Meet Bob Peterson
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As I’ve probably mentioned before, I’m on the e-mail list for MPC sales announcements. One that caught my eye this morning had to do with a $2.75 million order from a Federal agency. The order encompasses nearly 2,000 desktops, more than 400 notebooks, and several thousand memory upgrades. The added “perks” from MPC include revision control, asset tagging, managed deliveries, and technical support.
Included in this e-mail, as in others of this type, was a brief description of “What made the difference?”. Time and again, I’ve noticed that in our Federal segment, “relationship” is a factor. In the case of this win, it was further noted that “we are working closely with a channel partner to maintain service levels and to keep aggressive competitors our.” Say what you want about the commodity nature of PCs, but it’s hard to beat the power of trusted relationships in any business!
While strong relationships in the Federal segment have been critical to MPC’s success in selling hardware, I expect the months ahead to offer evidence that our Old School success in doing business is being enhanced by some very cutting-edge value propositions. Another piece of communication that crossed my desk today, only hours after our Federal agency win, was a Solutoin Brief from our technology partner Intel, entitled “Department of Defense Creates a Secure, Virtualized Environment”.
The Intel brief describes what I have to credit as the coolest acronym I’ve run across in recent memory (and in this industry, that’s saying something): G.H.O.S.T., which stands for General Dynamics High Assurance Open Scalable Technology. Taking advantage of Intel’s Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) and Virtualization Technology (VT), General Dynamics touts the following benefits that GHOST delivers to the Department of Defense:
The reason Intel’s depiction of GHOST got my attention is because of its similarities to MPC’s Virtual Desktop Initiative (VDI) program, which is currently being evaluated by a DoD customer. While it it is premature to disclose more details of our VDI program (note that you’ll see no reference to it on our Web site), the DoD vision described by Intel with regard to GHOST could have been lifted from the goals of VDI:
My fondest wish for MPC’s future business in the Federal space is to see our Old School relationship approach serve as the conduit for a new generation of sustainable IT solutions, enhanced by our partnership with Intel. If that wish comes true, I’ve no doubt that I’ll be seeing a good many more e-mails like the one I read this morning.
One of the things that MPC has prided itself on is the fact that its service and support is 100 percent U.S.-based. This is more than just a matter of jingoism: it reflects the simple fact that many of our customers (particularly in segments such as federal government and education) prefer dealing with someone on the other end of the phone who is American…end of story (no offense intended, Bangalore!).
That being said, our company, like many others, has outsourced some of its customer service and technical support functions in the past. Back in January, however, MPC brought its customer support for servers back in-house, along with all e-support (chat and e-mail inquiries). For its desktop and notebook products, however, MPC continued to rely on an outsource partner.
As of 8:00 pm (MST) on Saturday, August 30, MPC will complete its transition to a 100 percent, in-house customer support model. If this seems to fly in the face of industry trends, let me explain. The typical call center is optimized around call volume. While we care as much as any company about the cost-effective management of customer support calls, our greater concern is with quality rather than quantity. Simply stated, we wanted greater control over the customer experience from first call to final resolution. Toward that end, we recently hired 60 new customer/technical support employees (40 in our Nampa, Idaho location and 20 in North Sioux City, South Dakota).
As part of our in-house model, we have created an incentive-based compensation plan that rewards our staff to resolve customer support issues as close to the time of first call as possible. Moreover, managing this process in-house allows us to inculcate a service culture based on customer ownership, not simply managing call volume. This isn’t just an ultruistic motive. Since MPC promotes customer service as an important differentiator in the markets we sell to, we really have no choice but to set an industry standard or look like a bunch of hypocrites.
So why am I sharing this with you, since we have already announced this decision to our employees and customers? I have to confess an ulterior motive.
This blog is, in part, a litmus test for our local media in Nampa and North Sioux City. Despite my long-held conviction that one should never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the gallon, I’ve been stewing for a couple of weeks now over what I consider to be less than balanced journalism in the reporting of recent workforce reductions at MPC. To begin with, some of the media coverage we received incorrectly reported that the jobs affected (less than 5 percent of our workforce) had been ”outsourced” to Juarez, Mexico as part of our manufacturing transition from our Nashville plant to our manufacturing partner, Flextronics.
