100 days at SoftwareONE

I founded my first IT company back in 2000, 20 years ago. In 2020, I decided to join SoftwareONE and open a total new chapter for me. If you are interested in reading the full story, check out this LinkedIn article. Time flies when you're having fun. That's what they say and it's absolutely true. Wow, it's already been 100 days since I enjoyed a warm welcome and met my team mates for the first time - at least most of them. Time to look back, reflect and share some stories and experiences.

The 3 main questions

After I made the announcement about the move in September, I was approached by lots of people directly. Many of them had lots of questions about the how and why, but three main questions crystallized out. Let me answer those here.

"Marcel, why did you leave the services business and are now selling licences?"

SoftwareONE is a global top shot when it comes to licenses and software lifecycle management (SLM), that is true. But the company started their transformation journey years ago to become a technology services company. Many organisations I know are talking about transforming themselves in some way, but never take specific actions. SoftwareONE on the other hand is actively investing into that transformation by extending their technology services business heavily with organic growth on the one hand, and through acquisitions on the other hand. So the answer to this question is 'no', my team an I are not selling licences nor licensing services, but assist customers to become more successful by helping them to plan, build and run solutions based on Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365. SoftwareONE is the partner that wants to advise and assist customers from A-Z, no matter if it's licenses, SLM, technology services, managed services or support services.

"Marcel, you know that in such a large organization you will not be able to change and move anything but just to go with the flow?"

In the negotiations - long before we made the announcement about the move to SoftwareONE - this was one of the most important questions I had to find an answer to. I have an entrepreneur DNA, I need to have challenges I can work on, I want to change things and explore new grounds. I am a man of action. I would never accept a job where I just need to follow orders, need to be silent and just do what needs to be done without asking any questions. The SoftwareONE leadership team clearly mentioned, that entrepreneurial thinking and acting is highly desired and that they would support my team and I with everything that is needed to be successful. So far, all promises have been kept.

"Marcel, why did you take this step? You and your company have been successful ?"

True, we have been successful. But after 20 years I was ready for a new, bigger challenge. As I already mentioned, challenges drive me. And being part of the SoftwareONE transformation story to become a big, important player in the technology services business is it for me. My team's goal is not only to drive the Microsoft cloud business in Switzerland (plus to assist other teams in Germany and Austria), but also to give SoftwareONE a new face in the Swiss market so that we will finally be recognized as a leading Microsoft partner that supports organizations with everything cloud services.

Feedback: Smart move

Beside questions I also received lots of positive feedback. People that know the Swiss market as well as the Microsoft cloud business saw our decision as a smart move. There are lots of small partners around that have good knowledge in this business. The problem is that they do not scale and it's hard for them to get to the big, interesting projects. In addition to that, it can be critical for customers to work with such small companies because they fear that they might be negatively impacted by availability or even a situation when one goes bankrupt. On the other hand you have that big players, large companies with lots of human and financial resources, tons of connections and a huge customer base. However, they often lack very deep skills and specialties. Combining the best of both worlds is a success factor from the perspective of many people. AI could not agree more.

Not everything is gold, but ...

I am a brutally honest and direct person. Many people don't want to be offensive and address not-so-positive things because they try to be nice to everybody. Great, but that does not help anyone to improve. They only give other persons the impression that everything is good where it actually is not. So communicating what I do not like is in my nature, no matter if people want to hear it or not. What they do with my inputs however is up to them.

When my partners and I joined SoftwareONE we started to learn about internal processes and how things work inside this global company with 6000 employees in 90 countries. The beauty of larger organisations is, that lots of things are defined and documented, processes exist and you have lots of business units with specialists in their areas. This is true for SoftwareONE too, but of course not every setup works for everybody, for every team and for every situation and so there were things that we did not like and clearly pointed out what did not work for us as a new team, and what was blocking us from driving our business plan and activities in Switzerland and the DACH region forward. It was very pleasing to see how SoftwareONE listened to our feedback and whatever was possible has been adjusted in a way that is now very supportive to us and other teams and individuals. This flexibility and willingness to change things for the better is what brings a company forward. And that is exactly what already happened. That's awesome!

Summing it up

It was a great journey so far and my/our expectations have been totally met. Of course, there is still lots to learn for us to fully understand all internals, but SoftwareONE has a great, helpful team that not only warmly welcomed us, but is also very supportive for everything we need. Beside that, we are currently absorbed with customer projects and with growing our Switzerland-based team to have a good posture for 2021 and the following years. I am really looking forward to the next months/years and to the many ventures to come!

Marcel