Keeping our goals and objectives front of mind

Endace Ltd, a division of Emulex, was founded in New Zealand in 2001. Endace grew from a research project in the University of Waikato in Hamilton. The company provides network visibility and intelligent network recording products to large organizations that run complex networks including telecom providers, broadcasters, government agencies, investment banks and large enterprises.

Over the course of more than 13 years the company has transitioned from being a manufacturer of purpose built packet capture server adapter cards into a supplier of complete network visibility and recording solutions suitable for use in the world’s most demanding network environments.

Endace now operates as a division of Emulex Corporation (NYSE:ELX), headquartered in Costa Mesa, California. Endace RD facilities are in Auckland and Hamilton, New Zealand. Emulex is a global operation with sales offices across Europe, the Americas and Asia Pacific regions.

Tell us about Endace’s ambitions over the next three years?

Our business ambition is to increase our market share by growing faster than our market and ultimately to be the number 1 player in our space. Our people ambition is to have very engaged team that operates very efficiently on a global basis.

To reach these ambitions we need to equip our team with the best tools and the best practices that we possibly can, maintaining a continual focus on efficient time and cost management.

One of the key roles Leaderkit plays is keeping our goals and objectives ‘front of mind’ and reminding us who owns then and who is responsible for driving them. We are able at a glance to see how our high level objectives cascade down into deliverables and measurables with deadlines and responsibilities.

What are your biggest challenges in achieving these ambitions?

One of our biggest challenges is that as a relatively small Division and team, we are spread to the four corners of the earth. We operate in Europe, North America and the Asia Pacific region. We have senior members of the leadership team on both coasts of the United States, the UK, Sydney Australia, as well as in New Zealand. Keeping in regular contact and ‘staying on the same page’ is the biggest challenge.

We operate in a competitive and hot market, currently growing 20-25% CAGR. We are not alone and there are other very well funded competitors out there, so communication, efficiency and focus are the biggest ongoing keys to ongoing success.

Leaderkit enables us to keep focused, bringing real-time transparency to the leadership team, and enabling rapid, fact-based decision making. We are all able to dig into the shared application and view exactly where we are at.

How were you introduced to Leaderkit?

We were introduced to Leaderkit through IT networking here in NZ. Mike met Leaderkit’s founder, Brett Herkt at the New Zealand Software Association monthly get together, which we think is a great event. We applaud Brett for working hard at networking and for badge tackling Mike.

What were the deciding factors for going with Leaderkit?

Primarily it was the simplicity of adoption from a usability perspective as well as the commercial model.

1. The tool itself is simple and intuitive and it hasn’t taken long for users to find it useful and productive.
2. There was also the simplicity of the commercial engagement. It’s a cloud based SaaS model, so the barrier to entry has been low and kind of hard to ignore.
3. In addition, Leaderkit is based on best practice with solid concepts translated into a simple interface. It’s something we can see through. It’s all one page here. It is easy to adopt.

Have you calculated return on investment (ROI) for using Leaderkit?

Effective use of time is the hard ROI – time efficiency for a busy management team.

There is also a softer ROI around team. Because it’s a platform and we can all see what everybody else is responsible for it really should improve team working, team building.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

One of the things that really appeals is the opportunity, as relatively early adopters of a new technology, to shape and influence the development roadmap. The fact that Leaderkit is willing and open around that is really positive.

At this stage it is really important for Leaderkit customers to know that they are going to get value out of the box, but also that there is a really exciting journey to be had with new features and benefits to come, which is an important part of the proposition.