Name of your business.
CompuWorks
Your name and position.
Alan Bauman, Partner
What inspired you to start your business? How did your business get started?
CompuWorks started 28 years ago in the early days of the PC. This is back when many small companies were keeping their books on manual ledger paper and using adding machines. My partner and I saw the promise of automation in the small to mid sized business environment and launched CompuWorks to provide the resources these types of businesses needed to successfully integrate technology into their operations.
Tell us a little bit about your business.
CompuWorks has a staff of about 30 and a regional client base that spans from just outside of Boston, throughout western Mass, NY’s Hudson Valley, Southern Vermont and parts of Connecticut. Our staff is comprised of Virtual CIOs who provide strategic technology guidance, Network Administrators who align our clients’ technology with best practices, and a team of project engineers with a diverse set of skills. Our goal with every client is to help them efficiently utilize technology to achieve their business objectives. We’re partners with HP, Cisco, Microsoft, and dozens of other top technology companies.
What is your favorite thing to do in your business?
I enjoy meeting new clients and getting a sense of their business direction and uncovering their pain points. We can often help them realign IT priorities and budget so that their investments – both time and dollars – are having the biggest impact. If we can help a company add a half hour of productivity to all of the employees every day, for example, that’s an enormous boost. It’s very gratifying to be able to impact the success of another company and something I enjoy very much.
If nothing else, what is the one piece of information you want someone to know about your business?
That we’re in it for the long term when it comes to our relationships with clients. I care much less about short-term gain than I do about long term impact. If we can help our clients succeed year after year it’s good for everyone and that’s always been our perspective.
What is the one piece of business advice you would like to share?
This has nothing to do with technology, but one of the philosophies that has made us successful is that we are an “open book” organization. This means that we teach and share financial information with everyone on our staff. We post profit and loss statements on our wall and everyone knows if we’re on track or not. If you help your people understand what it is they do to impact those numbers and give them a stake in the outcome, over time you’ll transform your company.