The promise of “taking some of the headache” out of running a business, has kept Viv Redford and Rick Correia busy at the helm of Total Office Management (TOM) for the past seven years.

One of the Total Group companies - which also includes Total Marketing & Communications and Total Software Solutions - Mr. Redford and Mr. Correia, president/CEO and chief operating officer respectively, said TOM was established to provide a range of financial and management services to Bermuda businesses.

Mr. Correia said, in specific, TOM's target audience was small and medium sized local companies from a broad cross-section of industries.

“We have clients in many industries; retail, professional services and financial services, hospitality, wholesale...,” Mr. Correia said, adding: “What we can do for our clients is take the headache out of running the paper side of the business.”

The company, set up in 1997 by Mr. Redford, was established in response to what was seen as a need, from local companies, for outsource specialists. Happily, that perceived need proved true, and has only grown with TOM's client load now numbering 80 customers and six full-time staff. In all, Mr. Redford said the company had achieved an average rate of ten to 15 percent growth year over year.

As for the reasons behind their success, Mr. Redford said TOM had proven itself as a company that provided solutions to its clients.

As a result of that solid reputation, the company said very little of its business depended on advertising, gaining most new business through word of mouth referrals.

In a way TOM is actually much older than its 1997 incorporation date however with Mr. Redford saying a company he set up in 1986 - Software & Accounting Services - was really the forerunner to what would later become Total Office Management.

Mr. Redford set up that first company after a 15-year stint as financial controller at one of the Island's biggest law firms, Appleby Spurling & Kempe. And it was in that former life, that Mr. Redford and Mr. Correia, hired on as AS&K's assistant financial controller, first came to work together.

Fast forward to today and you find that the two company heads not only still enjoy working together but are also friends.

“We have a very stable work environment here,” Mr. Correia said, adding that their workplace philosophy was one where they recognised that clients may call them after hours, even at home.

But that drive was balanced, they said, by their equal emphasis on the importance of “family and friends”.

Both said that “working hard and playing hard” were the principles contributing to their success story, and as much as they enjoyed their jobs, they also made time for friends and family. Both have been happily married for more than 20 years and Mr. Redford is father to a 20-year old daugher and 15-year old son.

“We run an old fashioned business with new tools,” Mr. Correia concluded.