Trace3 Looks To Grow, Bolster Customer Experience Under New CEO

Bigger is better for Trace3, but the company's new leader wants to make sure they maintain a top-flight engineering unit and customer experience.

Tyler Beecher took over Aug. 18 as CEO of the Irvine, Calif.-based solution provider at a time of rapid growth, with revenue soaring over the past year from $325 million to $425 million.

"There is a natural appetite in the market for what Trace3 delivers," said Beecher, who joined the company in September 2013 after two decades in the industry. "We'll grow as fast as we can grow while maintaining our standards."

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Trace3 has over the past year grown from 22 to 33 sales teams in the core sectors of networking and storage, Beecher said.

The additional teams -- which average three engineers and one sales representative -- allowed Trace3 to establish sales operations in Boise, Dallas and Salt Lake City, as well as expand its sales footprint in Las Vegas and Northern California.

Hayes Drumwright, who founded Trace3 in 2002 and ran it until earlier this month, set the goal of reaching $1 billion in annual sales.

Beecher wants to move toward that figure over the next two to four years, but said Trace3's focus during his first year as CEO will be on maintaining revenue at present level and delivering a good customer experience.

Beecher came to Trace3 as executive vice president of sales and spent the past year developing management training programs to accelerate sales and improve customer service.

Prior to joining Trace3, Beecher spearheaded enterprise sales operations at NetApp, and led sales teams at EMC, Cisco Systems and 3Com. Cisco, EMC and NetApp are three of Trace3's largest vendors, Beecher said, along with Symantec and VMWare.

Trace3 employs more than 300, with five or six engineers on staff for every salesperson, Beecher said. Trace3's engineer-heavy staffing ratios are dramatically higher than any of its competitors, he said, and drive repeat business.

"We have the best of the best when it comes to engineers," he said.

Beecher anticipates room for growth in emerging areas such as data centers and cloud computing, as well as consulting services like venture capital CIO briefings and organizational health restructuring.

The venture capital CIO briefings are aimed at everyone from midsize businesses to Fortune 10 companies, Beecher said, and are intended to help corporate leaders get a clear sense of global trends.

The emphasis on emerging technology is consistent with Trace3's legacy, with the company well-versed in spotting the next big thing in IT and building a specialized team around it, Beecher said.

The company differentiates itself from cloud and data center competitors through the value-added component, Beecher said, providing both pre-sale and post-sale support with world-class technical staff.

"Other people hire what they can afford," Beecher said. "We simply hire the best."

PUBLISHED AUG. 26, 2014