As I've mentioned in previous blogs, I write about a lot of different topics. A common theme — both in my blogs and in the company's culture — is that we sincerely appreciate our customers and work hard to foster long-term relationships with them. With Equinox's emphasis on relationships, it's really no surprise to me that the most-read blogs are the personal interest ones, particularly those focusing on individual employees and customers. Therefore, I've chosen to use my first blog of 2017 to shine the spotlight on my colleague Matt.
Matt Lowe joined the Equinox team on July 12, 2010. Matt's previous telecom experience made him a great fit for the Equinox Support team. First, while completing his master's degree, Matt worked at Sprint's world headquarters in Kansas City. Later, after completing graduate school, he worked on Verizon's sales and marketing team, covering the southeastern region. He quickly put these telecom and communications skills to work assisting Equinox customers with installations, system updates, and general product questions. After a two-year stint in Support, he moved to the sales team to focus on project management and sales engineering.
Matt's official title is Sales Engineer because it fits on a business card — but I'm not sure it accurately conveys his day-to-day job responsibilities, which span the life of a project from the first sales meeting, to closing the deal, to implementation, and into the support and maintenance phase. In a nutshell, his primary responsibility is to ensure that customer projects are delivered as quickly and painlessly as possible. Accomplishing this goal requires detailed project management from beginning to end, which means Matt is tasked with attending tradeshows, demonstrating product capabilities, capturing technical requirements, creating proposals, keeping project notes, facilitating status calls and meetings, and following up with the customer beyond go-live time.
This involvement across all these aspects is win-win for everyone involved. Serving as a link between sales, implementation, support, development, and customers, Matt provides continuity that benefits not only customers but also the Equinox project stakeholders.
Reflecting on his time as a Sales Engineer, Matt is proud of his role in streamlining the company's project management processes, which has led to improved smoothness and efficiency for customer upgrade projects. He told me that his favorite thing about his current position is two-fold, with both parts centered on customer relationships. First, he loves his expanded role in the Protector User Group Meeting. Secondly, he enjoys how his customer relationships have continued to evolve. When on the Support team, Matt said most of his customer interactions took place by phone and email, whereas now, they have transitioned much more to in-person encounters. When I asked him what he liked best about Equinox, Matt explained that the flexible work schedule allows him to take care of things he needs to accomplish outside the office, including going on new and exciting travel adventures with his wife Jana.
Matt's desire to help his fellow coworkers create and deliver the best solutions in our industry is certainly evident to me. If you get the chance to work with him, I'm sure you'll agree!
About the Author — Amy Oldham is Technical Writer at Equinox Information Systems. To learn more about Equinox, visit equinoxis.com or call (615) 612-1200.