As C3 approaches it quarter-century we sat down with John Wood, Sales Director and co-owner of the company, to find out more about C3’s story and what the future holds for the company.
John originally joined C3 as a technical salesman and, along with business partner & Technical Director Wayne, has been at the helm of C3 since 2003.
Today he heads up a close-knit team of 20 staff serving clients worldwide. C3 applications have been successfully deployed in over 26 countries worldwide and in a range of industries
Firstly let’s talk a bit about you. As a proud Glaswegian how did you come to Cambridge?
I started out working for IBM in Scotland and later moved south to experience the hi-tech start-up climate in the region. I wasn’t the first Scottish industrial migrant to venture south of the border and worked as a research scientist with the then Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries & Food. Thankfully my wife-to-be agreed to join me after a year if I wasn’t in prison (!) and we settled in the area.
Having signed the official secrets act and been told no secrets I decided to leave MAFF and get involved in computing. I worked for Cambridge Microprocessor systems, then a small tech company involved in some great projects, and realised I liked the start-up environment and joined C3. Various twists and turn led to Wayne & I buying the company in 2003.
What’s special about C3?
JW: We have the innovation and speed to market of a start-up combined with 25 years of trading history, a self-generated strong balance sheet and the longest staff retention of any tech company I know. The most recent estimate puts C3’s combined experience at over 500 years!
What do you enjoy most about working at C3?
Corny as it sounds it has to be the engagement with both internal and external stakeholders. Taking a customer’s ideas and turning it into a profitable venture can be challenging but is always exhilarating. You have to take the raw concept to your team, get their buy-in and input in order to make the vision a reality.
What’s the most challenging project C3 has untaken?
JW: The BT Wave platform being accredited as Tier 1 PCI DSS complaint back in 2005 was way ahead of its time.
Do you have any mottos in business?
JW: Don’t look for the light at the end of the tunnel, enjoy the tunnel! Thing may not always go to plan but there are usually unexpected opportunities in there.
C3 has a reputation for working with clients worldwide, even in some difficult locations. What was the most challenging location to date?
JW: That’s a tough one as there are quite a few candidates! Our rule has always been that geography is not a boundary and we have countless stories of mice stuck in servers in Santiago and deployments where staff were confined to hotels for their own safety.
One which has become legendary in the office was Sierra Leone back in the early 2000’s when we were asked to do an urgent installation to allow thousands of UN troops to communicate with home. The rebels were 50 km from the gates of Freetown and there were some concerns amongst the team.
Our client assured us they had their own gunship, however that didn’t have the desired effect of instilling confidence in the C3ers! In the end Graham took on the mission and the deployment was a great success.
Any thoughts for the future?
For a team so steeped in voice it was possibly more difficult for us to embrace Multi-channel bi-directional communications however by leveraging our experience in sequential communication and PCI DSS compliant billing we have a software platform that is applicable to any business delivered as an on premise or Cloud / Hosted model for :-
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Contact Centres inclusive PCI DSS Compliant payments
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Multi-channel alerting , team assembly
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Complete 360~ for online businesses to track marketing and sales
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IVR inclusive of flexible voice recognition
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…………Watch this space!
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