Rick Cantu, CEO, president, and co-founder of Redapt, explains how company culture is nurtured and developed. The result? A Fast Growth solution provider with happy employees who want to help customers solve problems, day in and day out. (Redapt is #8 on CRN's 2012 Fast Growth list, with two-year growth of 542 percent.)— Jennifer Bosavage
At Redapt, we consider ourselves a people company first and an IT company second.
Nearly two decades ago, when my brother and I founded Redapt, we understood the value of relationships and going above and beyond for every single customer -- that stemmed from our first jobs at Nordstrom. Information Technology has changed a lot in nearly 20 years, but we still believe there is nothing more important than building exceptional relationships with customers, partners, and employees.
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Whether our customer is one of the fastest-growing Web or tech companies in the world or a Fortune 1000 enterprise business, we have the same goal: to help their team with any IT data center challenge they face. We believe in the importance of taking time to understand our customers’ business issues, goals and people. In this process a relationship is born or strengthened, and, ultimately, the solution will meet their needs of today and will scale to meet the needs of the future.
From our executive, technical, and sales teams to customer service and shipping, we view ourselves as an extension of our customers’ team. There is no task too big or too small if it drives their success. We’ll do whatever it takes, and work as long as needed, to get a customer’s new app launched or rack of servers up and running.
Our customers come to Redapt because they want best-in-class IT solutions; they stay because of our best-in-class people.
To deliver the best solution and create long-lasting relationships, we hire creative and goal oriented people for our own team. It is our employees who champion our innovation and success, create relationships inside and outside the work environment with customers and partners, and keep us growing. Our employees thrive in our workplace and we pride ourselves on the culture we create, maybe that’s why one quarter of our employees have been with Redapt for more than 10 years.
As a leader and entrepreneur, it’s important to encourage creativity, design goals, and reward greatness and success. We have an open and collaborative workplace, but we don’t believe our team should live in it. We play as hard as we work. Catch a Seattle Sounders game, cut past the line at our exclusive SXSW party, or have a good time at our Christmas gala.
Redapt employees are passionate about the future of IT. They get excited when they talk about cloud computing and how it can change the world. They care about our customers’ visions and helping them get there. Our employees want to play a part in the IT evolution, because we are imagining it, designing it, and building it right here.
