StrategyX trusts House of I.T. with their global infrastructure

Brett Quinn is the CEO of StrategyX, a global software company with offices in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Australia, the UK, and the USA. Founded in 2019, StrategyX provides business owners and entrepreneurs with a proven way to independently manage the performance of their businesses and exceed their goals without the cost of hiring expensive consulting firms.

Brett has been a House of I.T. customer since 2014, when he was the CEO of ASX-listed company ServTech Global. Here’s what he had to say when we caught up with him in January 2022.   

What would you consider are some of your current goals and challenges as a company?

We’ve always had a goal to ensure we have 100% uptime. As a startup in a high-growth mode, we don’t want to have a problem with our IT infrastructure. I want to give all our attention to our own work. Our goal is not to be consumed by any IT issues or problems.

I also want to make sure we have the capacity to grow.

What was the thing that made you look for help with your IT infrastructure?

Knowing what we need is probably one of our biggest challenges. We’re not technical but we rely on IT infrastructure to exist, to operate. It’s nice to be able to call House of I.T. and tell them what we want to achieve and get their recommendations. We tell them what we want and they provide us with the exact thing we need, even if we didn’t know it.

I have to smile because you said we’re not technical, and yet you’re running a technology company.
Correct. Software development and code and product development – which is what StrategyX does – are completely different to making sure the internet stays on, making sure the internet operates at the speed you want, and making sure you can work through your programs and not have any delays. Being constrained by your IT infrastructure is so frustrating when you want to smash out the work and then, all of a sudden, you’re being slowed down. That’s a big challenge I’m able to completely avoid because of House of I.T.  They let me preserve all my brainpower for my own business.

Did you consider handling the infrastructure yourself, doing it in-house?
No. I’m not that type of CEO who likes to play in spaces I’m not competent in. I’d rather leave it to the experts.

You’ve doubled your business in the last 12 months and you’re continuing a rapid growth rate. Are you confident House of I.T. will keep up with your capacity requirements?
Yes, totally. One of the reasons I chose to work with them is because they have the capability of being a long-term partner. Their own infrastructure gives me confidence they can meet our needs.

How did you first hear about House of I.T.?
It was a word-of-mouth referral when we first started our business in the Philippines. I was referred to Artem Soukhomlinov, who is the CEO of House of I.T., by a service provider who was helping me open a Philippines office for a previous company. The company came highly recommended. I can be demanding, so that’s high praise.

What House of I.T. services do you use at StrategyX?

IT managed support, firewall, and CCTV, for starters. We’re using all their licensed products, like Microsoft Office products. We license virus protection software from them. We also host our website domains with them. I have my whole IT infrastructure managed by House of I.T.

StrategyX uses seat leasing services from House of I.T., so some of my staff goes to work at their office. They provide services to our remote staff, too.

Did that influence you in your decision, that they could offer everything?
I didn’t know what I needed at the start, so it’s hard to say. I just didn’t know what I didn’t know. But as those requirements became clear, and I asked the question, they could do everything I needed. It was an absolute plus because it meant that I didn’t have to then go through the whole process of trying to procure another service provider or a separate service provider to handle different parts of the IT infrastructure.

You first started working with House of I.T. when you were the CEO at ServTech Global, an ASX-listed company. Then you start another business and you call the same guys. Why did that make sense when you were in startup mode?
They made it easy. And having had that experience with them before and having seen the type of companies that they work with, it was a no-brainer.

Why wouldn’t I keep using their service? We had a really great experience with them the first time around, so I chose to use them again.

Tell me about the implementation. How did that implementation go, given the importance you place on uptime?
It was very professional. I always knew what was going to come next. As a CEO, you want to have comfort that the project plan is there. That’s my first requirement. Second, I want to trust it’s going to be executed as planned. They were excellent at showing me the implementation plan and keeping me updated regularly throughout the installation.

I never had to ask what came next. There weren’t any holes or gaps in the service.

To say it was 100% perfect is unrealistic – of any service. What made House of I.T. seem perfect was the little glitches that came up were rectified really quickly. Even though it’s hard to say any service provider is perfect, House of I.T. was close enough to perfect to be perfect.

How big was the project? Give me a sense of what we’re talking about.
It was a big job. They fitted out a whole floor – 700 square meters of office space. They went from a bare skin to a completely operational office with 200 seats for our staff.

Were there any specific integrations or customisations you required? Is there anything special that you needed from them?
We were one of the first businesses that used optic fibre. They installed a fiber optic network for us with no problem. In 2014, those sorts of networks were still cutting-edge.

