Factfile
- Name: Sam Francis
- Business: Tek Express
- Role(s): Founder & MD
- Business function: Support services
- Sector: IT
- Hub member for: 13 years
Sam’s story
“Back in 2000 I was working in IT but I always wanted to run my own company, I knew I wanted to be in charge of my own destiny at the age of 20 but I wasn’t sure what in so I started temping at an IT company and realised that service management was an area I liked. I saw a niche solution for businesses with large field forces using laptops for mobile working and I realised that to get them back up and running took too long using the traditional method, so I devised a solution whereby we held stock for our clients and would send them a replacement, like for like, within a few working hours via courier.
For me, it isn͛t all about money, it͛s about providing a good workplace and everyone being happy and the clients being happy… just walking out of the door at night knowing that we’ve achieved what we set out to achieve. We are just on our end of year report for all our clients and we’ve been hitting the 99% service level!
I like all the challenges that being an MD throws at me. I’m a people person so I like being involved with different people, doing different things. I enjoy the finance side, looking at the bottom line, if it͛s not very good, it gives you another challenge to improve it. If I was asked what my business attribute was, I would say it would be project management, somebody wants something, I make it happen.
Why mdhub?
mdhub has helped me in the way that I handle situations, I’ve learnt to empower people to carry ideas through. Once upon a time, a member of staff might suggest something and my head was thinking ahead of them and I͛d finished off their sentence and made my decision. Learning to sit and listen has come from that and it’s pulled me back a bit. Also, just seeing what other people have done with their organisations and taking a little bit of that from them to actually improve ours …
MDHUB is very much a sharing organisation and at some meetings I might not even have a topic to speak about but I love the sharing aspect of it all. I’ve got a couple of groups that I belong to that meet periodically and one person might take the whole time because they’ve got something to say and everyone’s input is gratefully received and everyone’s input is slightly different so people can take the best of it. I think it’s been a bit of a life saver for me to be honest over the last few years.”
