2

HATTIE: Let's go to Godalming to start at the beginning.

NIGEL SKEFFINGTON: When I need to see my big clients based up in London, I need to get to them quickly. And I can leave from here and be, within an hour, in their offices. We do deal with international companies and we have to get on planes so we're only half hour away from Heathrow and Gatwick Airport.

HATTIE: So you have the best of both worlds: you get to live in this bucolic community and quickly you're in the center of the world.

NIGEL: Absolutely. I made a choice early on that I would never commute into London. My father did it the whole of his life. So consequently, when I was lucky enough to start the business, we decided we're going to base ourselves in Godalming. It is, on a bad commute day, only 11 minutes to our house.

3

When we started out it was very much driven by my passion, my sales activity. I was frustrated with the company I worked for previously. They were into time management. They worked on individuals. I believed even though we are individuals that we work in groups and we have to share information and work together. Outside of just ourselves. No matter how much I tried to persuade them we needed to go for the group area, they did not respond so consequently, I ultimately left them and came across this product, Lotus Notes, and all of a sudden I saw the opportunity to collaborate and work in groups.

4

ROSIE (ROSEMARY SKEFFINGTON): The business was started in this house.

HATTIE: I went to meet Nigel's wife, Rosemary, at their home just a few minutes away from the center of Godalming.

ROSEMARY: The basic path was that the pond--the basic sort of structure of the garden was there, but--

HATTIE: Their house was designed by architect F.W. Troup and built in 1903. Who wouldn't want to work at home to take in the smells and sites of the lush English countryside and be close to their children.

ROSEMARY: Hi ya.

ROSEMARY'S DAUGHTER: What you up to?

ROSEMARY: Just a letter I've got to get out.

ROSEMARY: Our very earliest marketing activity was a radio ad. We had the hot line, which was actually buried in the back bedroom so that when people rang in, that they couldn't hear the children crying or the dog barking or anything.

5

HATTIE: So you've got an office here at Brook House?

That's right, and this is where I work most of my time. I've got a message from Nigel. "Can you join the meeting?"

NIGEL: Hi, Rosie.

HATTIE: What Rosemary and Nigel demonstrate is collaboration software. There are hundreds of products. Their names communicate the struggle to capture its transformative power-- Mindbridge, Netmeeting, Co-create, Livelink, LiveMeeting -- all trying to say we can now share the same time no matter where we are. The word collaboration hides the fact that there is a new place that we all share. Instantly we create a unique place that transcends space and time, breaking through Newton's laws, reshaping Einstein, and right now you think you're just watching an online meeting. But it's more than that. Time and space are derivative.

ROSEMARY: Change it to ten. Change it to ten.

HATTIE: And it is as simple as Nigel gets Rosemary's opinion, he takes that suggestion.

ROSEMARY: That would be much better.

HATTIE: The meeting is over, but a revolution has begun.

ROSEMARY: Go for the rest. Comfortable with the rest.

NIGEL: All right. Okay, thanks, then.

ROSEMARY: See you.

NIGEL: Bye.

HATTIE: How much time elapsed from when you got the idea to when you started making money?

NIGEL: It was about a year.

HATTIE: See, to me that's nothing. That is very short. You should be thrilled that you were able to move that fast.

6

HATTIE: In 2002, Time Technology was one of the few to win a coveted Top Contributor Award from its premier supplier.

NIGEL: Well, the reason we were able to move that fast was because we won two clients --major clients -- who actually bought into what we were selling. Very specific solutions, but they bought into the concept of using this technology to share information.

The second customer was someone I had worked with my previous company. He phoned me up one day and said, "Nigel, we've got a challenge. I've been given a new job working with the ABN AMRO Bank. We're setting up a new-- completely new company or organization to carry out international cash management.

Now, my challenge is that I've got teams sitting in Chicago, in New York, out in Frankfurt, down in Paris, in London, and down in Milan. And I need to be able to share information between all of these parties, because we're dealing with global companies." So I went to Amsterdam. And previously, I was due to go on a particular day, and I was awful. I was really ill. Now, I then phoned up my client and said, "Look, I can't make it; I'm really ill." and he said, "Well, that's a shame, but we're still going to go on with the interviews with the other companies." and I asked him the question, "Well, you know, who are my competition?" because I wanted to know who I was playing up against. And he then named four of the biggest technology companies in the world.

