On Labour Day weekend 2014, the Four Partners met in the boardroom on Mercer Street to finalize plans for the acquisition of a competitor and moving to a new location.
It was a very productive and focused meeting with the details agreed upon all four of us in under two hours. The Partners are one of the keys to AlphaKOR’ success: four diversified personalities blended together exploring all aspects and options with unanimous conclusions. Very rare to find a group of four like this.
We planned the announcement of the acquisition to both Teams at the same time. The AlphaKOR Team received and embraced the news with a loud and long applause! The CCD Team was excited about the news and glad to be joining the AlphaKOR Family while maintaining their roles and clients.
The first challenge of the acquisition was keeping the two teams separate, keeping two separate books and yet performing overall as one Team. The logistics of locations did not help with some of the team being moved from Mercer to Walker to join the CCD team.
I spent a little bit of time at CCD getting to know the staff. I went out to many of the clients with the CCD rep to tell them the news in person. Most welcomed it, some had questions and concerns. It was an excellent opportunity for me to share the vision of both the Four Partners and CCD’s owner’s plan of bringing the Teams together. Sure it was not perfect and as always, we listened to the candid feedback and made adjustments.
The main concern was to keep the same primary technician. We did provide this and introduced the concept of a secondary technician as a back-up when the primary technician was on vacation. Blending the two teams together brought a larger pool of talent, expertise and skill-set to provide ongoing support.
The added bonus for the CCD clients was 24×7 support, web development, web marketing, custom software, phones and other services not available to them before.
Moving the company was a great opportunity to bring both Teams together at a new location, called the Campus. Everyone was behind the move and was looking forward to it.
Some of the challenges with the move was the timing and costs. Seems like these type of projects always require more time and investment to achieve your goal. We adjusted our plans and with the Partners and Team’ inputs, we came up with a great space and we are enjoying it.
The move went extremely well and the only hiccup was the phone company cutting off several of our lines a few days too early. This resulted in more busy signals and more calls to our cell phones asking why are the phones busy. The logistics from Walker Rd. and from Mercer St. to Twin Oaks was excellent. We were completely unplugged around two hours!
Like everything new, when the first scratches on the wall happen, it seems like a big deal. We had the painters in to patch things up. Today I look around my office and just smile at the scratches that only I would notice.
The Team adjusted very well into the campus. There is a lot of open space we are enjoying. Our monthly team discussions can accommodate the large group where no one can hide anymore behind the partitions!
Parking has always been a topic of discussion. When we did not have enough parking in our lot, there were rules made for who should park on the street and who should park at the satellite office lot. Now we have enough parking and most of the Team tend to always park in the same spot.
In the four months at the campus, I can say only a handful of times someone was in “my” spot. I just smile and make a mental note on whose car it is. Our rule now is there is no rule and free to park where you want.
Thanks to the Team for being a huge part of this journey as we brought two companies together into one team in one location.