Today we’d like to introduce you to Stan McNiel.
Stan, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Been in Information Technology since 1983. Mostly on the service delivery side as a consultant, Technician, and in various levels of management (all in the Dallas area). Also spent a few years on the client side as IT Director as well as a few years managing data center operations for a hosting provider in the Dallas area.
My wife and I started the business in 2005 with the vision of delivering enterprise IT services to the SMB market. Moved to the Longview TX area, close to where I grew up in Avinger, TX – also wife graduated from High School at the same time – still married after almost 36 years). Penny runs the day to day HR and financials.
Hired some key players in Longview, moved back to Dallas for both personal and business reasons, and the business took off. Grown to 26 employees in four cities, Dallas, Longview, Tyler, and Phoenix areas.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
No small business has a smooth road when you have been around a while — I am guessing.
We have much to be thankful for — Never missed a payment to our vendors or missed anyone’s payroll check. Penny and I have done with less at times, but that is just part of the small business growing pains. Our business has no long term debt and we are looking to grow.
Biggest hurdles revolve around making the correct hiring and business decisions–over the years some good some bad. We have several employees that will surpass the 10-year mark this year and a few that will go over eight as well – we consider that a feather in the cap.
Finding new and innovative ways to find new clients has always been a struggle in this competitive market.
Please tell us about Inline Network Integration.
Inline specializes in the delivery of managed services to help clients with all technology in their business–a trusted partner they can turn to for any tech question or concern. This includes the network, servers, Internet providers, applications, cloud services, phone systems, etc. that can be difficult–and expensive–to tackle. Even if you have your own in-house IT staff, they will probably need help. We say we want our clients to call us if the fridge breaks–it might be on the network– as technology converges IT role keeps expanding.
Inline truly outsources all the IT for a client – not just certain pieces– we may not actually repair the problem but we will work with the client and their vendors to coordinate the resolution. Many in our business will say “that’s the application – call the vendor support line” — that is not what our team says – we take ownership of the problem through resolution”.
Inline also has a fully staffed help desk–in Texas–that does nothing but provide support, manage open issues, and coordinate with our field services teams to make cure client issues are resolved — many of our competitors cannot boast this. This level of service is costly and difficult to build – we have that in place and ready to expand and grow.
Inline is also a reseller of hardware and software, including Microsoft, Dell, VMWare, Lenovo, HP, etc. We want to help clients with all parts of their business to make their lives easier.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
More focus on sales and new business – most of our growth has been organic and word of mouth, but that is tough to maintain. We are in the process of building a great sales organization but a little late to the game. Saying that direct sales is tough in our space and finding new and innovative ways to find new clients will be the key to growth. Also a more detailed focus on the finance side of the business–as techs, we tend to focus on the things we know – technology and problem resolution–as a business leader, the financial details are the hard things to manage. Only other thing is to focus on organizing and structuring how things are done early on – really tough to change culture late.
Contact Info:
- Address: 14275 Midway Rd.
Suite 160 Addison, TX 75001 - Website: www.inlinenetworks.com
- Phone: Help Desk 855-464-7778; Office: 844-966-7877;
Dallas: 214-295-8638; Longview: 903-212-28523 - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/inlinenetworkintegration/
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/company/771639/admin/
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