And one of those was a major consulting company that they were already doing business with. So at that point, you know, I thought, "I'm glad I'm ill, 'cause I'm not going to waste the last few pennies I've got getting on a plane, paying for that trip over to Amsterdam, landing in a country I've never been to before, getting a taxi into this place. And I just had this vision of all this money disappearing out and my last few pennies before I just could not get the business to survive.

So I then said, "Okay, I'm terribly sorry, Chris. I can't make it." Anyhow, next day Chris phones me back, and he and he says, "Nigel, you are coming, aren't you? When can we make the appointment?" I said, "But, Chris, you've seen all these other people." And he said, "Yes, and I need you to come." So at that point, I took that as a potential buying message. Clearly the big companies had come across in a way that something wasn't right. So literally, there were three of us in the organization at the time. We put a Powerpoint presentation together, and we made ourselves look much bigger, 'cause we had someone in reception who happened to also be the developer, who also happened to be the salesperson and marketing. And we built this PowerPoint presentation together. I've still got it. It's hilarious to look at it now.

I flew out the day before Christmas Eve. So Rosie made Christmas cakes. I arrive; I get into the taxi. On the way to the meeting, the taxi has an accident. My cakes box, which is sitting on the side of me, slides off, hits the floor. So we got to the end of the meeting, they ask me some questions, and said, "Right, thank you. We'll be letting you know."

Chris Tassel phoned Rosie to say, "I've got two pieces of information. I have bad news, and I have good news." And so he said, "Which do you want to hear first?"

Now, this is what Chris did for all the time that I've been working with him since. He's always got this bad news/ good news. Lovely sense of humor.

And so Rosie said, "Okay, give me the bad news." And he said, "Nigel was involved in an accident. But don't worry--he's okay." And Rosie says, "Oh, my God. oh, my God." He said, "No, no, you want to hear the good news now?" and Rosie's saying, "No, no, how's Nigel? Is everything okay?" and he said, "You got the contract."

7 - Enter a contest

ROSEMARY: I entered us in a competition with one of our local government bodies called Business Link. And we were actually a runner-up. We were short-listed. And although we didn't win, what it made me do was really look at the business in a very critical manner. And suddenly I realized--I suppose that was the first light bulb that came on--that actually the organization of the business was actually as important as anything at that stage.

8 - Other's thinking

So I became Operations Director. I suppose we had seven or eight people by this stage. And stayed doing that role for the next 3 to 4 years, really, up until we were about 16, I think, or 17 people. I used our local Business Link, who helped me with a managing director's course. You need to educate yourself and also find others ... I'm sure it's been said before, but it's a very lonely job, because you have to keep up the front the whole time.

If the money doesn't come in or if you have a bad month, it's just head up, plow on.

I think the thing that I realized was that my skills were not going to take us forward to where we wanted to go. Nigel's were not of the right making either.

NIGEL: I am an awful manager. My skill set is selling and building relationships with people.

ROSEMARY: If we could free him up from any management duties, then we could get that sales spurt to enable us to grow.

NIGEL: I was constraining the business. I held the business back everywhere. I didn't empower people. I thought I empowered people.

9 - Fire yourself.

ROSEMARY: I decided really that we needed a new managing director. We needed somebody--not me--who could take the business forward.

NIGEL: I didn't want to let my baby go.

ROSEMARY: Unless we grew, we wouldn't succeed. We'd probably fold, because you can't stand still as a business; you have to move forward all the time. Something had to change. But how? How were we going to do this? The way to do that was to find a new Managing Director. And we did. It took us a long time, but we did.

HATTIE (Voice Over): This is Peter Skeffington, Nigel's younger brother.

HATTIE: When you came here, you came from a huge, huge conglomerate. Why did you come here?

PETER: Well, I guess there are two primary reasons. One, there's the obvious family connection, which was kind of intriguing.

NIGEL: My brother was working for GE Capital. He'd been responsible for implementing Six Sigma, which is a management quality process.

PETER: Six Sigma fundamentally is a quality methodology. It's a whole set of tools and approach to applying improvements to your business. (More from Peter on Six Sigma)

NIGEL: Forget the fact he's brother for the moment; he just seems to be the right person to have in the organization. So being very cautious, we actually recruited a consultant psychiatrist, who worked with-- or psychologist--worked with one or two of the major consulting companies in terms of profiling prospective senior people. And we asked her to interview Peter and to carry out an analysis as to whether this guy was the right guy to join our company. That's probably the most money I've ever spent on a professional person in my life, and it was the best money we spent. Because what it did was, it gave us a profile of my brother that basically said he was ideal for the job. So it wasn't then a difficult decision to have him join the organization.

