NetGain Technologies team members love to celebrate, and we had many reasons to do so in the third quarter.

Happy clients

We count happy clients as our biggest successes, and Q3 saw many great reviews. There were many new “perfect 10” Net Promoter evaluations from a growing list of managed services clients. One of the things I also enjoy is seeing us improve individual client scores quarter over quarter. When we identify an issue for improvement, the team works hard to understand how we can improve in a measurable way and executes against that plan.

I love personally reading some of the great things our clients say and then getting to share that with the entire team. It is gratifying to hear about the impact the NetGain team has on other businesses. Last quarter, one client told me “Bobby Davis is your greatest asset.” A CFO offered “big thanks to Danny Campbell for taking control of the situation” after her computer wouldn’t access the remote network on a Saturday evening. Another CEO told me that Robert Patterson’s quarterly business review presentation was “the most valuable part” of their outsourcing their I.T. to NetGain.

Part of our ability to create happy clients is that we receive lots of great suggestions from them on how we can make our relationship even stronger. One way we do that is by hosting advisory councils where clients help us understand what’s working from their perspective. Read more about our regional advisory councils here.

33 years of service

Every August, right in the middle of Q3, NetGain commemorates its anniversary by hosting an employee appreciation event. In 2017, we had a whole week of festivities as we turned 33 years old.

Q3 theme

Another great reason to celebrate was achieving our Q3 theme that I mentioned in my last message. We moved four “rocks” out of the way:

• We established new Cloud-based offerings we would be rolling out
• Zack Wildman took ownership of the ticket process for Technology OneSource end-to-end
• We hired two new project engineers
• A team put together by Brendan Jacobson finished up the documentation for our Executive Workshop process

The quarterly theme was “Oktoberfest.” Because we achieved all four goals, each branch office received a budget to observe our success any way they’d like. In Lexington, we tailgated at Keeneland on a beautiful Saturday with good food and great fun, with the thrilling backdrop of a huge crowd out to watch a day of horse racing. The best part of accomplishing our quarterly goals is the fun we get to have celebrating together.

Employee culture

One challenge we face as a growing company is recruiting enough talent to fill newly-created positions. Last quarter, we had some fun shooting a video that helps introduce NetGain Technologies to prospective employees. Check out this video. Being able to share what goes on inside our walls with clients and prospective team members is very important to us.

Q3 review

A few team accomplishments in Q3 are especially noteworthy:

• After a year-long search, we found our VP of Managed Services Sales. Near the end of Q3, Nigel Taylor joined the company as an Executive Leadership Team member.
• After several years of continual growth, several of our branch offices are relocating some office space. Louisville will be relocating to new class “A” office space by end of year. Cincinnati will be doing the same around the same time.
• Our virtual chief security officer program is off to great start. We know our clients recognize the need for security at an executive level, yet may not be able to afford a highly compensated I.T. security officer, so we created an offering to fill the market need—and I keep hearing about how much clients love working with Scott Logan as their new vCSO.
• We heard from clients they wanted a way to add, modify, and delete users in an online website instead of submitting forms. We have created a BETA website to allow this functionality and it is currently being tested. This will save everyone time!
• The Services team upgraded our proprietary CIARA client data system with lots of new features to help us track client issues we resolve back to the root cause. With this new data we can trend issues and resolve the root cause, not just fix symptoms.
• We created a Health Care Forum to get employees involved in the decision making process of health insurance. Based on employee survey feedback, they wanted to be involved so we are making it happen.
• We are upping our game again. In addition to being a SOC 2-certified company, we are now moving to implement ITIL. This stands for “Information Technology Infrastructure Library.” It is a set of detailed practices for I.T. service management that focuses on aligning I.T. services with the needs of the business. It demonstrates compliance and helps measure improvements. Think of it as “Six Sigma for the I.T. world.” What this means for our clients is better results and processes to support your business. As one of the top ranked I.T. services providers in the world, we know ITIL will continue to raise the bar for us and set us apart from the competition. Companies that want and depend on great I.T. performance for their business will require this sort of excellence.

Services team reorganization

Maybe the most exciting development at NetGain Technologies during the past dozen years is our emergence as an internationally recognized managed I.T. services provider (MSP). We have accomplished this feat by establishing real relationships with our clients and becoming invested in their success. Our goal is to be known for business consultation, not just technology consultation.

I’ve previously introduced you to our new Vice President of Operations, Jason Bowra, and to our Virtual Chief Information Officers (Robert Patterson, Deuce Towe, Mike LeBeau, James Walker, and Adam Weiger), and described the vCIO service offering.

In Q3, we formalized some functional organization changes. The services team now consists of:

• Tactical Operations Team: Client-facing remote engineers and field engineers
• Technology OneSource Engineering Team: Overseers of client technology relationships and enforcers of best practices and industry standards
• Technology OneSource Client Success Team: Business advisors who help clients understand the business impact of technology and budgeting
• Professional Services Team: Project coordinators, pre-sales engineers, and implementation specialists
• Centralized Services Team: Engineers who oversee automation, scheduled maintenance and backups, and tools deployment

Because the majority of our employees are engineers, the reorganization affects all of our internal teams. To familiarize the rest of the NetGain family about the services team reorganization, Jason Bowra and his team presented team information companywide during lunches throughout Q3.

Read more about the Services team structure here.

Looking ahead

Every quarter, NetGain Technologies sets a series of quarterly priorities with specific goals. As I mentioned above, achieving these priorities results in a companywide celebration.

Three specific goals we have for the fourth quarter are based on internal communications:

1. Complete training and internal awareness of ITIL
2. Each department “teaches” us about another department during lunch with Q&A
3. Establish a company dashboard framework

Honors and recognitions in Q3

Quarterly awards for outstanding employee efforts went to:

• Sales-Professional Services: Wayne Logan
• Sales-MRR: Emily Toles
• Finance and Administrative: Brent Law
• Marketing and Development: Scot T. Gillies
• Technology OneSource Engineer: Ryan Burney
• Professional Services Engineer: Jason McRoberts
• Tactical Operations Team: Jonathan Tuers
• Client Success: Robert Patterson
• Sales Support: Kevin Smith