Today we have selected Narjit Patel to take her interview. She is the Co-Founder, and Head of Delivery at HiView Solutions.
First of all, how are you and your team doing in these COVID-19 times?
I’m glad to say that the team and I have been doing well. As a company with the ability to operate fully remotely, we have been able to stay safe while continuing to serve our customers as their Google Cloud Premier Partner with the same level of quality.
Tell us about you, your career, how you founded or joined this company?
I grew up in the small town of Coseley, England, and attended Loughborough University for Computer Science and Management. I then worked for 9 years for a large UK consulting services firm before immigrating to the United States in 2016. I soon found a passion for the emerging field of Change Management.
After 12 years of working as a Management Consulting focusing on Change Management, I met my colleague Miles. We shared the sentiment that the “people side” of business transformations, especially those involving Google Cloud, was far too often neglected by consulting firms. After a while, Miles approached me with a wild idea: to open our very own Google Cloud consulting practice, with the mission to provide top-tier technical services while cultivating a people-centric approach to workplace change. I agreed, and since then, our unique approach has served us well in acquiring and retaining over 190 customers to date.
How does your company innovate?
There are many Google Cloud Partners and even Google Cloud Premier Partners like us. However, we do things differently at HiView. Through our close relationship with Google, we are able to provide exclusive discounts, help our customers take advantage of the latest Google Workspace features, and provide cutting-edge development services that take organizations’ collaboration systems and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) practices to the next level.
We’re also adding new features and tools offered only to our customers at no additional cost. Currently, we have a self-service portal that simplifies Google Workspace spend for companies, allowing administrators to easily adjust their license quantity and accounting teams to easily pay their bills and access financial documents. One project currently in beta is our Signature Management Tool, which gives administrators the ability to easily adjust users’ Gmail signatures organization-wide. Our team has many more features in store, which we’ll be announcing soon.
How has the Coronavirus pandemic affected your business, and how are you coping?
We have been fortunate enough to see continued growth in spite of the pandemic. Because many organizations have had to transition to remote work, we have seen a spike in interest in Google Workspace (G Suite) and related services that help teams collaborate wherever they are.
Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?
Some of our customers have been struggling with paying their bills, especially those in the entertainment and hospitality industries. We made the choice to float some of these customers to support them through the financial hardships of the pandemic, especially those who have been long-time, loyal HiView customers. Fortunately, we are seeing some of these businesses already beginning to bounce back, and nearly all of them have managed to weather this storm.
What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to navigate this crisis?
Coming from the co-owner of a Google-partnered business, it might sound cliche, but Google Workspace has been our saving grace. Although our team has been working fully remotely, we have remained as collaborative as ever. Meet, Chat, Currents, Drive—all of these applications and more help us stay organized and complete projects successfully.
From a management perspective, we lean on each other when making decisions both big and small. By listening to one another and trusting each other’s judgment and expertise, we are able to move quickly and decisively, which is necessary for keeping us competitive. Additionally, we have continued to put our employees first, because empowering the team helps us deliver projects successfully, which in turn helps HiView and our customers.
Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?
We have a whole ecosystem of competitors, many of them massive firms that support a large range of software products. We continue to choose quality over quantity by centering our products and services almost exclusively around Google Cloud. By recruiting seasoned Google Cloud, consulting, and Change Management experts, we’ll keep differentiating ourselves as we continue to double our client base every single year. We are also proud to maintain a customer retention rate of over 96% by providing unmatched support, training, technical services, and more.
However, something unique about our niche is that we collaborate with a select few of our competitors whose projects require certain expertise. This entails one or more of our team members joining another Google Cloud Partner’s delivery team for a project. It’s quite nice to have this symbiotic relationship with these competing companies. It’s also worth keeping in mind that although we have quite a few competitors, there is more than enough Google Cloud demand to go around (on occasion, we even have to turn projects away for this reason).
Your Final Thoughts
I am immensely grateful that HiView has continued to enjoy such success in spite of the pandemic. We are honored to be entrusted by each of our customers to provide the products their employees rely on every single day and invite anyone considering a move to Google Workspace or Google Cloud Platform to reach out to our team.
- Spokesperson: Narjit Patel
- Company: HiView Solutions
- Website link: hiviewsolutions.com\