At the time we talked to Peter, he was a small cog in a very, very big mechanism, and he was frustrated with the fact that he spent a large amount of his time sort of just oiling various elements and never really making the difference. Now, how did we afford him? Well, I'm a salesman, so there was a bit of blarney, a bit of ...

PETER: He loves selling. That's ultimately his passion. He loves it. And the one thing that I've been able to do is release him in that respect. He was very--prior to that, he was constrained by all of the worry and the responsibility of trying to actually make the thing work as well. And by his own admission, that's not where his main skill or indeed his passion lies.

HATTIE (VoiceOver): By 2002, with 17 employees, the right leadership team was in place. But rarely do they need to be in the same room at the same time, as they most often depend upon their own collaboration tools to run the business.

10

LIGHTBULB

HATTIE (studio): With a rather simple but new technology that attenuates the thoughts of people on the same problem, the same concept, no matter where they are, we wrestle with the wisdom of the ages in new ways. At the core of a sale, at the core of a good business, at the heart of a good marriage, yes, even a good government, are healthy relations. And at the heart of good relations are many agreements. At one time, we were often separated by space and time. No longer true. At one time, it was location, location, location; today it's relations, relations, relations.

Living is not about a space and a particular time. It is about the quality of relations. To launch the business, Nigel landed a huge customer, and that sale was based upon an old and nurtured relationship. Mutual respect. A series of agreements. To grow the business, Nigel and Rosemary needed a CEO. They had been burned over and over again recruiting and investing in salespeople and were apprehensive to commit the big bucks that would be demanded by a skilled top gun. I'm not suggesting that the only person you can hire is a relative. I am suggesting that the only thing that does matter is your ability to have and to build relationships. money, time, space--everything is a derivative of relationships.

Within this web site, there is self-help study for people who want to start a business and for those who want to grow the business they have. From the home page, choose "Pathways" to self-study. Next, you'll find eight steps or stages of growth. At each step, you'll find links to more resources. Also, in the video box for online learning, you can always watch a current episode, and you can experience an interactive study guide.

11

HATTIE (Voice over): Nigel could use collaboration software for this training session, but he wanted me to meet his customer and take in more of the English countryside.

HATTIE: This is such a great spot.

NEIL RUSH: It's lovely, isn't it?

HATTIE: I met Neil Rush, owner of Support Training Services. (hygenico.com) From here his company provides consulting and training in food and health safety.

HATTIE: So what year do you think this home was built?

NEIL: Well, they believe it dates back to the Doomsday Book, which was back in the 1600s when they did the register of all the property that was in England. And they believe it was one of the original seven mills that were on the river.

HATTIE: But of course, you put in plumbing, didn't you?

NEIL: Oh, yes. We don't use the water from the river any more.

HATTIE: Let's have a look in your office.

NEIL: Yes, certainly. Step this way.

HATTIE: Okay. So, Neil, why do you use Time Technology products?

NEIL: Well, basically, we needed a computer solution, and I'm not a computer expert, so firstly I got a consultant to come in and help me go through all our needs, identify the different solutions and the different companies. One of the companies was Time Technology, and the thing we liked about Time Technology is they understood our business, they listened to us. They were also local, but they also could adapt to whatever we needed, and they really did a good job for us.

PETER: You need to bring in a whole culture of measure, a whole culture of being able to measure these things. that measurement must be carried out primarily as your customers see it, not as you see it. We have one person on the management team whose responsibility is quality, which is a big thing for an organization of our size. we also have a lot of-- obviously--informal feedback as well, which fall under the category of complaints and compliments.

NEIL: Yeah, that's what I like to see about Time Technology. Excellent service, massive bills.

NIGEL: When Peter arrived, he said, "Look, you know, at the end of the day, we are working with a single supplier, effectively. And therefore, we must build relationships with that supplier."

12

HATTIE: Steve Rudland is the Sales Manager.

STEVE: What we've done: because we're serious about the relationship with Lotus, is we've aligned our sales territories to Lotus' sales territories. So we have Southeast, South London, West, East Midlands, Northwest, Northeast, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. I set the territory model up and didn't really want to ask anyone to do anything that I wasn't going to do myself. But when it comes to dealing with the north, also I suppose, there's a degree of is suspicion about companies from the south anyway. And because I'm from the north, I get a degree more tolerance there than basically some of the other guys here would do.