Point of fact: the reductions that occurred were part of a larger transformation of MPC’s business model - one in which the value of our IT solutions matters more to the markets we serve than whether or not we assemble our own components. As this model continues to evolve, some jobs will be eliminated while new ones are created. Aside from the same imperative that every company faces to effectively manage its overhead, MPC will continue to look at EVERY function in the company in terms of how it figures into the value proposition we are delivering to our professional computing market segments, from Federal to K-12.
So…here’s where the litmus test comes in. I’m sending a link to this blog to the media in North Sioux City and Boise/Nampa. Will the fact that we have hired new employees merit the same attention as the fact that we recently reduced our workforce by a similar number? I’ll be watching The Idaho Statesman with particular interest. While our esteemed local daily ran an article a few weeks ago on the details of the severance package received by a former member of our management team, the very same publication ignored last week’s annoucement of our most significant new product introduction in nearly a year! Go figure.
Sorry for the rant, but for the record, let me make one thing very clear. In my career as a PR person, I’ve had clients who on more than one occasion suggested that local media ”owed” them positive coverage because they provided local jobs and paid local taxes. As a former business journalist, my counter has always been that this might be a more compelling argument if businesses were running philanthropic enterprises based solely on job creation within their communities. Please! Companies hire people with the expectation that their contributions will result in profit. That’s capitalism 101, folks. Enlightened self-interest works.
I don’t believe that the media, local or national, has an obligation to carry our water. That’s our job…and if we do our job right, our customers will tell our story more compellingly than anyone in the media. What I do expect, however, is the same standards of professionalism from business reporters that they should rightfully expect from me, or anyone else at our company. When the story concerning MPC is negative, report it…but for pete’s sake, get the context right. When the story, whether new hires or new products, is positive, I believe our local communities have just as much right to know about that as well. That’s just good journalism.
End of rant.
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Ken celebrates his victory at IDF
Cue up Weird Al’s “White and Nerdy” while I introduce you to MPC’s Ken Haugen - winner of this year’s coveted “Ultimate Geek” contest, held at the Intel Developers’ Forum in San Francisco.
As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, Ken put the smack down on 100 other competitors to win more than just bragging rights at the next Star Trek Convention. He also won a Smart Car. Rumor has it that former members of his high school chess club will be hosting an event at the Statehouse to rival the recent celebration of Kristen Armstrong’s gold medal in Beijing.
I mean, really…winning the Ulimate Geek contest or taking gold in the Olympics? Like there’s a comparison?
Congratulations, Ken. You’ve done Idaho and MPC proud, man!
Be prepared to reconsider whatever you thought you knew about MPC after you’ve listened to these segments…and stay tuned for Part 2!
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Warning: the following podcast is a shameless self-promotion…but it does address a semantic stumbling block I’ve tripped over on more than one occasion. More important, it provides an “audio trailer” for the launch of our newest podcast series, “Sustainable IT”.
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The Lair of a Tinkerer (Doug Rollins' crib)
At the risk of revealing my age, I can still remember the “hi-fi” craze of the early ’60s. It was a phenomenon that was a total mystery to anyone without a “Y” chromosone, and democratized a legacy going back to Thomas Edison. To this day, I still believe that America’s leadership in technological innovation owes itself not to a legion of MBAs and the Free Market, but to the “tinkerers” - people who created “things that did something” with the same passion and relentless sense of purpose as the greatest artists. Afterall, long before Edison there was da Vinci.
I suppose I inherited my respect for tinkerers through my dad, who was a journeyman tool & die maker. My dad instilled in me an admiration for people who created wealth not by making money, but by creating opportunities. And somewhere behind those opportunities was a tinkerer.
Which leads me to the point of this missive. Today marks the inaugural blog of the guy at MPC that I like to think of as our CTO (Chief Tinkering Officer): Doug Rollins. It isn’t that Doug is the only person at MPC who likes to roll up his sleeves and build things, but as you’ll see from his introductory blog, Doug’s background and history at our company have given him a perspective that few others can offer. It’s this perspective that I’m looking forward to sharing as Doug begins his new life as a blogger.
By the way, when Doug asked me about finding his ”voice” in the blogosphere, my adivce was this: ”Just imagine you’re sitting down over a beer with an IT manager and talking shop.” If there is one thing I remember as a kid from those guys down in their basements soldering the latest “solid state electronics” into their fancy new audio machines, it’s that the love of sharing the experience was as much of a kick as the experience itself.
Long live the Tinkerers!
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