Solugenix: Making Everyday Business More Effective for 50 Years

For 50 years now, one small company has been creating big business solutions that touch the lives of millions of people every day.

When you map your driving route, place an order at a fast-food drive-thru or check the value of your mutual fund investment, there’s a good chance that Solugenix had a hand in developing the technology that functions behind the scenes.

So why is it you’ve probably never heard of Solugenix? President and CEO Shashi Jasthi say that’s by design. He describes Solugenix as a “fiercely independent company” that strives for simplicity, develops client relationships that span decades rather than a few years, routinely reject offers from venture capital and private equity firms, and even frequently gives up business because it’s not in the client’s best interest.

“By maintaining our small company outlook, we can attract and retain the right kind of people for the long term. This enables us to experiment with emerging technologies, incubate consequential new companies and then spin them off with remarkable regularity,” Jasthi said. “If you count the size and number of the companies we’ve spun off over the years, it’s significant.”

One of those spinoffs, CBSI, pioneered the first billing system created for the emerging cell phone industry. That solution and the technology behind it have stood the test of time. Even today, roaming and major carriers’ capacity sharing use the technology developed by Solugenix.

Another spinoff was the remote ordering center technology Solugenix developed for the quick-service restaurant industry. That technology connects thousands of drive-thrus across the country to a central call center. Instead of having a restaurant employee take the drive-thru orders, someone in the call center takes the order and types it into the system. That order instantly shows up in the kitchen of the correct store. The world’s largest quick-service restaurant company ended up buying this business unit from Solugenix, and several other large quick-service restaurant companies use the technology.

Navteq was one of the company’s biggest successes. Solugenix conceived, developed, tested and deployed all of the components that make GPS navigation possible: road maps, routing, map display, traffic data integration. Eventually, that business unit became Navteq. Today, over 80 percent of all GPS systems and web-based services use maps, routes and traffic data from Navteq’s derivative companies.

Solugenix also developed technology that has changed the way large health care systems manage their inventory. Hospitals within these health care systems replaced a slow, manual process that was prone to errors and instead now use tablets and cloud storage to manage their inventory. Streamlining the process has even created a secondary market for surplus inventory exchange and sales between hospitals, according to Jasthi.

“The innovations we take the most pride in — because they have added the most benefit to our clients — are always at the intersection of leading-edge technology and out-of-the-box business model evolution,” Jasthi noted. “When we see that technology can be used to help our clients leapfrog their competition, we jump on it and spend the time to make it work.”

Prime examples of innovations that intersect technology and business are the market data processing systems Solugenix created. They allow mutual fund companies to accurately calculate their net asset value every day within two hours after trading closes. That entails consolidating all sales and purchases in the various exchanges around the world and arriving at one price for each security listed in the fund’s portfolio. It’s a mind-boggling amount of data to synthesize, and a variation of 20 cents on a single stock can affect the value of a mutual fund by millions of dollars.

“Wherever there’s a high-risk, high-value business process, we know that we can change the business model and the value our clients get out of the process,” Jasthi said.

Innovative technology has been the cornerstone of Solugenix’s success over the last five decades, but the company’s absolute commitment to its clients’ success is another key component. That means working to resolve the root cause of a problem — curing the ailment rather than merely addressing the symptoms, as Jasthi would say — and converting activity-based contracts into results-based contracts, even though it means the contracts become less lucrative for Solugenix.

“By design, our claim to fame is that we make our clients sleep better, grow faster and be more profitable without drawing too much attention to ourselves,” Jasthi said.

About Solugenix

Back when IBM and Burroughs were focused on selling hardware and throwing in software and services as an afterthought, Solugenix was the first company to specialize in software development and services. Since then, we've outlasted all of our competitors and have maintained a stable team for more than 50 years.

Now with more than 1,200 employees, we've expanded our core competencies to include: product development & management, help desks & support centers, ServiceNow^® implementations & support, professional staffing, and business process automation technologies, including RPA, AI and Machine Learning (ML).

Our corporate headquarters is in Brea, Calif.,  with additional offices around the globe. For more information, visit www.solugenix.com or call 866-749-7658.