Our Story

Who we are

We are a passionate bunch of engineers/programmers/geeks that calls Malaysia home, but otherwise we are just like everyone else. In our previous lives, we were automation system integrators and drawing lots of electrical and control circuits.

There must be a better way

After trying out almost every piece of software out there and came back empty handed, we finally settled on Microsoft Visio and began to automate some parts for a number of years purely for internal usage. Eventually, in preparation for a large project, we sat down and mapped out what an ideal electrical CAD software should be and set out to do that. Lo and behold, we didn't get the large project, but ended up with a great piece of software instead.

The early days

We decided to call it Electra, put up a website, and three weeks later, we had our first two sales, one from Mexico and another from USA, who remains our customer today.

When the sales came in, we were woefully unprepared. Although we had ordered a printing run of manuals earlier, we were notified that they will be delayed, so we had to beg a friend to let us print manuals on his high quality laser printer and have them bound into a book. We had also ordered software boxes but they too were delayed, and we have to send out emails to our customers and apologize profusely. By the fifth day after the sales came in, we were so embarrassed, and had decided to stay up until 2 AM at the printing factory to get our hands on the first batch of the boxes, and promptly sent out our orders the next morning on the sixth day.

Our commitment for prompt customer service remains strong until today, and we will go out of our way to ensure customers are serviced and supported within 24 to 48 hours, simply because that's how we want to be treated.

Growing up pains

Although we had managed to send out our initial orders, to our dismay, the printers has decided to retype our copywriting and made glaring mistakes, even though we have proof read everything earlier.

We had gone to great lengths to create a high quality product, our codes are tested and retested, our software and websites are triple checked to ensure everything "just works", and we were devastated by these spelling mistakes on our boxes. We simply cannot allow any shoddy work to pass, especially to our customers who had paid their hard earned money for our software. But the fact is, we cannot afford to reprint our boxes during those days (2005), therefore we had to print a bunch of stickers to cover up our mistakes.

Our guiding principle has remained the same since the days we started, no shoddy work, period. Everything that goes out our doors must be of high quality, down to the last detail, even when nobody is looking.

Attention to details

Early versions of Electra comes with a dongle that you can plug into any PC and be able to use it there and then. As can be seen from the design below, due to the rounded nature of the dongle, we found it difficult to pull them out once they are plugged in. If we found it difficult, imagine what our customers has to go through, and that simply won't do.

Therefore we went out and got ourselves a bunch of straps and included one in every box that we sent out, so our customers can have an easier time if they choose to plug and pull out dongles.

To date, we have nearly a thousand symbols in Electra and each one of them is meticulously planned and made, and an insane amount of work goes into making sure each and every part looks and work absolutely right.

In everything we do, whether it's a video you see, or an invoice you received, or the fact that shorter wires automatically hides it's wire name, these kind of attention to details drives our work and will continue to do so for a long time to come.

To be continued...

From humble beginnings, we are extremely honored to now have assisted countless satisfied engineers to expedite their productivity, in more than 50 countries worldwide.

Operating on a global scale has driven us to greater lengths and given us the possibility to go even further. As a result, we eagerly anticipate what the future holds for us now that Siemens has acquired our company.

We've already reached for the "clouds", so who knows what we'll be pursuing next?

Nevertheless, some things will never change, as we will continue to develop software that we are proud to use and find simple. Even though we are now a proud member of the Siemens family, customer satisfaction will continue to be our highest priority.