Another holiday season is upon us -- many of us have celebrated Christmas Day with our families and are now (depending on where we are) celebrating Boxing Day or, perhaps, are back to work.
Today, I'm going to sprinkle some of my personal reflections into this blog entry -- between plates of ham, trips to the gym (to work off the ham), and an indoor softball tournament played by my soon-to-be 10-year-old daughter.
This is my 12th Christmas with Metron and I know there are quite a few people with many more than this -- a real testament to the company and the people I work with on a daily basis.
Every year the Taunton (UK) office has a company lunch in mid-December. This year, I happened to be spending a week in Taunton and was able to join the staff in the festivities.
The food was wonderful, the company was fantastic, and I extended the experience by spending the next few hours with a much smaller group at a neighboring pub. I got to know people I'd never had the pleasure of spending time with, and vice-versa -- to them I was someone who was only a voice on a telephone. I became real to them, as well. It was a real highlight of the year for me.
At Metron, one of the things we pride ourselves on is personalized service to our clients. I can tell many stories over the last decade-plus of how we've had customers put in requests for our software that would help them serve their clients better -- and the internal conversation that followed was wholly centered on how we could make that happen, if possible. Indulge me as I tell but one of these stories.
I was new to Metron -- this was early in 2004. A new client was taking a week's worth of athene® training -- on-site at their offices. During the training, one of the people suggested that there was a better way for their company to display data in a particular chart. I took a note, and after the class I sent an email off to the development manager. The next morning, as I checked my emails, I found one from a developer that included a patch that did exactly what the new client wanted. The 6-hour time zone difference meant that I was able to go back to the classroom the very next day with a solution I could show. The client was, notably, impressed.
This was actually an easy patch to create, but as a person who had experience in much larger organizations, I was amazed at how quickly this was turned around -- developed, tested, sent. Depending on the request, these things aren't always possible, but with Metron they have been a lot more likely than in some other places I've been, mainly because the question "What can we do?" is always asked.
For us, as well as our customers, business is 24x7, 365 days a year. For our retail clients, this season is the most important time of the year -- having adequate capacity and performance to meet customer expectations is crucial for them. As it is for all our clients during the time periods that matter most to them. That's what capacity management is all about -- having adequate capacity to meet SLAs during the periods of peak demand. That's what good Capacity Managers plan for -- and that's their investment in athene® and in Metron pay the most dividends.
And as we head into 2015, Metron and its dedicated staff will be there to provide software and support, education, and services to help organizations and individuals improve how they ensure service to their clients. As we have every year since our founding in 1986.
Stick around and see what Metron will be up to in 2015. Till then, more ham, more running, more softball, more ham...
Happy Holidays, everyone.
Rich Fronheiser
Chief Marketing Officer
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