House of I.T. has been at the cutting edge of technology for the whole time I’ve worked with them. I’ve seen how they’re constantly looking for the latest technologies and suggesting how to use them in my business.  

They’re actually passionate about it. It’s not just a service, “Oh yeah, we can do that.” You can see the passion ooze out of their business.

How long did it take to do that initial setup?
Three months from start to finish. Like I said, it was a big project. That’s from the planning phase all the way through installation for a whole floor of an office. It was good.

In what ways do you use the House of I.T. solution?

It’s what underpins our ability to work in and maintain a modern office, especially in these times of needing to operate remotely.

Tell me a little bit about that. Has House of I.T. provided additional services as everybody’s gone into a work-from-home mode? How have they supported you through that?
Their ability to react to a situation is second to none.

We’ve had government mandates saying some of our employees can’t come into the office due to COVID-19. House of I.T.’s ability to get my employees up and running from home is excellent, and they were able to maintain that level of service for many different locations.

The Philippines was recently hit by a “super typhoon”. Did that impact your IT infrastructure?
Ironically, House of I.T’s main office was where the typhoon hit. They had nearly everybody up and working one week later from home or back in the office where half their roof had been lifted off.

House of I.T.’s ability to react to natural disasters and ensure continuity of production is excellent. It exceeded my expectations. Even when their own business is under duress, it doesn’t impact my service. It is a credit to them.

StrategyX has a global workforce. How does that work with IT infrastructure?

We currently have people based in Australia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and India. We have contractors that work in the US. It’s a mix of employees and contractors. If our contractors have to use any part of our IT infrastructure, House of I.T. makes sure the integration is seamless.

How has House of I.T. helped you reduce risk in your organisation?

I’ll give you an example using the virus protection software we have through House of I.T’s business. You can call them and know they actually answer the phone. They put your problem in progress and start working towards a solution. It’s so much better than being flicked from one person to the next who say, “That’s not my department.” We tried to use another major provider of antivirus software and we never got a return call.

The House of I.T. escalation procedure is good. If one of their general staff can’t help you, it gets escalated quickly.

Why do you think an escalation procedure is important to how House of I.T. delivers its service?

When you have a problem, you just want it fixed. You want to know you’re the only person in the world that has a problem and that they’re going to throw their resources at it. It may not be able to be fixed in 15 minutes, but you know that they’re fixing it. You get the comfort of knowing they’re onto it and they keep you updated on the status.

The good thing about House of I.T. is that they monitor their success factors. Ticket resolution time is important to their customers so it’s important to them and they track it.  It’s comforting knowing they monitor the factors that are critical to their customer success.

They’re a really well-run company.

What kind of ROI do you experience with your House of I.T. service?
The number one thing that comes to mind is I don’t have to worry. In business, we have problems coming up all the time that must be solved. That’s what businesses do. We’re mistake-fixing machines. To know that IT problems are not on your list to solve, you can’t quantify that. It’s priceless.

The quantification is the brain power that’s saved. It’s the energy that’s saved. It’s the fact that I can maintain the productivity with my staff knowing that we’re not constrained by the underlying infrastructure.

How many people would you have to hire in-house to replace the service provided by House of I.T.?
I wouldn’t even try. There’s an element of their expertise that can’t be quantified. They typically solve a problem because of their experience, not because just anybody could have solved that problem. So it’s their experience in IT that enables them to solve problems faster.

That makes a lot of sense. How do you plan to expand your use of House of I.T. in the future, or do you have plans to?
Our service with them will grow as our business grows. As we require more computers or bring on more people, then we will go back to House of I.T. and ask them to resource that for us. We’ve already formed the trust with their service that we never consider using another provider.

In IT I’ve never gone for cheap, because typically cheap means that everything’s intermittent. The connections are intermittent. Your speed is intermittent. I’ve always said to House of I.T.,  “Just put the solution in that is not going to cause me problems,” and they do.

House of I.T’s service is value for money.

Is there anything else that we haven’t talked about that you wanted to add or that you think is important?
House of I.T.’s commitment to finding the right solutions is probably one of their biggest attributes. If there is a tough problem, it’s not too much. It’s not too big. They will try. They won’t say, “Sorry, we don’t do that. Talk to someone else.” They don’t do that. It just doesn’t exist in their vocabulary.

They’re excellent.

Bottom line: House of I.T. is a great service provider. And the fact that I’ve used them for seven years consistently without considering using someone else is a testament to their ability to meet our needs.

HOW YOU CAN EXPERIENCE SUCCESS LIKE BRETT’S

If you need a global service provider who alleviates any IT infrastructure problems so you can focus on your business, get in touch with House of I.T.