I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Robert Hutcheon, CEO of Coordinated Systems, Inc., or “CSI,” a business man who has steered his company through many turbulent economic times, including the recent economic recession.

 

Here is part two of the interview.

 

Rich Marcia: What’s your take on the current economic situation?

Robert Hutcheon: We consider this great recession the United States is going through to be one of the toughest we ever experienced and many businesses will fail the test.

 

 

RH: We at CSI are grateful for our experience of prior difficult times. It has humbled and tempered us and paid off handsomely in our success and we know that learning is the silver lining to this storm as well. Today, after going through numerous recessions, we consider ourselves to be seasoned veterans to these economic times and pride ourselves as survivors. We’ve learned a lot over the years from our business history. We’ve enjoyed many boom times as well -- but when times were booming we always had in the back of our minds the tough times and it kept us centered which gave us the advantage to be prepared. Because of that preparation, we’ve just completed what I would say is our best year in business, adding a number of key accounts and new partners.

 

RM: What are some of the things you prepare for, day-to-day in operating your business?

RH: We’ve always had a deep respect for debt. We always looked at debt as more of an obstacle to our goals and borrowed only when we could envision a payback with interest to ourselves through business enhancement or growth. We were debt free when we entered this recession and today CSI is still debt free and has been throughout this recession. This is an advantage to our customers as well in the knowing that we are a standalone company that can carry itself financially when times are tough.

 

RM: Can you describe how you’ve gone about dealing with managing a staff through difficult times?

RH: We’ve gone through prior recessions before and prided ourselves on keeping our company intact throughout those times. We’ve enjoyed tremendous loyalty from our staff and have returned that loyalty by securing their jobs through a no layoff policy even when things got tough. By maintaining this bond, our employees have become family. Many of our employees have been with us for decades. We pull together when things are tough, we look out for each other and we remain together when things ease up as well. It builds respect and pride which radiates beyond the walls of the company and extends itself to our customers as well. Those that deal with us recognize it and know they are dealing with a culture that has proven its metal. By being loyal to our employees it has the added benefit of giving us a knowledge base of employees that have evolved with our product lines. This means they know the product cold. This knowledge includes all versions of the product from the beginning and not just the current version being sold today. And we all know how valuable that is when a client needs customer service.

 

RM: How have you developed your business model to thrive despite a difficult economy?

RH: Focusing more on customer service. When we were in the throes of a downturn, we realized how important our customer base was to us and we made a concerted effort to enhance our approach to how we offered and carried out support by changing the industry policies that seemed to be the standard. We shook it up completely by giving a valuable service to our customers at a realistic price. We knew our customers were experiencing the same issues we were having and we made it a mission to revamp our policies and came out with a plan that is tough to match in the industry. We did it in a downturn and it worked, so we knew it was successful. We continued the same policy when the economy got better and it still receives kudos from our clients.”