Tell me a bit more about I.T. Solutions of South Florida and the value you bring your customers.
We are a pureplay managed service support company. At I.T. Solutions of South Florida, we don’t take on projects for companies unless they have an active agreement with us, and are a managed client. We do this so we can fully focus on our clients, without distractions. Our priority is assuring that we provide the highest degree of reliability, resiliency, and security. If we’re delivering only two of those, it’s not enough. That’s why we prefer to bring someone on as a full-fledged, managed client and we work with them, month after month. It’s never just a quick project and then goodbye.
Our engineers are people-people. We hire down-to-earth, approachable, and responsive team members. They’re all so intelligent, but it’s important to us that they don’t talk geek-speak to our clients. A big value for us is to hire people that don’t talk over our client’s head. I think that’s a big problem in our industry. We’re a Best Places to Work company and that’s because I truly put a lot of effort into finding the right people. Those people are a huge value to our customers.
What’s the company culture like at your company?
We foster personal connections and growth with each individual, and we remember that everyone’s different. That is very, very important to us. We genuinely care about work-life balance. COVID, especially, brought that to the forefront. One thing we do is invest heavily in automation for simple tech tasks, which shows that we’re willing to invest in maintaining the happiness of our employees. They’re able to spend their time working on meaningful projects, instead of busywork.
We’ve always had a handful of fully remote employees, which allows us to always be available to our clients no matter what is happening in South Florida. So, when COVID hit, we simply flipped the switch and had everyone fully remote and fully functional immediately. To keep everyone engaged, we have a live feed up on multiple TVs throughout the office so I can still pull my remote people into our culture. I want them to feel as though they’re sitting right there in the office.
What separates you from the competitors in your market?
The first thing is that we are a certified woman-owned business in a 90% male-dominated industry. Automatically, that makes us different in the industry. We also provide free cybersecurity education to all our clients. Once a quarter we sit down and train their staff on how to be good cyber citizens. We do it because there’s always something new or changing in the world of cybersecurity, and none of our competitors provide that service. When we sit down with them, we’ll share things we’ve noticed their employees are doing that could be improved on. It’s free, customized cybersecurity education to benefit their business.
What are some of the challenges you faced over the years in growing your company?
Now that we’re in our 18th year of business, the challenges have definitely changed over the years. But a challenge that’s always been there is finding the people. I know that I’m not alone, though. I talk to so many of our clients, all in different industries, who are all hiring right now. It’s a big issue, not just in our state but everywhere. There have always been growing pains along the way, but I think working with my spouse has helped with that. There are two of us and we’re each helping the business continue to move forward.
Does operating remotely help to open your talent pool?
Not really. My staff has flexible schedules, but for my new hires, we do the first 60 to 90 days in the office. This is so they can understand our culture and really become part of the team. All of the team members that are remote were in the office at one time. I haven’t hired anybody straight to remote yet, but I sure am considering it though.