Robert Bracey

In this Reader Spotlight, Quartet Service, Inc. President/CEO Robert Bracey shares a little about himself, company, and the state of the channel.

Summarize your background/professional experience.

After graduating from the HBA program at Western’s Richard Ivey School of Business, I started teaching. I taught a business course at Western for a few years, then taught at the University of Toronto. During this time, I also was able to publish a book titled Canadian Small Business- An Entrepreneur’s Plan.

After this, I returned to school to complete my MBA in Japanese at Keio University in Tokyo. I gained a unique perspective here that continues to shape Quartet’s business practices. We adopted many Japanese services in Quartet.

I worked for a few large firms but the end goal was to become an entrepreneur. While working at Quartet as the Head of Consulting, I decided to buy the company when it was forced into receivership in 2002. It has since grown from $2 million to $12 million under my leadership.

What is one interesting / humorous / entertaining fact about you?

I was the second westerner to complete an MBA in Japanese. I was in Japan for 5 years under full academic scholarship and managed to do several other things during my time there. I sold Canadian sailing yachts, did research for the embassy and worked part-time for a trust company. It was a lot of hard work and a lot of fun.

What threatens that opportunity?

There are always several potential threats. If Microsoft changes their sales compensation, we could lose money. We must also keep up with technical changes. Due to the rapid changes of this industry, we’re always vulnerable, particularly if we don’t change fast enough.

Traditionally, the backbone of our company has been mid-tier clients. They’re large enough to realize that technology is a strategic imperative yet small enough that they can’t do parts of the job themselves. Larger companies have somewhat similar issues and Quartet has the critical mass to help them.

What is the most difficult aspect of leading an IT service provision company?

Stamina. The life cycle of a company in this industry is short. Keeping it alive for 20 years takes a lot of work, and a lot of innovation. Our cost structure now is high enough that we can’t sell to companies that don’t care about technology. We invest heavily in technology and training. Our 2 hosting facilities and SOC2 certification are examples. These investments add up and we can’t afford to discount our prices for clients because they don’t understand the value of what’s going on behind the scenes.

How are you attacking that challenge?

That’s the $64,000 question. Part of it is, we’re helping people to find us. We’re trying to be loud and proud about our IT philosophy. If we’re loud enough and proud enough about what we do, then companies can find us.

We’re working toward a more proactive digital presence to start this process. Part of it is in redefining our website to clarify our message and to simplify our product descriptions. The other part is in sales. We are using referral programs and I am doing speaking engagements.

In the context of running your business, what apps/tools/utilities could you not live without?

We would be lost without our carefully curated stack of tools. These include our Microsoft suite, ConnectWise- which is our workflow management program and most importantly, our security tools. We leverage the tool investments we have made to provide a collaborative security suite to our clients that would be otherwise inaccessible to an SMB.