Born in the Cloud firm: Practising what you preach is essential

Remote working is a central part of 64TEQ's strategy, meaning staff are 'immersed' in the cloud services they sell

"Eating your own dog food", or "drinking your own champagne" is a commonly used phrase in the IT channel, as resellers deploy the technology they sell to customers among their own businesses in a bid to prove its worth. The practice is common, and is strongly encouraged by vendors, which often provide discounted or free versions of their wares for partners to use internally. But although it might be a regular feature in today's channel businesses, few have structured their entire business around the idea.

Born in the Cloud company 64TEQ was established three years ago and operates completely remotely via cloud technology. The firm claims that by doing so, staff can be truly immersed in the cloud experience they are selling.

Many companies across the board are looking to remote-working strategies as a means to save money on office space. But 64TEQ'S chief culture officer and managing director Bandish Nayee said this was not the motivation when the company decided to go down this route.

"For me, I wanted us to be set up as a remote company from the start," he said. "Not in terms of saving costs - you don't [save money]. It is much more expensive doing remote working, if you're doing it right. For us, it is all about everyone working for us getting on board. We are a big consumer of cloud and we see the benefits on a daily basis. Once they're immersed, then they can go about promoting cloud to customers."

But although having staff working remotely can bring big business benefits, it is not easy, Nayee said, pointing to challenges in ensuring the company has the right culture.

"It's never been easier to communicate and collaborate [from home] and it means freedom from soul-crushing commuting," he said. "But it has taken a lot of work. You save [money] on offices, but significant work is needed in terms of changing people's mind sets.

"Offices are interruption factories. We piled a lot of investment into getting it right and working on our culture. It's all about output versus input. Other resellers want input; they want 100 calls a day. We don't. We focus on output, not input."

64TEQ has six staff at the moment, and Nayee hopes that the number will reach 50 within the next five years. In order for staff to feel like a part of the company, 64TEQ arranges regular meet-up sessions and offers staff access to a membership club where they can go to meet up with one another or clients, or simply get a change of scenery.

Nayee said it can take a while to ensure staff are ready to work from home.

"When people first join, in the first few weeks, you can write it off," he said. "They're doing their washing and other stuff. We realise that if you've not worked from home before, you realise you can get that stuff done. Then they get bored watching This Morning and then they start working. Then they work too much! They're always online. We recognise that and we counter-attack - we offer 30 days of holiday, plus bank holidays, as standard. People are working hard and have a tendency to burn out. People are more productive at home.

"I've worked in other environments where it is a typical sales environment. There is too much testosterone and [it is like] Wall Street. We think if you look after your people, they'll look after the client. My role is actually chief culture officer, then managing director. Everyone else is first."

He said other companies in the channel try to create a similar company culture, but that it requires more than "a few beanbags and a table tennis table" to get it right.

Although the company is geared towards selling cloud solutions, Nayee said that it cannot escape from selling certain traditional IT to facilitate the change.

"We can't sell everything cloud," he said. "It's at the forefront of what we're talking to clients about, but there's a journey to get there. We sell traditional and modern. You still have to do traditional - cabling and internet bandwidth - before they can look at [cloud]."

But although both types of technology are offered by 64TEQ, the commission structure for its staff is the same across both cloud and traditional wares.

"We have a very simple commission structure and it is very lucrative," he said. "We don't want to stop them being able to sell anything else. And it is all about working on the mind set: they could be reactive and sell the traditional stuff, have to continuously work harder and have to start again each month... or they can be more intelligent.

"It's not like treating them like children and saying 'you're not allowed this anymore' and making it murky so they don't go in. We treat them like adults."