become a consultant. From there I became a director of a managed services organization and that’s how I met my managing partner here at Forward Slash, Matt. MB: It’s a similar story for me. Computers came out when I was in grade school and I have really been working on them ever since. I took it from a different perspective, though. I was more interested in electronics and connecting things together and making them work so I always had home com- puters from the time the first PCs came out, like the old 80-86s. I was one of the only kids my age back then who had a computer in their room that was their own. I worked with computers all through grade school, in high school I took programming classes and I became really interested in networking, connecting different systems together, and moving data. I didn’t quite finish college but my studies there were IT-related. My first job was IT- related, too, at a payroll company. I managed all the PCs and printers they used for creating those payroll reports and paychecks and I haven’t looked back. I’m genuinely interested in how things connect, solving the problems of connectivity between sites when they occur, and things like that. So you could say that my background is more engineering from the network side, security and connecting devices, that sort of thing. JD: I think a great comparison for these guys is the show Young Sheldon. You know the scene where he’s standing dazed in Radio Shack in front of the shelf of computers sal- ivating – that was these two. MH: [Chuckling] That’s accurate. You should also know that Matt and I are 11 days apart in the year, so the 80-86 that he’s working on is the same thing I called the ‘Trash 80s’ back then, the Texas Instruments ones. Like he said, he was approaching everything from a different angle; we both had the same computers in our rooms at the same time and developed two different philosophies of technology – and eventually ended up in the same area. MH: Well, we started on April Fool’s Day in 2011, which I’ve always found funny. But we knew that we were building a business that was about serving clients with their interest at heart. Matt’s an engineer and I’m a programmer but our ideologies and methodologies are the same: we both believe in managing technology from the business per- spective first, technology second. That means having a real grasp of how departments within a given business collab- orate. Rather than sports memorabilia in my office I have two pictures of bridges as a constant reminder that we’re trying to build relationships at every level of what we do at Forward Slash. We have very close relationships with our clients. We really take technology very seriously. I become a virtual CIO to all of our clients. I get into their budget process- es and here’s an example: we have a client right now that has multiple locations and now they’re moving to a new I can’t imagine a more balanced IT business model. You must have been confident coming out of the gate.
location in Nebraska. We will be part of that conversation before they even get started. We are at that level with our clients that we are their IT department. We truly work out their problems at all levels, not just the technological stuff. They don’t just tell us, “Hey, this is our existing infrastruc- ture and here’s what we think we need moving forward.” We actually go in, assess, and propose and recommend. We’re a part of the budget process completely. I understand that Forward Slash provides IT services for The City of Perryville, Missouri whose municipal council recently spoke with Spotlight on Business. MB: They’re a good example of where we are different than other IT providers. They are a city and within the city they essentially have different little companies. They have a public works division, a parks department, they manage the airport there, they have City Hall, administration, the library, the police department, and we were able to come together, assess their current needs and their current solu- tions and really find ways to be able to look at the bigger picture. We looked at it all from an economy of scale angle and employed systems in a way that’s best for everyone. So, instead of the parks department paying one group to manage IT and the library another and City Hall another, we took over everything and connected everything. Now, communication across the board is improved. Because we approach things from the big picture perspec- tive, as Monte said, we can really give our clients a one, two, or three-year plan. That’s what we did in Perryville. We gave a full assessment on how we could connect the different departments together and how we planned to leverage that connectivity. We detailed how we were going to provide things like a phone system, a unified email system, and unified active directories. We also outlined how we’d be able to provide that same level of connectivity for tenants of all their municipal offices and manage their overall IT connectivity, their internet connectivity, their wireless, and extend their fiber. We were even able to help them with the TVs in their council room and with projecting images from their laptops. All of those things where you might have to go with different vendors and maybe not get a cohesive solution, we’re a one-stop shop for all of it. I think that is what makes us stand out from the other providers. We were also able to deal with the challenges they were having at the airport. Matt, you just mentioned the projections you’re able to provide your clients be it two or three years down the road. This in itself must make Forward Slash the leading choice for a lot of small and medium-sized business- es not only in their formative stages but when they’re planning expansions or restructuring. MH: So, it’s very funny that you say that, David. The one- year, three-year, and five-year perspectives we conduct are invaluable to our clients – they see the value in it right away and down the road.
SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • DECEMBER 2018 114
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