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O P I N I O N
Leveraging technology
A dopting new technology is vital to support the growth of any firm. Being adaptable and open to new technologies can set a quickly-growing company up for success while refusing to evolve with technology can spell failure. If you’re looking to grow your firm, be diligent and adaptable in finding the IT system that suits your needs.
Mead & Hunt has learned this lesson firsthand. Our company is in the middle of a growth spurt. In the last 25 years, we’ve grown from two offices to more than 35, and from 130 employees to more than 750. Our revenue has increased tenfold, from $13 million to $136 million annually. We have an ambitious vision for our future involving intense growth. We could not achieve this without strategically applying new technologies. To achieve our growth goals, we needed to be able to bid on projects regardless of their location, and we needed to be able to access the very best talent from across the nation. We also needed to consider the cultural shift towards telecommuting we were seeing in our industry. Employees need files, software, and resources available immediately, no matter where they are working, and expectations of speed, safety, and accuracy continue to rise. We needed to identify and implement a solution
that met our company’s extensive and evolving needs. The task seemed daunting, but by breaking it into smaller steps, we were able to succeed. ❚ ❚ Evaluate the company’s needs. Our IT team man- ages the needs of a widespread network of archi- tects, engineers, and technical professionals. They needed the ability to send extremely large, graphic files to clients and partnering firms across the coun- try. In addition, our staff were demanding software speed that matched previous experiences even while working out in the field – or anywhere else. Physical workstations have a great user experience but are time-consuming and expensive to deploy and man- age. They require costly hardware and take a long time to get up and running, so they limit our ability to pursue projects where we do not have a branch office. To meet our growth goals, we needed to be able to work from anywhere a project takes us. Physical
Andy Knauf
See ANDY KNAUF, page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER September 9, 2019, ISSUE 1311
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