Sequent

Source: Technology Digital

Date :11/04/2008 03:58:01

A firm that pays it forward, Sequent, Inc. is committed to offering the best service to its customers and employees. Part of this strategy is recognizing the importance of people. Bill Hutter tells Exec more

Written by Rebecca Waters and Produced Jon Ellingwood

“Imagine if you and everyone in your office came in to work one morning and your building was gone, your physical plant was no longer there, you had no desk, you had no computers, no telephone but all of the employees were standing in the parking lot looking at the place where the building used to be and nothing is there. Would you still have a company?”

This is the analogy that Bill Hutter, Founder and CEO of Sequent, Inc. uses when he speaks to his customers and clients. A business that specialises in Human Resources, Payroll, Benefits and Consulting Services, Sequent is focused purely on people.

Bill continues: “You can rent new space, you can buy new equipment, you can buy new computers, and you would probably have difficulty functioning for a couple of days, but the building, the computers and the telephones are replaceable.

“Let me give you another analogy - the person who is in charge of the office gets to work one day and the building is there and no one shows up. You have all the telephones, you have all the computer equipment, you have all the desks, but no one shows up. What happens?

“Nothing happens. Therefore, the most important factor is the people. One person can’t do everything that 25 people can do, let alone a hundred.”

Changing paths

Bill has many years experience in Human Resources. He began his career in the restaurant and hospitality business, leaving behind a planned career as an elementary school teacher. “There was an opportunity to teach school for $13,000 a year or run a restaurant for $20,000 a year. With the difference in compensation and the social perks of the restaurant business, I quickly chose the restaurant path,” he says. This led Bill down a certain road - one that would eventually lead to Sequent.

He then underwent a career change by becoming an entry-level HR person: “My wife thought I had lost my mind,” he says. While working his way up the HR ranks, he was approached by a couple of his partners who suggested he do it himself. That led to the planning process in 1994 and opening the doors in February 1995.

“We started with an empty metal desk, no telephone and just an idea,” Bill explains. The traditional way, with a lot of time, effort, blood, sweat and tears. Within four months, Sequent began to experience sales activity and by the eleventh month of operation, the company passed the breakeven point. This gave Sequent the energy to continue to move forward for the next couple of years, Bill explains.

These efforts were recognized in 2000 when Bill was honored with an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Recognizing markets

Sequent seems to be in a great position with the growing marketplace acceptance of business process outsourcing, the understanding of human capital management and how important it is to invest in employees. “We’ve been talking about it for the past ten years and now it seems that marketplace acceptance has caught up with what we are talking about.”

“There’s literally only four percent market penetration in the US,” Bill avers. To substantiate this growth, the focus will be to establish other office locations for the next several years throughout the mid-South and second-tier markets: the Georgia area and the Carolinas.

Serving the small to mid-size market, which represents 92 percent of businesses in the country, there is a very large market opportunity, which Bill identifies: “Small business is typically not sophisticated enough and does not have the financial wherewithal to build the systems and infrastructure that they can tap into through us.”

With Sequent’s help, these businesses can benefit from a spectrum of Sequent services, from strategic consulting services to a wide variety of technology enabled outsourcing services, such as Human Resources, Payroll Staff, Managers and Administrator Services and Organizational Development Services.

Life-blood

With around 120 employees corporately and servicing 400 plus client companies, there are over 7,000 people in the Sequent demographic. What’s more, the company has an almost non-existent staff turnover, credited to the healthy package of benefits, compensation and other incentives that Sequent offers, including prescription benefits for every employee, vision insurance, access to short and long-term disability programs, flexible spending accounts and childcare reimbursement programs.

For Bill, his employees and his customers are the “life-blood” of the business, a spirit they integrate into the local community through participating in organizations such as Lifecare Alliance, serving on Boards and donating to Cancer Research and Children’s Hospital Cardiac Care unit. “Not only are we giving up money, but we are giving up our time and our expertise to those organizations to help them grow,” Bill explains. “We believe in the concept of really paying forward.”

Our focus is on people, Bill maintains. “We have dabbled in areas that we thought created opportunities for us but we found that it really didn’t so we are going to stick to our core competencies and our core belief system which is built around the focus of people, the people being the most important part.”

With the market awakening to the work that Sequent has done over the past decade or so, this is the right time to capitalize on such people expertise.