HATTIE: So the buyers from Scotland will give you five more minutes to talk to them, because you've got an accent?

STEVE: Maybe 10 or 15 more seconds.

HATTIE: And then is it hard to get the money out of them?

STEVE: The notion of sending a check south of the border for Scotch organizations is quite an anathema, quite a difficult one for them to cope with. So we have to work that a little bit harder to get the business going up there.

HATTIE: So you're able to get the check, though?

STEVE: We're able to get the business, yeah.

HATTIE: So yesterday, Nigel comes in and says, "We got the deal! We got the deal!" do you think what you've been doing the last 12, 18 months helped that to happen?

13

ROSEMARY: Very much so, because what happened was, they had received the newsletter perhaps in February this year. They will have been called in March or April. They will have had a mail shot--I can't think, but one of our products we mailed shot them the next month. Just a simple letter, not expensive--the cost of the stamp. Short letter. Se mail, call, mail, call. Just touch the customer.

HATTIE: While all of their customers have embraced collaboration software, Rosie believes there will always be a place for a well-designed physical piece of mail like their newsletter.

ROSEMARY: Put time technology in front of them as much as we can.

HATTIE: What do you think the deal you just closed yesterday is going to be worth to the organization?

ROSEMARY: I think Nigel was talking in the region of a million pounds. So that is a fantastic contract.

HATTIE: So marketing works?

ROSEMARY: Marketing works. It's hard work. It's hard work, but marketing is 99% common sense and 1% you've got to roughly know what you're doing. But you can read a book. You can ask people. But do it: get your name in front of the customer.

HATTIE: Nigel, what does it take to build a business?

NIGEL: What does it take? Well, I hate to mention that dreaded word luck, but there is a lot of luck in this business. Any business has to have that lucky break. How do you make yourself lucky? Well, I think hard work, determination, commitment, passion. We have to focus, and we must always focus on what it is that the client wants and that we deliver exactly what the client wants. In fact, we have to do more than deliver what the client wants; we have to exceed what the client wants. That will be the difference-- that will be the difference when Time Technology is a multi-million pound organization, is when we make that difference and we exceed the expectations of our clients. It's all about focus and service.

HATTIE: What gives you your stamina? You two, you and Nigel, bought this house when it was falling apart. You said, "oh, we can fix it." You bought a building downtown when it was falling apart. "Oh, we can fix it." You started a business on an idea--"Oh, we can do that." I mean, where does the stamina come from?

ROSEMARY: We did always hope that we would have a third child. We had two--fine, brilliant. Then we thought, "Number three," and it didn't happen. And so I always said Time Technology was my third child. And if you look at it like that, then you nurture it, you love it, you take care of it, you're passionate about it, and you do it for that reason. I don't know.

PETER: We've got a clear vision. We know where we want to get to. We've got ambitious plans for growth. There are no real boundaries to that growth.

NIGEL: It's fun. It is a lot of fun.

HATTIE in the studio: We learned so much from Nigel, Rosemary, and Peter. On our website you can read the complete interviews. Peter talks about how he is applying Six Sigma principles at Time Technology. Nigel tells how their C.P.A. got them angel capital for the start-up, and learn from Rosemary how she out sources the creation of her mail pieces and how she writes a telemarketing script that gets results.

NOTE: There are two additional clips for Time Technology. Please see below for #14 and 15.

We'll see you next time.

New CLIP for the web #14Nigel on Start-up Capital:

HATTIE: When it comes to the start-up, what big lesson can you share?

NIGEL: There are a number of factors than enabled us to get to where we are today. One is not be afraid of hard work but I would expect anyone to have that view if they were going to start-up. And two, totally believe in what they are doing and be passionate about. If you are not passionate about what you're selling you will not succeed because people will see holes in your arguments.

The other thing, certainly for us, never underestimate the amount of money you burn before you start to make money. We were very lucky we had some investors who put some money in.

In the software development environment typically you ask for 30% up front then you call it off over a period of time. As you deliver elements rather like building a building, the construction business. Customers paid some money up front for us to get going but we still had to deliver elements so we took some investors.

HATTIE: So would you say these investors were angels?

NIGEL: Yes. They were angels. They invested under the business expansion scheme at the time which was effectively a tax write off. That's what the motivation was. We were introduced by our accountant. We were so lucky from that point of view. We were going to do this on our own even though we didn't have the money and we would have never survived the first six months to let us get to where we are today.

