Partnering with Heartland is now a safer bet than hiring BIG BLUE

The past month we have seen banks like Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapse. We have even seen Credit Suisse, categorized as one of the top 30 banks that are too big to fail be forced into a distressed sale to UBS. The banks, where people store money, don't have any money and is causing stress to the system. So what does this tell us about working with a small business vs. a large corporation and why would a small business be safer?

The argument for a larger partner/bank/corporation/tech company is natural. They have access to more resources, have a more advanced team covering all holes, and overall have more depth to overcome challenges. Even outside of banking, there is a comfort ordering from working with Accenture/Deloitte/PWC/KPMG/E&Y since we know they are backed up by thousands of employees and a mature model. The safe answer is to pick this company, right, no ever got fired for hiring big blue (IBM)?

1. Speed- Things have changed and they move faster than ever. Big companies can't adjust the way smaller companies can. Here is a chart from First Republic Bank, a large regional bank whom is currently having liquidity issues. Even with support from others, they can't keep up with the momentum and the market changed too fast for them to keep up with. The agility being small enables you to actually survive these types of challenges, unlike what we have seen from banks. All these banks are generally large, not small regional banks.

2- Compensation has changed. Large corporations are incentivized for taking on excessive risk while small businesses pick and choose the best opportunity and can't take on all risks. A large business can grow fast or fail. A small business needs to grow/survive offering a more pragmatic decision process for people that want to be long term customers vs. transactional no relationship customers.

The CEO of Silicon Valley Bank Greg Becker lobbied to relax Dodd Frank which was put in place to avoid bank failures yet Congress relaxed the regulations in 2018. Becker also dumped his personal shares of stock 2 weeks before its failure. Plus, he served as the CFO of Lehman Brothers in 2007 during its failure. There were no consequences for those bank executives in 2007-8 like Greg Becker who went on to earn $10M per year as CEO of another bank as he drove it into total failure. Whom do you trust more? The owner of a small business or Greg Becker?

Turnover- An organization strength is the quality of it's people. Amazon announced today they are laying off 9,000 more people adding to it's layoffs recently. Meta announced more layoffs of 9,000 taking its 4 month total to 20,000 layoffs. Google laid off 10,000 people. You get the trend. Do you know how many people Heartland IT Consulting has laid off in the past 13 years? Zero.

How does that impact the quality of talent internal to the company and the delivery of their service? It is difficult to comprehend the gaps in large companies that have huge volumes of layoffs. I could see them forgetting to hire a risk manager, at a bank for example. The person who ultimately pays the price is the customer, do you want to pay that price?

Working with Heartland vs. IBM will offer you a more secure solution. IBM is used as a general term for larger corporations and have no data to suggest they are in any trouble, but this gives you a glimpse into the value of working with a quality, known, small business that is interested to build long term customers. Whom do you want to support and rely on your professional career success with? To me, I would pick the person giving us the best chance for success and reduce the risk and optimize their professional service.