Mind Your Business magazine offers an informative, interesting and topical read for the business mind, with feature articles about business start ups, how to win business, networking, Coventry focus, technology and more.

The latest issue of Mind Your Business features bit10’s owner and Managing Director, Alan Malik, where he talks about his best and worst business decisions.

Read Alan’s article below, or read the latest issue of the magazine online.

My best & worst business decisions

Alan Malik is the Founder and Managing Director of multi-award winning software developer Exasoft plc, which supplies specialist financial software solutions to the majority of the UK’s High Street banks and building societies.

Established in 1993, its clients include HSBC, RBS, Barclays, Lloyds, and Halifax and its software handles 95 per cent of Britain’s compliance market.

BEST

MY BEST… ‘Persevering with the development of our Mortgage Fundamentals product, having had just two sales in so many years. Having created a product that could replicate mortgages for multiple lenders, the lenders themselves couldn’t see the value in purchasing an external product. However, in 2001 when the industry was hit with mortgage endowment complaints, our system was way ahead of anything else available and we became the dominant system in this area’.

WORST

MY WORST… ‘I suppose the most costly was starting an outsourcing company too late in the day. Having been dominant in the supply of our mortgage endowment redress system and observing the lack of good case processing services, I embarked on a new venture to provide case processing at an affordable rate by highly skilled case processors. We trained and certified numerous staff but failed to break into an established market even under the premise of providing a service which would ultimately save clients money…’