Techopia Live: Martello CEO John Proctor on adapting to the COVID-19 reality

The CEO of Kanata’s Martello Technologies says the era of COVID-19 will test companies that haven’t prepared their business and their workforce for long-term stability.

Martello’s John Proctor joined Techopia Live’s video chat this week to talk about how the Kanata-based company, which develops software to help IT teams maintain reliable service, has adapted to the spreading coronavirus.

He said that while a number of the company’s employees were already working remotely, the remainder are now adjusting to a work-from-home environment.

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“There’s a bit of a culture shift in that effect,” he said. “It’s results-driven. It’s not about being there at eight and finishing at four, it’s about outcomes.”

As Martello’s technology can help companies manage bandwidth demands for cloud-based services such as video-conferencing, the company is becoming imperative to customers ranging from brewers in the United States to universities in the United Kingdom. Proctor said the company has adapted a common infographic it used to show IT workloads in an office environment to display a now-common scenario for apartment buildings, where residents are either working from home or streaming TV shows and movies at all hours of the day.

“It’s taken what we described as an office problem and made it a home problem,” Proctor said.

Though Martello has focused on developing custom features and keeping the pulse of CIOs in the tech industry to learn where spending priorities are shifting amid the pandemic, Proctor said he’s not concerned about long-term disruptions to the company’s business. 

With Martello having just surpassed the $1-million mark for monthly recurring revenues in its past fiscal year, he said the company’s SaaS model gives it a reliable foundation from which to weather the storm.

Comparing that with other tech companies that rely on routine sales and renewals, Proctor said Martello sits at a position of relative strength.

“It’s much harder for companies that are (selling) one-time solutions; they only eat what they can kill on a monthly basis. That’s not us.”

To hear more of Proctor’s perspective on the new reality of business, as well as practical advice from Techopia sponsor Perley-Robertson, Hill & McDougall on surviving the crisis, watch the video above.

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