Montreal – Even John Venator, the CEO of the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) realizes he is a big picture guy.
He has to be.
For more than 18 years he has led the Chicago-based organization from a small staff, 600 members and paltry budget of just US$1 million to a group with 144 full-time employees and more than 20,000 member companies in 102 countries.
The not-for-profit CompTIA’s mandate is to further the advancement of resellers worldwide, but what Venator has given his members over the years are influence and global reach.
But he isn’t stopping there. CDN recently sat down with Venator at the latest Breakaway event to talk about one of his epiphanies — outsourcing. He says that the concept of saving money from outsourcing has to be properly thought out. He believes it increases the costs of many companies but they are not aware of it. Items such as IT resources, unintended legal costs, accounting software and hardware compliance, setting up tax situations with employees will impact the bottom line.
CDN: How has CompTIA evolved as an organization?
John Venator: We started with a staff of six, and I knew we needed to grow the membership. For years the board never gave me extra money in the budget to hire new staff. So my challenge was to every year meet their expectations in terms of the bottom line, even though we are not-for-profit organization, to grow some financial stability. Every year I had to meet and exceed the expectations, so I had some money (at the end of the year) and took a chance and hired somebody so that at the end of the 12-month cycle they would have more than paid for themselves. My second year I was there I told the board to hire people to do more membership development. One member of the board said: ‘Why would we want to do that? We have you.’ I said I was flattered, but that I would need to clone myself. Even if I am the Son of God I can only do so much. There are only so many hours in the day and so many weeks in the year.
You need to have a vision and I helped the board challenge them on the vision. Now I chair the board.
CDN: If you had to pick one thing that Comptia does very well, what would that be, and conversely is there one challenge you need to overcome in the next 6 to 18 months?
J.V.: Listen to specific needs of members and fill voids. We are delivering more now that we have the resources to help them in day-to-day business. The challenge is getting smaller software companies involved in CompTIA.
We did not do well there for whatever reason. We have to get smaller software companies involved in the organization. I want to increase that.
CDN: You have been vocal recently about the treatment of tech workers, that they haven’t been getting the kind of education necessary to succeed. Why did you go public?
J.V.: I was encouraged by the board to claim our space and to say things publicly and bring attention to it to get support from government. So it was a conscious decision to be more public and if they (statements) are controversial I had approval for it. We are looking for longer term needs. We worked more behind the scenes in the past.
CDN: You were one of the first organizations to back the RFID technology. How is that going and is this the biggest new growth area?
J.V.: We think with the government and a major retailer in Wal-Mart and others (active) that APlus and RFID Plus (certifications) will be the top exams in next couple of years. Why are State Farm, All-State, Proctor & Gamble and Disney, all non-IT organizations, members? They figured it out. Whether you get the member or non-member price to buy these certifications it will be a good business decision. So it will be a reliable predictor of employee success. One guy asked me how did we get all these people to do all these exams? In many cases, we had nothing to do with it. There are new training companies that send hundreds of people to our exams, and some sell text books for our exams.
CDN: How does Canada compare to other regions?
J.V.: The skill sets of resellers are the same. Markets are different and Canada is diverse with time distance issues. The needs of skill sets are universal.