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Rudy Discusses Critical Lessons In Shaping His Visions
for BiTMICRO Networks
The BiTMICRO message is sweet and short: Data
Availability, Information Integrity. It is a strategy
we have been executing daily and would want to provide you
-our partners- a little background on my experiences, which
helped form the specific objectives underlying this
strategy.
Over the past nine years, I have had the privilege of
watching BiTMICRO grow from a small start-up company into the
world's leading provider of solid-state flash drives totally
focused and dedicated to delivering ultimate storage solutions
for the military, industrial and enterprise markets
worldwide.
Make customers advocates
1999 marked the year the first E-Disk was delivered to
our first customer, Larry. In delivering that E-Disk, all we
had in mind is ensure that it will perform based on customer
expectation. Larry gave me a call after a month and told me
that I am a lucky man.
Larry explained to me, with passion on his voice, that
we have the best product he has ever tried. The E-Disks were
easy to integrate, worked flawlessly in their systems,
satisfied with the performance, has low power consumptions and
most of all, made him sleep well every night without worrying
of its reliability. He also told me he considered the product
to be of great value because of the ease of use and
extraordinary customer support.
That conversation affected me. It left me with a strong
send of pride with BiTMICRO and a deep feeling of
responsibility to make it a mission to maintain that special
reputation forever.
While we may stumble at times along the way, BiTMICRO
maintains that culture at its core: dedication to customer
delight, quality products and customer support unmatched in
the industry. More than any other qualities, I am dedicated to
protecting and enhancing this reputation.
Lesson Learned: Customer satisfaction is not good
enough. We must develop our customers as our impassioned
advocates.
Adapt to customer requirements
A
couple of years later, I was working closely with our largest
customer. They were in the process of evaluating solid-state
drives but would require a custom built in to make it work
with their proprietary solution. The customer was not willing
to pay for the research and development costs and we have
limited resources then. It was a tough decision and we were
inclined to turn down the customer request as a smart business
move. However, we decided otherwise due to the good
relationship we have established with the customer and took
the plunge with eyes closed.
We were able to prove to the customer that our
technology supersedes competition and have earned the
customer's trust and respect. That design turned into more
orders and more products. In time, they would not want to do
business with any other solid-state storage solution provider
other than BiTMICRO, transforming the relationship to a good
business alliance.
Lesson learned: Never take your customer for
granted. Listen and adapt to their
requirements.
Laser-beam focus
Several years later, we were negotiating a good-faith
alliance with a systems integrator, intending to bundle our
product with their solution offering. This integrator's
selection of BiTMICRO's E-Disk essentially endorsed us as
having the best solid-state storage device in the market.
Revenue from this alliance made both organizations happy with
the partnership.
Unfortunately, the systems integrator changed strategy
and partnered with another solid-state drive vendor hoping to
enhance their position with better pricing. Things on the
other hand did not turn out the way they planned. The solution
they delivered to the market was priced lower but ended up
exposing themselves to a lot of after-sales support issues.
They started to lose their credibility in the market; they
started to lose their customers.
On the other hand, this allowed BiTMICRO to build
partnerships with other vendors and secure the position as the
leading solid-state storage vendor. As a result we were able
to focus clearly on making ourselves better than what is
expected of us and forge alliances with partners we can
trust.
Lesson learned: Laser beam focus is needed to secure
a leadership position that benefits our
customers
Deliver promises
On one occasion, a customer made a request to benchmark
a specific model of E-Disk drive vs. three of our competitors
with a specific hardware they are using. I asked for the
urgency of his requirement, and he told me that he just wanted
it out of curiosity, no requirement for now. Being the good
sales person that I am, I felt obliged to say "yes". I relayed
the message to our technical guys, emphasizing on the phrase
"no urgency at all".
Several months passed and this same customer called me,
informing me of a project requiring a few hundred units of
E-Disks amounting to millions of dollars. And then, he asked
the million-dollar question: "Were you able to do the
benchmark we discussed previously? I intend to use it as
reference material for evaluation." Fortunately, our technical
team lived up to its commitment and performed the benchmark
without me having to follow up on them and I was even
surprised when they presented it to me. Needless to day, the
project was awarded to us.
Lesson learned: Until we become sensitive to every
little commitment we make to our customers, and are actually
delivered, we have not done our job.
Solve customer problems
Recently, we had a customer that acquired our E-Disk on
the hope of improving the performance of their system. We
delivered, assisted them with the product installation and
left.
A
month later, the customer informed us that the increase in
performance was not significant as what they hoped for. Our
technical support team decided to conduct their own series of
tests, and exchanged a couple of emails with the customer. One
week passed and the problem remained unresolved. The head of
our Customer Support decided to send an engineer on-site, half
way across the globe to look into the customer issue. The
decision to persevere and resolve the issue was the one of the
best decisions we have made.
It turned out that the E-Disk was not properly
configured to match their environment, requiring a few
adjustments to tune the overall performance. We would not have
been able to resolve the performance problem early had we not
decided to send and engineer to the customer site. Though the
customer was only making a comment, our team took it up as a
challenge to prove that they did not make the wrong decision
in their purchase for an E-Disk.
Lesson learned: Organize our company and compensate
our employees to solve customer problems - not only sell
capacities.
Today
Through 9 years with BiTMICRO, I have come to know this
company and its customers well. As I write this, I am on a
plane going to a tradeshow to ensure we are able to spread the
word that we have the best solid-state storage solution
available in the market.. I can proudly say that the BiTMICRO
team has never been better than it is today.
Helping our customers solve their business problems
makes them one of our best advocates. We solidify our
leadership when customers choose and recognize BiTMICRO as the
standard for reliable solid-state storage solutions.
Thank you and please do not hesitate to call me or
email me if I can be of help to you.
Rudy.Bruce@bitmicro.com | 
