President’s Letters
Ideas and advice from Rob Bracey, President & CEO of Quartet.
I am delighted to announce the merger between Quartet Service Inc. and KLM Solutions Ltd.
At first blush, you may wonder why a services business like Quartet, with so much invested in the Cloud, would be hooking up with an IT hardware products and solutions provider.
But that is the primary reason: the Cloud is actually what got Kent Leckie, KLM’s President and owner, and I initially talking about this merger almost two years ago. We see so many benefits for not only our two companies, but, most importantly, for our clients.
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“The Big Switch” is a book that draws parallels between the electrification of North America and today’s cloud computing trends. Read it. It is way better than it sounds and that is not because I am a half-geek. It examines the potential impact on employment, privacy, social structures and politics and implies that George Orwell might not have been too far off. Absolutely fascinating and deeply concerning, “The Big Switch” impacted both my professional and personal perspectives. I recommend it wholeheartedly and if you promise to send me your thoughts, I’ll send you a copy. Just contact us with a General Inquiry, reference this letter, and provide your shipping information.
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There are lots of pithy little sayings that summarize adolescent challenges. I’ve written about them before. They apply to people and companies; both can be brimming with potential, but conflicted between immaturity and burgeoning capabilities. Between my company and my daughters, I am surrounded by adolescents and as I crash through my own mid-life crises, I find it invigorating for some reason. Nostalgia maybe.
This letter outlines how Quartet is dealing with adolescence. It will give you a better idea of what type of company we are, what we’re becoming and what we’re avoiding.
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One day my wife called me at work to discuss yet another wild holiday idea and I guess I wasn’t paying much attention. When she pointed that out, I replied that we were having a “Dodgeball Day” and that I really couldn’t chat right then. That “Dodgeball Day” metaphor for work at Quartet haunted me for a couple years, but I think I’m finally ready to discuss it.
For those who have not played Dodgeball, it is a brutal high school sport where the objective is to bean members of the other team with volleyballs that you throw as hard as you can. Head shots were illegal, but that didn’t matter to gym class thugs. In any case, balls zip all around the gym and you can get picked off in a cross-fire, by a rebound or by a fast ball up the middle. You have to be nimble, alert, well-balanced and anything else that can metaphorically spill over well onto Quartet.
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I owe this thought to my father and Quartet’s newest employee.
My father worked in the food industry for most of his career and put himself through night school with three kids and a wife to feed. Very down to earth, he worked hard, had a great sense of humor and didn’t tolerate any sort of artificiality. Sunday dinners were usually really fun. I remember laughing so hard we couldn’t eat and sitting around the table so long our legs went numb. I miss him, I miss those dinners and I smile at some of the things I hear myself say now, knowing full well that they are little nuggets of hard-earned wisdom that spilled out during those marathon meals.
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My letters usually have some sort of double entendre intended to make you smile, help you understand technology and get a feel for Quartet. This “weather report” angle might be the cheapest one yet, but “cloudy” is so versatile I had to use it. It sums up our 2009 perspectives, it is a relevant technical trend and it will help introduce several new services.
Let’s get the obvious metaphor out of the way. We don’t know what is happening in the economy, so Quartet’s outlook for 2009 is cloudy. There’s more though. Financial sector deleveraging is well underway and those that aren’t struggling with the implications of that are waiting for the dust to settle, or the clouds to clear. IT outsourcing does well in this sort of environment as companies strive to cut costs and focus on core competencies. If you are in one of those camps, I encourage you to call us. Our business model leverages scale economies and service distribution efficiency – it is not based on change order requests from rigidly defined contracts. A traditional (read large) IT service company will earn 30% or more from change order fees and in this environment, that additional level of uncertainty is unacceptable. With Quartet think flexible, outcome based contracts, flat fee assignments and full cost disclosure.
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Quartet’s approach to IT cost savings is simple, but works. We put “First Things First” as my father used to say. We start by lowering costs compared to what you are spending now. We leverage our hard skills, infrastructure, knowledge and tools to improve your efficiency. We follow with technical innovation that usually includes infrastructure rationalization and process reengineering. The innovation part of this approach is where all the drama is, but we can’t get there without saving money on status-quo IT to start with. First Things First.
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We launched Wireless Wolf services in May and argued that by managing mobile devices better, we would allow companies to save money and time. The response has been fantastic, but we only captured part of the benefit. Now we’re extending our Wireless Wolf services based on what we learned and introducing a Deployment and Training Service. We hope you like what we’re doing and look forward to discussing it with you.
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My wife’s book club might be the best club I sort of belong to. I read about every second book and eagerly attend the semi-annual meetings where they bring the husbands along. The discussions at these evenings are fabulous. In fact, a couple of years ago I suggested to the guys after hockey that we form our own book club. After a stunned silence, the change room erupted in laughter and I was reminded that the only books we’re interested in come in monthly subscriptions. So I live vicariously through my wife’s club and have to give them credit for this little gem of a thought.
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The servant leader oxymoron embodies Quartet’s development challenge. The conflicting demands of being both a servant and a leader are difficult to manage, frustrating and often lead to compromise. This letter is about the nature of IT servant leadership and what Quartet is doing to meet the challenges.
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