I offered to buy them out about four years after we started but they decided they want to stay in for the long run. We still see them once a year, no active participation. We still have a shareholder meeting to fulfill obligations. We tell them what we're doing, they say that's very nice, we buy them a meal and the next time we see them is in a year's time.

HATTIE: So your CPA realized you needed money to start a business and that same CPA had the angel investor as a client and knew they needed a tax write off and put you together?

NIGEL: Absolutely. We were so lucky to have met them. They are a married couple who inherited some money and were looking to maximize their money so the accountant suggested the investment. It was a window of opportunity which is now gone. And we have taken advantage of other tax incentives. For example, one of the companies we formed out of Time Technology, which was Time Information Services, Rosie and I sold. As a consequence of owning the business for a period of time we got a lot of good tax breaks. We only paid 10% tax as opposed to 40% on the profits we earned.

New CLIP for the web #15Rosie on Writing A Telemarketing Script.

We've been doing a lot of telemarketing every month-- we outsource that. We've produced newsletters and we do mail shots. So we've bought a database and I talk to that database twice a year. We also outsource the database management I can't do everything. I have to balance my time between HR and marketing. I outsource copyrighting and design also. I coordinate and pull all together. The newsletter goes 4 times a year and mail shots every month.

I write the telemarketing script. Telemarketing does work but you have to get the script right. We've rewritten the script about 4 times. We started off using support. Have you got a problem with your software support? Can we help you? Perhaps you need some fixing. Can we send in a consultant? Have you heard of XYZ Product? Have you heard of us? Time Technology? Is there anything we can do to help. That worked quite well. Then we moved on to specific pains inside a company. We might choose to call the sales director rather than the IT director and we might say, "Have you got a problem keeping your customers up to date with information? Have you got a problem getting things to market quick enough? What really hurts?" We might say to the production director, "Are these your problems?"

Think about the pains then translate them into something about which you can have a meaningful conversation. So it is important to catch their interest. You need to write the script to encourage whoever you are calling to talk to you about their specific problems. Then you can pick up on an idea. Then you can say, "do you want a sales person to call on you?"

HATTIE: So how does it work? Do you mail to the same people you call?

ROSIE: Yes. We mail-call-mail-call. Touch the customer. Put time technology in front of the customer as much as we can.

Peter on Applying Six Sigma Principals to Time Technology
(other episodes dealing with business management -- top-right box)

HATTIE: What is Six Sigma?

PETER: It's an ingredient in securing long-term success. Six Sigma fundamentally is a quality methodology. A whole set of tools and approach to applying improvements to your business. I came from a situation where I had been a quality leader in my previous role and I had to apply it in an awkward environment and I had to learn an awful lot about it when I came to Time Technology. I knew that certain fundamental principals could really benefit a small organization particularly one that was looking to grow equally as much as it would a large organization.

HATTIE: What can you teach us about the principals of Six Sigma?

PETER: It is about the idea that you run your business through processes. Everything you do you are running through some sort of process. The efficiencies of that process are very important. You hope to control your costs on one end of the equation and on the other end of the equation you delight and satisfy your customers. To achieve this you need to bring in a whole culture of measure and some people find this difficult. Six Sigma gives you a set of tools and an approach to bring that into an organization and you can sell that idea that we can measure this stuff and that it is important.

What's also really important is that measurement must be carried out as your customers see it not as you see it. This was something that fundamentally GE believed in -- it is all about how you are seen by the customer. So you have to understand that. Most people have the perception of how they are performing based upon how they think they are performing but that may not be how they are performing at all. If the customer thinks in fact that you are much worse than that then that's the reality. So you've got to look at your processes from a customer's perspective not your perspective

HATTIE: You now have 6 month appraisals. Do you as the general director ask customers to participate in that process?

PETER: The most important thing about our appraisal system is that it has value. It means something. People know what they have to achieve. We have to pass down the vision all the way to business plan and process to specific goals and objectives against every individual in this company that contribute up to the overall strategy. I've been part of many bonus, goal and objective schemes in the past but the important thing in my mind, is someone needs to understand how they can be measured. What is the measurement of success? How do I know whether I did well or didn't do well enough and it's not good enough if my manager thinks I did well. So that means you need measure which is where the whole quality piece comes in to make sure you have the framework in place to measure this stuff.

