This month we are celebrating 20 years in business.

There are many reasons why Telcion has been able to succeed these past 20 years. This is a remarkable milestone, and we want to acknowledge it by taking time to observe where we’ve been and what the future holds for us.

The one thing we knew for sure when we started Telcion was that we wanted to focus on a new, fledgling technology called IP Telephony, or Voice over IP (VOIP). 20 years ago, this was a big deal—the cool new thing.

I still remember some of the obstacles we had to overcome that seemed big at the time:

• Most structured cabling would not support power over ethernet, so we had to either replace the cabling or use power bricks on the phones.

• There were a lot of feature parity issues from the legacy PBXs that we were migrating from. Things as simple as music on hold. Or paging. Or call pickup. Or intercom. Features most considered basic weren't available just yet.

• Often, people had to replace their entire switching infrastructure to get power over ethernet capabilities.

Despite these obstacles, dozens of new clients signed up to gain the advantages of this new technology. A majority of these clients are still with us today.

We still sell VOIP today, but now everything is moving to the cloud. The same challenges have resurfaced, but our clients are once again embracing the benefits as the features catch up.

No matter how the technology evolves, the one common denominator for us is Cisco.

Our Focus on Cisco

Early on we decided to be singularly focused on Cisco as our primary vendor and go-to market strategy. Very few IT companies choose to do this, and none do in the geographies that we serve. The reason we chose to do this is because it allows our people to go deep with one vendor.

When you work with Telcion, you know that our people are dealing with Cisco technology every day and that’s all we do. We aren’t trying to stay up to speed on every vendor out there. It’s impossible to do that well. We wanted to be the ‘go to’ Cisco partner for those clients who believe Cisco should be the foundation of their network. This strategy has worked well for us and has helped us differentiate ourselves from other IT vendors over the years.

Company Culture

In the first 3-5 years of the business, we began to get clarity on who we wanted to be as a company and the kind of culture we wanted to have.

The wording of our purpose statement has evolved over the years, but the essence hasn’t changed any:

To create a workplace environment that enables the lives of our people and our clients to be changed for the better.

This is why we exist. And we really mean it. Money is not everything, and the relationships we develop will last long after Telcion.

We often say around the office that we want the people who come into our lives to leave better than they arrived. Whether they work for Telcion or one of our clients, that remains true. We want you to be better as a result of your interactions with us.

The culture a company has largely revolves around the values they exhibit. And it’s important to state these values and talk about them often. They aren’t meant to be on a poster somewhere but rather embodied and lived out through the people of the organization. There are 4 core values we’ve identified that create the core of our culture:

Selflessness

Team and client before yourself

Work Ethic

Willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done and delight the customer

Transparency

Openly sharing and being direct about what we learn and observe for the betterment of the team and our clients

Curiosity

Adopting an attitude of inquisitiveness and being open-minded about learning new things

What we’ve learned about ourselves is that when we have people on our team who don’t believe in these values, they don’t fit very well. We rub each other the wrong way, and they usually end up exiting the company at some point. But the team that remains has tremendous synergy and serves our people and clients well.

Thank You

The last 20 years have been like riding a roller coaster. Full of twists and turns, an occasional loop, long rides to the top with breath-taking views, then heart-pounding speed as the g-forces push you back in your chair. It’s been a lot of fun and full of exciting challenges. I look forward to the many years ahead as we find new ways to make your life better.

Thank you to everyone that has joined us on this journey and come along for the ride! Hang on though, this ride isn’t over yet! We are just getting started . . .

This post was contributed by Lance Reid, our CEO. Lance has worked in the technology industry for over 25 years. He became a Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert (CCIE) in Collaboration in 2005 and has been serving on Cisco's SMB Advisory Board since 2013.

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