A coffee with Nick from Trio Technology
Nick Crossman, General Manager from Trio Technology meets us for an e-coffee
Nick Crossman is the General Manager of Trio Technology - operating a software development business right in the center of the Palmerston North CBD. They do business in Manawatu, and impressively across the globe - we think there are some good lessons in there on how to do business with the world!
Who are Trio Technology?
Trio Technology is a boutique software development company employing 4 staff in Palmerston North.
http://triotech.co.nz/
What does your business do? How do you do it?
We develop bespoke software for clients who need our software development services. Generally for business applications using the best development tools available to us. Of course the key ingredient is our staff, without them we have nothing.
What client sectors do you work with or in?
We work in most sectors and don't have a speciality as such. In this business, we need to be as flexible as we can to engage with as many possible clients as possible. We do have some specialities such as Xero integrations where we are Certified Developers on the Xero website. SEE HERE
Nick seeing you work with a number of clients overseas or outside of Manawatu – how do you go about attracting clients to work with a Manawatu based business?
Our work is generally led by referral. We were fortunate to start our business with a number of customers, but have gained a lot over the years from our projects and customers. Our website is also SEO optimised so that we get a number of visitors and enquiries from all over the world.
Being in the Manawatu is also a real advantage:
- English speaking, which customers from the US really appreciate
- OK time-zones from US to China
- Lower overheads like premises and salaries
- Committed long-term staff
The reality for us is that our international customers couldn't care less where we were located as long as we could do the job for them. On the other hand, we get very little national work, so our customers tend be either Manawatu (local factor) or international.
How does your business work with clients who are in different timezones and/or countries?
We use all the tools like Skype, email, Collaboration software. Most companies don't care so much where we are and in our business, we don't need face-to-face or many real-time conversations.
Trio Technology is a business with less than ten people – what are the issues you face when considering staff?
We can't afford to get it wrong, as the wrong hire can disrupt our business very easily and it can be costly in staff management, re-work etc.
Our goal is also to hire people who are committed to this area by way of family, schooling and/or home ownership, which ensures continuity of employment. We offer job security and above average salaries in return.
We don't compare what other companies are paying and certainly don't compare our offerings to that of Auckland or Wellington companies, but we believe that after you deduct the costs of housing, child-care, transport and commuting time (subjective, yes), then our employees (and most other companies' employees) are better off in the provincial cities.
For the reasons above, we don't tend to hire younger workers or graduates as they tend to be looking at this role as a mere step to their next job in Auckland or Wellington.
Getting employment for the spouse is also an issue if the potential employee is moving into the area and this is one area where the local promotion entities need to work better.
"Nick, I couldn't agree more! We see this tralling spouse syndrome a lot across industries and see the downstream costs to local employers when the wider family is under-employed"
Nick you do a lot with developing web-based tools and use web-tools yourself in your business. What are your 5 most valuable/useful web-based tools?
- Skype
- Activecollab for Project collaboration
- Xero
- iPayroll
As a business reliant on the web and "uptime" – what is the biggest risk Manawatu businesses face with being web-based?
The biggest risk is not technology risk (we've had maybe an hour in total internet outage in 3 years), internet infrastructure is fine and you wouldn't serve your application or web service from Palmerston North anyway. The biggest risk factor in my mind is the lack of direct customer contact. You're not talking to your customers face-to face and you tend to only heard from the 'squeaky wheel'. You can become detached from your customers and they become only a $ figure – but the only thing that makes a successful business is the customer.
What recommendations or advice would you have for anyone contemplating a web tools or a wholly web-based business?
Go for it.
Find your niche, deliver the solution to the 'itch' and do it – it can be done. However, the internet is not the business solution (unless you're an ISP), it is only the delivery mechanism.
You still need to deliver value to your customers and they still need to know about you somehow. "Build it and they will come" is a fantasy. Every successful web business out there has to have a plan on how to grow their customer base and they aren't waiting for them to come.
What recommendations would you give to Manawatu businesses who want to re-engineer their online presence or business?
I think it is essential that whoever you choose to create any online presence or tools or systems for you that they use either Open Source or Commercially available systems to build what you're after. If anyone says that they have their CMS or Framework that they have built over the years, run away. There is no reason in 2014 for any website development companies to build their own systems, it just makes no sense.
There are better systems out there built by either teams of a hundred developers from the likes of Microsoft or thousands of developers contributing their time for free to excellent Open Source projects like Joomla, Wordpress, Symfony etc.
Also ensure that you can at any time, move your hosting and support away from the incumbent and get these services from elsewhere. Trio designed and built this website for Palmerston North Personnel and we host it for them too. However they are able to easily move its hosting elsewhere and get support from other Joomla developers anywhere in the world should they wish. They use us because they want to, not from technology lock-in.
Don't get tied down.
Thanks Nick - We recently worked with clients in Christchurch and Taranaki using those very tools. I see significant potential for Manawatu businesses to expand their markets further by leveraging smart technology, low-cost communications and really delivering the high level of service we all expect locally.