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For the past 20 years, Branham has tracked the Canadian ICT Industry and the leading companies that comprise it. As part of Branham’s ongoing efforts, we speak with leading executives from across Canada to gather first-hand insight on current trends and recent developments within the Canadian ICT Industry.

Recently, Branham sat down with Trent Dilkie, VP Strategic Initiatives & CSO at Gibraltar Solutions. The following statements summarize some of the key points that Mr. Dilkie would like to pass along to the Branham300 community. Alternatively, listen in on the conversation between Branham and Mr. Dilkie in its entirety here.

Getting Started in Big Business…

I went to school for mechanical engineering, but technically I’ve never really applied it. Early on I discovered that my real passion was in computers. I really enjoyed applying computers and related technologies to solve engineering or real world problems. 

As soon as I graduated university I started out in a job writing software for CAD/CAM automation at Husky. I did that successfully for quite a while and it eventually led me to the role of Vice President, Information Technology. After a few more years, I started to feel as though that portion of my career had run its course. 

Leaving Husky was certainly a huge turning point in my career, because I went from being a customer to being a supplier of IT, so I kind of started working on the other side of the fence.

Starting a Business based on Emerging Technologies…

When we started Gibraltar, it was basically four or five guys doing consulting work. We didn’t necessarily have a clear direction of where we wanted to go as a business, but very early on we recognized some technologies that we believed would soon drive change and revolutionize the way things were done. These technologies were heavily involved around application and server virtualization. Gibraltar was definitely a leader in this space at the time in terms of implementing them in our business, and more importantly introducing them to our customers, and we continue to strive to be considered a leader in this space today.

Adjusting to the Start-up Life…

The biggest thing you notice when going from a billion-dollar firm to starting-up a business is the overall access to resources. At Husky, if I needed money to invest in a piece of technology I could get the money. I had to build a business case to demonstrate that the investment made sense, but ultimately the money was there. In a smaller company, especially when you’re just starting out, it’s really hard to tap into the treasure chest. It isn’t impossible, but it’s extremely difficult, especially because banks aren’t all that willing to give out money to young developing companies, because they see so many of them fail in their first couple of years. Managing the financial aspect of the business was probably one of our biggest challenges in the early years of the business, especially for me coming from a background in big business.

The other big change for me coming from Husky was I was used to having human resources policies and process, and all the back office operations that are required to run a business in place. When we started Gibraltar we didn’t really have any of this. We realized pretty quickly that this would be an important part of building the business and attracting people to work here, so we ended up hiring an HR professional who understood that area. It was a smart move for us because it allowed us to focus on the business side of things, while also ensuring that we were putting the necessary policies in place to build a long-term and sustainable business.

Building a Business that has a Family Atmosphere…

One of the key differentiators for us compared to a lot of our competition is we genuinely feel that we want to run a company that is rewarding for our employees. We want them to be paid well, have good benefits and make sure they feel as though they are part of the team. We also, for the most part, only bring on full-time staff because we believe that really cohesive teams can’t be built with a rotating door of contractors.

Growing the business…

Gibraltar has really relied on organic expansion to grow the company. The fact that we didn’t go and get venture capital to get things moving along faster, probably slowed our growth early on to some extent, but ultimately we feel that our organic growth is probably one of our biggest strengths. The fact that we have come all this way as a result of building a good reputation, listening to our customers and going above and beyond their needs, without any outside financial help is a huge testament to the team here and our relentless focus on the customer.

Dealing with the Economic Slowdown…

During the recession, I think the biggest thing that the team here did is that we didn’t panic about things. If anything the economic crisis really forced us to focus our efforts on the things we do really well and the things that make us successful. We didn’t slow down on training and investing in our own infrastructure and research. If anything, we increased our investment in these areas. 

I actually think that there is no better time to increase investment in your company than during a recession, when everyone else is cutting costs. It’s a lesson I learned from the President of Husky back when I worked there in the mid-1980s during a horrible recession. He always said that when times were bad, that’s when you have to spend the most money. You have to position yourself to be the absolute leader when the recession ends. He’s a brilliant guy, so I have to believe he’s right in many ways. So it was a conscious decision for Gibraltar to continue to invest throughout the past couple years.

Technology Trends on the Horizon…

The information technology market is changing rapidly, and that’s not going to stop. Companies – small, medium and large – don’t want to buy computers, install software, or run their own IT infrastructure anymore. They want a service provider to come in and run everything for them so they can focus on their business and not the infrastructure that supports it. I believe that we are on the leading edge of helping our customers understand this technology movement, and how to incorporate the shift into their day-to-day business. 

I think one of the biggest things driving it is the Gen X and Gen Y and Millennial generations, because they have grown up with things like Hotmail, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter and they are completely comfortable with someone else running their IT infrastructure. In fact, I believe that they probably prefer it. 

I also see a big change in how IT is administered within an organization in the near future. Traditionally, IT has been pushed down on the employee, whether they like it or not. I think it’s going to shift completely to a pull system, or maybe a better name for it is a self-service environment, very much like the Apple App Store. I see it as an empowering shift for employees. When a new employee comes on board, they get a device and they get set-up on the corporate app store, and they download what they need. The entire infrastructure of the system will have compliance, workflows, licensing and a number of other things built in. It will reduce cost and increase user satisfaction, because now they feel like they have a say in the whole process.

The Remote Workforce Movement…

I saw a great presentation a couple of weeks ago in Ottawa on the shift to a remote work environment. The person presenting was a young guy that had recently become a manager. During the presentation, he said something that really stuck with me. Throughout his entire university career, he did most of his work at Starbucks using Wi-Fi. He was essentially trained in school to be a remote worker. So I wondered to myself why we force these new recruits to enter an office environment when they are already trained to work from wherever there is an internet connection. This generation is really going to drive the shift to a distributed workforce because they essentially come out of school with all of the skills needed to be successful in this model. 

There are a number of different things that companies need to consider from a technology perspective when shifting to a distributed workforce model, but I think the main one to consider is eliminating the data on the end devices and shifting it all to a virtual desktop that hosts all of the information in a secure data centre. There are huge benefits associated with this for the company from a security standpoint. Mainly, the data never leaves the data centre, you can easily lock the data down, and if the employee ever looses a computer it’s no big deal because there isn’t any sensitive data stored on the device. There is also next to no productivity loss associated with losing a device either, because you can just give them another one and they are off and running again.

Parting Advice...

Always present a very positive image when you are with a customer, even if the answer is no. For example, if a customer says to me ‘can you do this’ and it’s something that we can’t do, I’m perfectly willing to say ‘no we can’t do that, but if you let me come back next week with some ideas I am sure we can do something’. The customer will not only appreciate your honesty, but when they ask you to do something that you can do, they will be confident that you have the tools and expertise to deliver. 

Another piece of advice I have for those that are looking to start their own business, is to start it when you are young. Take your chance when you are in your 20s and 30s, because you will learn a lot and even if you aren’t successful you still have the rest of your life to recuperate. When you get to be in your 50’s or 60’s, it’s not as easy to recover from your mistakes.