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Our Story
While some software products come from observing a business from the “outside” and creating a product to fit the observation, our story evolves from the perspective of “walking in the shoes” of a business owner and creating a product from the "inside-out" to specifically fit the needs of the repair business.
The story starts when Daniel, the founder of Chicago Computer Club (CCC), began a computer repair/retail store in Chicago in 2003, and soon grew the business to a point of opening a second store in 2004. He was using a accounting software to perform his invoicing for his customers and manage his inventory. But at the point of opening a second store, he began to uncover problems with managing two stores and the inherent problems of managing people, tracking inventory, making sure repairs were done on time, as well as making sure his customers were happy with the product and service. Having a single store was okay to manage, but having two stores (and more) creates multiple problems that many times over for Daniel. And he had no means to manage, track and resolve these issues.
This is where Daniel asked his friend Steven to create a software application for helping to manage his business with the multiple locations, and to help resolve business problems. Initially, the system was simple and performed a few functions, but as time went on Daniel asked Steven to include more functionality. After many conversations about adding functions to the application it occurred to Daniel to ask Steven to work for him in his stores. This was the beginning of developing the MaNova application for Steven.
At this stage, working for CCC is when the software development for MaNova began to really take off. Steven, began his work for Daniel as a technician performing the repair of computers and realized early on that he needed a process to track the repair process along with the people involved in the repair system and who the customer was. To write the application, Steven spent 4 months in the library of the University of Chicago so as not to be disturbed. And, he wrote the upgrade to version 2 of the application, and ultimately redesigned and rewrote all the code.
After 12 months with CCC, Steven was promoted to a store manager which he performed for 6 months before becoming the general manager overseeing 8 stores ultimately. It was during this period of growth that Steven developed the membership concept, and idea of the CCC becoming a franchise operation. During Stevens' tenure as a manager and regional manager, Steven continued to develop the software application adding features and functions that would help the manager, technician, and owner to manage the business better, and help grow the company. His features were common-sense in nature and had actual, measurable value to the company. They included such features as multiple location sub-system, commission earnings and tracking for employees, repair process, marketing functions as well as other features and numerous reports. During Stevens 7 year tenure as manager and using the software application, the Chicago Computer Club Company grew from a single store to 8 stores with each store using the application to help the store manager run the business.
In 2011, Steven visualized the future of the software application and decided to leave the Chicago Computer Club to start his own company, and thus Future Star Software Inc. was conceived. Stevens' actual experience and the ideas gathered from those experiences were used as a common-sense approach to developing the features that are in the current version of the MaNova system. His experience in managing the daily operations of a business, knowing what’s involved for a business owner to manage the whole business, and what processes are important in running the day-to-day business operations, are what the system was specifically designed for.
Since starting Future Star Software, Steven has redesigned and rewrote the MaNova program to become a general product for all repair businesses, and continues today to improve and enhance the product to meet the changing needs of the industry. He continues to develop the application with the perspective of the end-user; meaning he attempts to minimize the number of keystrokes, mouse clicks, and type of keys to use when working on the application system, all of which provides a more user-friendly system.
