Professional Story : Bridging IT and Finance

The Story

I have been in Tech facing C Level Decision makers for six years. I say it all of the time. What does it mean?

It means I meet people all day long to talk about the technologies they produce, the technologies they service and the technologies they use to advise them on how and "who with" they might do more of the same "better, faster and cheaper".

The Tech industry is like any other business except more complicated, containing more exceptions and until recently a lot less political.

When my father walked off Berkeley High School Campus on to the Labs to learn cathode ray tubes, Fortran and Assembly he did not know he was going to end up training engineers at NASA, Lockheed and Apple on how to do their jobs with the then new C+ programming language but he was proud to be a part of it.

When he taught me to perform text analysis on hexadecimal code to search for and replace suspected dropped bits, showed me what the VC fund had him writing for accounting software in Basic and told me "son in the future everything is going to be on the computer. You won't be able to wipe your butt without pressing a buttOn button" he was not planning on raising a second generation Technology guy, it was only natural.

I saw where things were going with my father so I picked up a UC Berkeley Degree and some Masters education in Advertising.

As he transitioned from his last position in Corporate America as an Information Architect at TIS Worldwide to IT Director for one of the wealthiest groups of Lawyers in Northern California we had a chance to work together for a year. We had a chance to reflect on the past and the future of the Industry while helping our firm win Best Firm awards and reducing administrative malpractice costs to fractions.

The main difference is that in the old days everything was specialized. Now everything is a commodity. The skills change. Since I have been in business, most if not all of the deals now involve, insurance, lines of credit, Net30 accounts, upgrade planning, upgrade financing and maintenance. As a dealer I was purchasing from 14 hardware providers, contracting 3 service groups, getting financing quotes through 6 banks and blowing away many of my customers with financing options, savings, flexibility and time to delivery.

I became a Bay Area Business to Business Sales Leader at my first job, rocked some national scale manufacturing deals with Polywell Computers and recently made deals with CIOs at several Fortune 500 Companies at the multinational Corporate Executive Board.

The Turning Point

This is where the career change happened to me. The skills for selling a commodity are that of the broker. The industry demanded that I the computer salesmen become a broker. Just because one product appears to be the same as another it does not mean that price makes the deal. More importantly who can look past the appearances? When a client needs a financial product they can get from any financial house do you tell them it's the same no matter where you go? Many people honestly believe this is the case. But the devil is in the details. I differentiate products and services when others can't. I challenge people to compare the information I provide to that of the competition. Brokers are different animals from sales people because they have in mind the interests of several counterparties in each deal. Over the years my business to business database has became ripe and cumbersome.

I see hundreds of ways that the thousands of companies I have helped with technology could benefit from financial tools suited for the kind of business they perform.

One day I speak with the man who is presently my boss about working in financial services for Tech Businesses in California. I tell him about my plan to offer Health Care Benefits, Key Person Insurance, Employee Retirement Account Planning and Capital Expenditure review all under one name. He said "That is exactly how we are going to do it. But David, compliance say's I can't promote you to management until you have been here for at least six months."

So if you are wondering why an IT Business guy is asking you questions about your financial plans you need no longer wonder.

I thought you ought to know that.

David Caro-Greene