About six or seven years ago, I was sat down with the designer developing the Unleashed IT logo – I can’t even remember whether the dog was even my idea or his. Though it is fairly logical that a dog escaping its leash is probably a sensible logo idea for a company called Unleashed. However, until recently, I was never too keen on the idea – I thought it was the least relevant thing for the IT world but as I couldn’t come up with a better idea, thought it was probably better than nothing…
Recently, we’ve been talking to a lot of IT managers, I’ve even been fortunate enough to have tours of brand new datacentres in new high-profile office moves, I’ve had tours of old factories that are still churning out good and popular products and I’ve been talking to IT managers in despair at the lack of budget to do necessary upgrades telling them that there’s also a bloke down the street in the same predicament.
I’ve never been a fan of sales, selling myself or anything like that. In fact, I am my own worst critic. I constantly get told off by those around me who work in sales for doing it too. However, I always feel it gives us an edge and a constant desire to improve and learn. As I’ve said to potential clients and customers alike, as a business-IT geek – I’m more interested in what companies do and how the IT function is supporting them.
I’ve probably learned more about our customers and the UK economy through the tour of recent weeks, than they have from us. Having a chat, seeing what they do and helping them create solutions inside of their budget, time or other constraints. Sometimes this means business for us, other times it just means a chat between us and bouncing ideas back and forth – we often learn stuff too and that’s never a bad thing. However, I just get really fired up and interested in the way different companies do things and how they’ve got their IT supporting them.
At the beginning of the year I said this would be the ‘Year of the IT Manager’ and my plan was really to promote IT Management at the senior executive level, and actually them in getting through the barriers that a lot of them face with regards to aging equipment and increasing pressures due to current economic circumstances. I wanted to arm executives with questions to be asking of their IT managers and directors that would break down some organisational walls and hopefully help out the IT guys.
In reality, we ended up practicing what we were preaching and started just looking to talk with as many IT managers and directors as we could, customers, potential customers and even those we just really wanted to speak to because we thought they or their company were interesting. Whilst I hope we’ll get back on target with the goal I set at the beginning in the year, I’m currently just having fun Unleashing the former IT Manager in me!
So then, the dog… Why have I suddenly seen another side of him? Well, I’m starting to think of him as being representative of being a friend and companion and how that value has very much become part of how we want to work as a business. After all this time, I’m finally quite happy with him. One day, we may even name him!
