The Bridge Podcast - Cannon Intro
Hi, and welcome to The Bridge. I'm your host, Scott Kinka. This episode was a special one. First, because it was in person. I don't get to do a lot of those. And second, because it was with one of our own from Bridgepointe. My guest today is Chris Cannon, founder of the Cannon Group, recently acquired by Bridgepoint Technologies.
Chris is now serving as the managing director of Lifecycle Services for Bridgepointe. That’s why I'm all decked out in my Bridgepointe gear today. Cannon Group is a 20 plus year old MSP. It focuses on technology, expense management, mobile management, transition projects, and strategic sourcing. They're located right here in the Philadelphia market, not too far from where we're filming.
Like most of our episodes, we started talking about their business during the pandemic. They have an inbound contact center for mobile support that needed to be transitioned. They were already on Teams and Teams Voice, which is something we don't hear often. So that transition was seamless and that includes their call queues, an early adopter there.
What was not seamless was Chris's work. He lives only a few miles from the office. He found it easier to work there. He sort of walked around in a surreal, dystopian future, empty office, kind of wanderer model there. Must have been really, really interesting. What also didn't transition well though was the mobile deployments out of the business.
What I mean by that is kidding, as they call kind of mobile staging has to be done in person, right? I mean, he shares a great story about original convenience store chain, that we hear in the east know very well; Wawa. For those of you who don't know, Wawa is a convenience store, sandwich shop, and gas station combo, all over the place. And they're a customer of Cannon Group. They moved from an iPad based, for doing online ordering, to a 4,000 iPad rollout, basically overnight. And, as the mobile desk for Wawa, that meant receiving, unboxing, staging, apply screen protector test, put it back in the box, ship out all, hands on deck, everybody that could be involved from the company working through that.
And if you think about it, this again, challenges that definition of essential. That's become a theme through some of our past episodes on data center and things like that. Workers you wouldn't normally consider to be essential. But, you know, think about it, these were people literally provisioning the tech necessary for people to be able to order food during the pandemic.
I'm not sure it gets any more essential than that. That discussion branch starts over into supply chain. First for laptops being poor and, you know, as a mobile support organization, Cannon was getting calls for laptops, frankly, because customers were trying anything. They didn't have access to those.
But something you don't think about is that mobile devices weren't a problem during the pandemic. And it was because we were in an iPhone refresh cycle at that time. You know, new devices were dug into return to work. We dug into what that means. We talked about work-life balance, culture, committees, type job markets, online, happy hours, what worked and what didn't work.
Something's going to be interesting in there for you, I'm sure. You've got similar stories and could get a chuckle out of some of that. And finally, we talked quite a bit about the economy, the looming recession, the macroeconomic environment that we're walking into and Chris's belief and backed up by research.
He shared some of that research at our tech summit in September, that tech budgets will remain firm during the recession, but that money will move over towards more efficiency and cost containment types of initiatives. He shared that there's usually room in an IT budget, if properly managed.
New IT projects in reality, expense management is not a job that IT people focus their time on. Tech leaders don't have time to focus on mobility, as an example. Mobility is a savings every year on new plans, if properly done, but it just falls into that also job category for IT and tech and even businesses that have formal procurement teams who are supposed to be focused on that are not generally mobile plan experts.
That is just something to think about as you're trying to figure out how you're going to fund your IT initiatives in a compressing economy right now. But either way, it was fun to talk to Chris in person, fun to create an interesting bookend to some of the provider focused conversations that we've been having and really interesting.
To think about the idea that funding, uh, you know, it, new IT initiatives is still out there and available, it just might be buried in your existing expenses. So let's get to it. My discussion with my friend Chris Cannon, Founder and CEO of Cannon Group here in Philadelphia, and now the managing director of Lifecycle Services for Bridgepointe Technologies.
ABOUT CHRIS:
I like to think I’ve had great success helping large organizations and senior IT executives drive efficiencies that have led to exceptional results for over 30 years. Essentially, we help them do more with less. But what I am most passionate and proud of is the company and staff I have built at Cannon Group.
Our mission statement is “Building long-term relationships with clients by over-delivering on value and exceeding their expectations.” I feel we do an amazing job at that, and its reflective in the long tenure of our client relationships. Clearly, our staff is doing something right.
My role has evolved into one that focuses on client satisfaction and new solutions we can offer that provide great value and the long-term vision of the firm. Most importantly, I am also focused on motivating and empowering our team by providing a supportive work environment that encourages a healthy work-life balance. It’s a challenging role that I have welcomed and has paid off--this past year we were recognized as a 2018 Top Workplace by Philly.com
My expertise includes: Information technology, telecom strategy, contract negotiation, cost containment, vendor management, new product innovation, business growth and partner alliances.
CONTACT CHRIS:
Web. https://www.cannongroupinc.com/teams/chris-cannon/ eMail. ccannon@cannongroupInc.com LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherccannon/LinkedIn
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