The holidays are right around the corner and 2019 planning has begun for most, or will begin soon. As I review where we started 2018 to where we have ended Q3 2018, it’s easy to see where the year has gone, although it seems to have flown right by us. Our third quarter consisted of an evolved operations team, progress with our new marketing strategy, and topics like cloud, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
Operations Evolve at NetGain
I have some exciting news regarding our operations team. We promoted Jim Huegen to Vice President of Operations. Jim came to NetGain in 2017 with over 30 years of experience in the I.T. industry. His depth and breadth of knowledge has made a big impact since he began at NetGain Technologies, and will continue to drive the company towards its goals.
Prior to NetGain, Jim was the Vice President of Services at another I.T. services provider. He has been on both sides of “the managed services field”. He has been the client with certain expectations of a managed I.T. services provider and led operations servicing clients from another managed I.T. services provider.
Jim is certified in ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) foundation version 3 and achieved his Six Sigma Green Belt. His process-oriented style, along with his attention to detail, will accelerate NetGain’s ability to become more efficient while servicing its clients. We’re excited to see his progress over the coming months and into next year. If you see Jim, please help us congratulate him!
Marketing Is All About Consistency
In the last quarterly message, I shared news of hiring a new CMO Andrea Skov and, promoting from within, a new Director of Marketing Megan Reed. Over the past few months, these two women have been implementing a marketing plan to fuel our growth in each market.
We continue to learn that the key to effective marketing and branding is consistency and cadence. Our mantra is simple: Your business depends on I.T.
Companies depend on I.T., but I.T. is not their core business. Every minute spent worrying about I.T. is time and money not spent on their business growth and success. In the managed services economy we live in today – whether it’s payroll, legal, tax, finance, or I.T. – it’s more cost effective and reliable to outsource those services to a local, best-in-class company that can support the needs of the business. That’s where we fit into the equation.
Moving to the Cloud
Many of our clients are evaluating, and some making the move to, the cloud for applications that make sense for their business. Today, the cloud is easier, more secure, instant and flexible. It is fascinating how the conversations with our clients a few years ago were about their fears around the cloud, mainly because of security concerns. As ransomware attacks have increased and cybersecurity is on everyone’s mind, the conversations have changed to clients wanting to move to the cloud because it is more secure than what they could ever do themselves. It’s also easier from a budgeting perspective because it’s a pay-as-you-use model. You are able to grow into what you need and buy on an as-needed basis, as opposed to purchasing a server every five years with extra storage that you may or may not utilize over the course of its lifespan.
Like many of you, NetGain has been evaluating what applications make sense to move to the cloud. We recently migrated our internal SharePoint site to the cloud so our employees can access that data from anywhere, anytime. It will increase productivity and allow hands-on access to information as needed. If you haven’t started evaluating this for your business, I highly recommend you begin the process. If you would find value in being introduced to our cloud expert to help you, let me know.
Client Feedback
We recently held our fall National Advisory Council meeting where we brought a select group of our top clients together to gain feedback on how we can help them achieve their business goals through our partnership. One of our core values is a “constant pursuit of a better way” and “every client should be a promoter”. We crave feedback, and are relentless about client satisfaction. We received so many good ideas from this council that we can take back and implement in our company to better serve all of our clients. For our clients, be on the lookout for more business intelligence delivered to you regarding your I.T, higher level reviews you can share with your board or ownership group, and more focus on security discussions.
Honors and Recognition in Q3
Quarterly awards for outstanding employee efforts went to:
- Professional Services Sales Person: Wayne Logan
- Managed Services Sales Person: Carl Crosby
- Finance and Administrative: Tina Warner
- Technology OneSource Engineer: Ryan Burney
- Professional Services Engineer: Shane Wendel
- Tactical Operations Team: Justin Trent
- Client Success: Adam Weiger
- Sales Support: Alex Featherstone
