the small print wanted to make that imaginative and prescient a actuality.

“He’s extraordinarily well-organized,” Colbeth says. “He sees the worth of constructing the infrastructures to help the expansion of an organization. Once I left, I mentioned to the board, ‘That is the man who can take this from a $100-million firm to a billion-dollar-a-year-revenue firm.’”

Sicard’s calmness underneath strain was not often extra evident than in mid-August 2017, when Kinaxis misplaced $350 million in market worth in lower than every week after it didn’t hit its quarterly income goal.

Whereas different execs might need panicked, a assured Sicard merely shrugged it off and guaranteed skittish analysts and buyers the enterprise was “stable.” Since that day, the corporate’s market worth has practically tripled to greater than $5 billion.    

Kinaxis’s head of human sources, Megan Peterson – who’s labored with Sicard for a dozen years – marvels at her boss’s uncanny capacity to steer a course that satisfies the short-term calls for of shareholders whereas protecting his eyes fastened on the place the market might be heading months and years down the highway.  

“The strain of being publicly traded, he has managed it actually, very well,” she says. “I’ve labored for different public corporations the place they reside and die by the quarter, however he’s acquired a longer-range view. I believe that helps us keep the course even when issues are rocky.”

Sicard’s colleagues additionally level to his robust expertise as a communicator and his team-first mentality. Even within the midst of a hiring blitz, the busy exec nonetheless takes time to have an off-the-cuff meet-and-greet with each new worker the place he asks one query: How did you change into the particular person you’re?

“There’s just one rule: you’ll be able to’t speak about what’s on LinkedIn,” Sicard says of the get-togethers, which now happen just about. “It forces you to get to know individuals. I typically begin by saying, ‘I’ve a tattoo, however I’m not going to indicate it to you.’ Then they understand, ‘Oh my God, he’s only a common dude.’ It actually unites everyone.”

Away from the boardroom, Sicard and his spouse Pina are the proud dad and mom of 29-year-old Alexandre, a PhD candidate in chemistry on the College of Ottawa, and Nicholas, 26, a software program tester at Kinaxis.

Autism at Work program

Identified with autism at age two, Nicholas is the inspiration behind one in all Kinaxis’s most necessary and far-reaching initiatives in Sicard’s tenure as CEO – the Autism at Work program.

The corporate partnered with Specialisterne Canada, a world group that helps employers combine individuals with autism into the workforce, to launch this system 4 years in the past. Its aim was to have one out of each 100 Kinaxis staff be an individual on the autism spectrum. 

In the present day, practically two per cent of the corporate’s workforce is autistic.

“I believe variety is the trail to innovation,” Sicard says. “This isn’t a charity. These are phenomenal brains that simply occur to be wired a bit of in another way. Aren’t all of us?”

Though he likes to explain himself as a “software program engineer who fell in love with provide chain,” Sicard is equally obsessed with one other pursuit that showcases his artistic facet: music. 

By no means one to accept half-measures, Sicard has geared up his Kanata North residence with a full-scale music manufacturing facility, the place he practises along with his band, Open Channel D, and hones his expertise at recording, mixing and mastering demo tapes in his spare time.

“I mainly constructed a studio after which wrapped a home round it,” he deadpans. 

Nonetheless, you get the sensation work is rarely removed from Sicard’s thoughts as his firm strives to change into the worldwide chief in an more and more aggressive house. 

New headquarters

Earlier this 12 months, Kinaxis made its first acquisition, becoming a member of forces with Toronto-based supply-chain software program startup Rubikloud as a part of its push into the retail vertical. Subsequent 12 months, the corporate will transfer into a brand new company headquarters close to the Tanger outlet mall that’s greater than double the dimensions of its present head workplace on Silver Seven Highway.

In the meantime, Kinaxis continues to battle day-after-day for market share with U.S. and European opponents comparable to SAP, Blue Yonder and Oracle. 

Twenty-six years into the journey that was nearly aborted on the runway, Sicard remains to be as excited as ever to seek out out the place it can take him subsequent. The best way he sees it, Kinaxis is simply getting began.

“I say it on a regular basis – we’re nonetheless in chapter one, e-book one, in an epic collection to write down,” he declares.

“I’m simply so happy with what the group has produced. We’re on the world stage because it pertains to provide chain. Perhaps sometime we’ll be in chapter two.”