Fallon-based software firm develops long relationships

Andre Gous came to the United States from his native South Africa in search of more freedom.

And then, searching for even more freedom from the heavy hand of tax collectors and regulators, he located his technology company in northern Nevada.

But all the freedom in the world isn't helping Gous with his biggest challenge: Development of new markets for his Fallon-based Precision Quality Software Inc.

The company specializes in software that improves the ways that business processes work.

Sometimes, the work is huge.

When the U.S. Navy wanted to develop a way for pilots to request training airspace at its Fallon Tactical Training Range, for instance, Precision Quality Software created the software.

And sometimes it's small.

The company has handled one contract after another for Fallon Travel, writing software for a custom database, a custom Web site and an e-commerce site (including an accounting system) for the travel agency.

The firm's list of clients also includes the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and a major trucking company that turned to Precision Quality Software to develop software to track its shipments and schedule its drivers.

The client list has provided much of the market muscle for Gous' firm.

"When you write really good software, people will go to bat for you," he says. "We make good stuff."

The challenge, Gous says, is getting a steady stream of folks to tap into the firm's expertise.

"I'm very bad at marketing," he says with a rueful smile. "I need a better approach. I just don't know what it is."

A small or mid-sized company probably is a candidate for the business-process software developed by Precision Quality Software if its staff encounters headaches in using Excel spreadsheets to manage a critical business function, Gous says.

His firm typically doesn't land with a splash, seeking to re-do all of the software used by its clients.

"We like people to start with something very tiny," says Gous. "And then we can go from there."

From those tiny starts, however, the company develops longstanding relationships.

Some relationships with Fallon Travel, with the Navy, with a unit of the Dutch multinational Philips date from even before Precision Quality Software was launched.

Those relationships, and the jobs that they reflect, have helped the Fallon company weather the recession with relatively few bruises.

Gous has been working in software development since his high school days in 1977, an era when programs were written in pencil and run on punch cards.

He earned a degree in accounting and undertook his first business-process software shortly after graduation, when he went to work as a cost accountant in an automobile assembly plant.

He came to the United States in search of more freedom in 1984, and launched a personal computer refurbishing and optimizing company known as Happy Journey Systems in Los Angeles.

He moved it to Fallon in 1992. The company bought software licenses from Microsoft, Quicken and Borland and offered almost-as-good-as-new rental PC units with set of installed business solutions, including custom software optimized for each business.

Fallon Travel was its first Nevada client.

Precision Quality Software was launched in 2003 as an outgrowth of Happy Journey Systems' growth into custom software development.