If I'm saying that quality is how the customer sees us then my people need to be aware that they will be evaluated on how the customer sees them. And therefore there are elements within their goals and objectives for instance ...quality of communication with customers during projects. After ever project we do a post implementation feedback survey which has on it one criteria, "How do you rate the communication during this project?" The customer will score us 1-4. People will get part of their bonus paid based upon that score. It is absolutely fundamental. The appraisal should match up to the strategy and there must be quantifiable measurements that people can understand, agree with and relate to.

There are a lot of people trying to do customer feedback these days so you have to make sure you are gathering the real feedback. There are some customers who welcome giving feedback and others who want to know where the value is. If I can get the opportunity to get in front of the customer and sell them on giving us feedback that is good. They don't want to think it is just going on some chart somewhere and not be used.

We have one person on the management team whose responsibility is quality and that is a big thing for an organization of our size.

HATTIE: Out of 16 people one person is dedicated to quality?

PETER: Absolutely and they sit on the management team. She captures all complaints and compliments and there is action taken on each. We publish both.

HATTIE: What can you tell about the improvements you are seeing since you arrived?

PETER: It would be unfair to say we weren't making money. We weren't leveraging. If you just keep doing what the customer asks for you end up with lots of stuff to support which is difficult and not profitable. We have more focus and therefore more profits now. The profit margins are up but only just now are they going up after 18 months of hard work. It takes longer than you think. No matter how strong your vision is, to translate that into results take a long time. But yes the results are now coming.

HATTIE: Is Nigel allowing you to lead?

PETER: There is tension and you would expect that. There are going to be disagreements, specifically in Nigel's case, it has been difficult but anyone in his situation would have to go through a lot of change. I think the saving grace for him is that fundamentally he loves selling. That is his passion and I have been able to release him. Prior to that he was constrained by all the worry and responsibility trying to make the thing work. And by his own admission that is not his main skill or his passion. We have ongoing disagreements. (Laugh) One of the things we have is that we are brothers. We didn't have to have preparation conversations that you would have to have without the blood tie. Early on it is really important to talk through the issues you are going to face and use a professional if you don't do that, and in our case we did not but if the blood tie wasn't there it would be very very tough

HATTIE: You were hired because you have what it takes. It is unusual for the founder to hire someone to be the boss.

PETER: As frustrating as it can be from time to time, that's the way it is and that is the way he wants it and he likes it. He is freed up.

HATTIE: Can you give us an example of how you measure customer service personnel?

PETER: It is not easy. You have to understand what they do first. Proper role profiles structured to reflect the processes that most people have to have responsibility for and important. People take for granted that everyone understands but it is important to make sure that people are very clear on what they are supposed to do. When you understand the job, you can create the list of what the person is accountable for. Anything that happens in a process can be measured. For example, the developers are measured on customer service. They need clear communications. Customers need to understand what is going on on a piece of work what is being delivered constantly kept up to date with what is going on. A very clear measurement of success of development is clear communication. That is one such measure.

The majority of the people who we feel are the right people actually welcome it. They like the idea that there is structure to the way they will be evaluated. I heard a great expression, someone said what's the measure of a good appraisal? When the employee actually looks forward to the appraisal. It has to be meaningful and to see the value in it people generally want to know how they are getting on. It's better if you can provide a framework around that conversation rather than leave it totally in the hand of the manager.

Generally we bring in a carrot. If you start measuring put in rewards into the system. We actually, on some of the measures say, "If you get certain levels you get 75% of this number, if you get this level you get 100%, if you get this level you get 125%." People that excel will be rewarded through a clear process.

HATTIE: What will keep you from getting your goal of $20 million a year in sales?

PETER: Fundamentally it's the people. We're in a people business. We're in IT but we're selling services so we have to have the right people to do the job, to work with customers and the right management team. To get the right people we go through a great deal of filtering . For every role we look to take on, we understand a set of competencies needed for that role anything from customer focus to analytic thinking, persistency and different roles have different needs. You have the framework with is important you don't need to be overly analytical.

We have a clear vision. We know where we want to get to. We've got ambitious plans for growth and there are no real boundaries to that growth. We're right at the beginning of the journey. We're building the blocks and every person needs at least to bring in the next block or the next and its up to the individual how high they go up that equation. People who come here have that opportunity. We're only 17 people. You can influence and you can make the difference. I will maintain a clear vision and we will help everyone achieve. It's all about the people.

COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS. We invite your comments and questions. Was the show inspirational and/or educational? We hope this show is both!