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Abenaki Associates has helped more than 600 communities across Canada

More than 25 years ago Percy Barnaby saw a chance to make a difference while creating a job for himself. Now the Miramichi area man is the president of a small but ambitious business looking to tackle new markets.

The former military air traffic controller left his job in the federal Department of Indian Affairs in 1984 to help First Nations communities adjust to providing more services themselves.

Federal and provincial governments passing over the responsibility of essential services to local First Nations governments, combined with the growing use of personal computers for business and administrative purposes at the time created a gap Barnaby thought he could fill.

"If they don't have proper tools they may not be as effective in delivering basic services," he says.

What started with Barnaby offering some basic computer training has grown over the years into a successful company, which has serviced all of the more than 600 First Nations communities in Canada, at some point.

Today Barnaby's company, Abenaki Associates, an entirely aboriginal-run firm, employs nine people, mostly at the company's head office on the Eel Ground First Nation, less than 20 kilometres west of Miramichi.

"Initially there was nobody willing to go to those remote communities to help them set up," says Carol Ann Barnaby, the company's vice-president. "We just started taking computers and everything right to the communities and we'd stay there and do the installations and training."

Though Abenaki Associates now has some competition, none of them are national she says, and for a long time the company served as many First Nations communities' only way of leveraging the advantages of computers.

The company is a reseller of leading accounting software Sage, which along with the accompanying training makes up about half of the firm's business. Abenaki Associates also offers a smaller scale version of the software.

"It's really popular for small companies or smaller communities that can't necessarily afford the larger system," Percy Barnaby says. "But as they grow bigger the transition from the smaller system to the larger system is very smooth."

The other half of the business is in six management programs ranging from water and wastewater to social assistance to housing.

The firm has offered many of these services for years and is now working to modernize them.

"Our biggest move now is towards cloud-computing," he says. "It seems a lot of First Nations are heading towards cloud applications."

Abenaki Associates is looking to have all six systems converted to web-based applications, which can be accessed from any Internet-connected computer, to be sold under the software as a service model by April.

All of the company's software was designed with aboriginal communities' needs in mind, but the systems are starting to get the attention of municipal and provincial governments.

"Our package was designed for First Nations but is generic enough, with a few adjustments, to be applied for the province," he says. "We're slowly expanding to other areas but not at the expense of our primary market."

The company already has many non-aboriginal municipalities across Canada on its client list.

"I think we'll probably be getting more clients for our water and waste water system," he says.

Because it's a full management system, and not just a water monitoring tool, Percy Barnaby says it has caught the attention of many municipalities.

"We're also looking at expanding into the American market," he says, adding he has been to Boston to explore serving New England municipalities. "Another area we're going to look at is the aboriginal communities in the United States.

"But we're going to have to study what their needs are and if our applications can meet their needs," he says.