Things are changing at Abaco. For the better

I joined Abaco as the company's first Chief Growth Officer in early November of 2017 with the charter of accelerating growth. Our industry is booming, driven by an increase in government spending on military programs in response to evolving global threats. Our nation is moving beyond the days of Sequestration and Continuing Resolution and now investing in defense modernization in support of our warfighters, keeping us ahead of China and Russia who have ramped up their own military spend over the last few years. The demand for high-performance computing, signal processing and rugged systems is strong and I plan to see Abaco deliver the highest quality products and solutions to meet that demand.

Over the past five months I've had the pleasure of visiting many customers across the globe. Maybe I have visited some of our readers here on The Connected Battlefield? We have a great relationship with our customers, many of whom have partnered with us through good times and bad for over twenty years. 

Our customers develop the defense systems that keep our nation secure and the advanced weapons systems that keep our men and women safe in the battlefield. I am always impressed by how committed our customers are to their customer and every company I visit reinforces how important it is for us to deliver on our commitments. Our customers rely on us to deliver leading-edge products - on time. 

Working in unison

Since coming on board, I have reshaped our go to market team and streamlined our internal end-to-end processes to improve the speed at which we operate as an organization. Our commercial, development, program management and production teams work in unison to serve our customers. Specifically:

- Business Development: We are investing in our business development function, bringing in more people that understand the challenges that our customers face. Our BD team works closely with Abaco customers and their customers to identify the technology solutions that will be needed in future products.

- Sales and FAEs: We have literally thousands of products to offer our customers. We expect our sales team to operate as trusted advisors, helping customers select the right solution from our vast portfolio and acting as customer advocates throughout our organization.

- Marketing: Our customers are highly technical and want quick and efficient access to relevant information (not marketing fluff). I have tasked the marketing team with the development of high-quality white papers, case studies, and engaging digital content that is easy for our customers to find.

- Program Management: We have beefed up our program management team with new leadership and more resources. Our program managers partner with customers and other internal Abaco functions to ensure customer success.    

- Product Management/Engineering: Our product teams are working far more closely with business development, sales and our partnering with our customers since I came on board. We want our teams to develop a roadmap of products that help our customers develop solutions to some of the world's toughest problems and deliver those products precisely when our customers need them. 

- Production: Our production team is focused on delivering quality products, on time, all of the time. It’s that simple.

This may seem like basic blocking and tackling, but I truly believe that a close end-to-end alignment will improve Abaco's performance and deliver the value that our customers seek in an open architecture embedded technology partner. As Abaco's Chief Growth Officer, I know that we can only achieve our growth aspirations if we help our customers succeed. What do you think? What else should I be doing to ensure our customers' success? I'd love your feedback.