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Tukuru Technologies, LLC |
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September 21, 2015 Issue |
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The Most Powerful Name In Corporate News and Information |
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Customized Solutions for Construction and Design Industries |
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CEO
Tukuru Technologies, LLC
Interview conducted by: Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published – September 21, 2015
CEOCFO: Mr. Tukuru, would you tell us the focus for Tukuru Technologies today? Mr. Tukuru: We started out focusing on architects, engineers and the construction industry because I am by training an architect myself. Having satisfied our roster of clients early on, we have since branched off to encompass the entire design industry which would be interior designers, landscape architects, lighting designers and even the odd other small businesses. We service professional services firms that are in that industry.
CEOCFO:
What are some of the challenges or special circumstances in the AEC
community so that is makes sense to work with someone specialized in that
area?
CEOCFO: Do
you have a standard offering and is most of what you do customized?
CEOCFO: What is the competitive landscape? Mr. Tukuru: There are very few who do what we do. The industry is like a small village. Most of our clients worked at a firm will move to another firm and recommend us. Many times they start their own firms and recommend us so there is not a lot of competition when it comes to people angling for the same clientele. They just know who has been around and go with that person. We have been around for about twelve years.
CEOCFO: Security and disaster recovery are two big areas that most tech companies say clients embrace, as they should. Would you tell us what you find in your industry and how do you help companies in those two areas? Mr. Tukuru: We very aggressively monitor the servers and the network environment with antivirus and antimalware because much of the stuff that actually ends up making it through is from people clicking on a link on an email or a link in on a website so it is hard to control. That portion of the security is not bulletproof but what is bulletproof is to try to educate the users from all these companies on best practices when they use the technology. For instance, do not save sensitive information onto thumb-drives or do not email sensitive information and be careful where you enter your banking information and things like that. It is more around education.
CEOCFO: Does it surprise you that in this age, people still click on links when they should not? Mr. Tukuru: It is surprising but again not so surprising because people are naturally curious. Most of these things are innocuous enough where I find myself having to pause sometimes at something that looks legitimate from Starbuck’s or Amazon or FedEx. You wonder afterwards how you could have been so dumb.
CEOCFO: Do you work primarily around NYC? Mr. Tukuru: Yes, most of our clients are in the city. We have some in New Jersey and some in Long Island. We have branch offices of our clients in Boston and Washington D.C., as well as California.
CEOCFO: Do you much in-person or is that not necessary these days? Mr. Tukuru: It is not as necessary these days but I try to get in front of our clients as much as possible because you find that sometimes they are able to drive more business process ideas from just talking to them face-to-face.
CEOCFO: When you are talking with a new client, what is the key to understanding their needs that perhaps other firms would not take into consideration? Mr. Tukuru: Ninety percent of the time, we know who they are going in because it is such a small community. Once we get in front of them, we ask a few trigger questions like what is their pain point on a day-to-day basis or what frustrates them the most. We are frequently surprised that sometimes it is something small such as they do not have email signature in their Outlook or it could be something bigger where they have not had a backup in three months. I think even though we find out how their business process is because even among the engineers or architect they have different ways. For instance, we have a prominent client that likes to draw so he draws everything and does watercolor on top of the drawing and then he scans them in and gives it to his staff to interpret his design idea. We now craft a workflow that makes it possible to get it to the design stage a lot quicker than somebody just coming in off the street and saying what is your backup. What is more important for us is to understand their workflow.
CEOCFO: Do many companies come to you for advice and how do you help them on the hardware side? Mr. Tukuru: They do come to us. At first, we did not really sell hardware. We saw quickly that left on their own people would buy the wrong things even if you advise them to buy something, they would go out and buy something else and you would be stuck with trying to support it for the lifespan of the equipment. Nowadays we do give discounts and carry that to buy from us. We are not motivated by the margin necessarily but by the best of breed for the equipment. Going back to the workflow issue, it is about what works for their workflow. When they say they are going to be out in the field a lot and they do not want to carry anything that will put any strain on their back or they need to be able to doodle on this, then that tells us what to recommend. We have partnerships with most of the major computer manufacturers and the software vendors. We also integrate those things together before delivering the solutions. We do a lot of recommendations and many hardware recommendations which I do personally.
CEOCFO: What is the key to staying ahead of the new technologies? Mr. Tukuru: I try to attend industry conferences, not necessarily architectural focused ones because I think those are sort of preaching to the choir so I look for new technologies that may benefit the majority of our clientele. Over the last three years or so, I have been to a lot of cloud conferences all over the country. I focus on cloud technologies and that is the next frontier in terms of delivering affordable technology to everybody.
CEOCFO: Are there regulatory issues that you need to be aware? Mr. Tukuru: We advise them on certain things so there has been a great deal of lawsuits around construction errors and design errors and things like that. We train them how to preserve a lot of their information that they are required to keep. As pertains to other regulations, it is not a highly regulated industry.
CEOCFO: Where do you see growth? Mr. Tukuru: I do not think our growth will come in necessarily acquiring more and more customers. I think the growth will come from being able to provide business solutions to all kinds of industries. If you are successful in one industry developing what a lot of people call intellectual property and standardizing your offering around that, I think that is where the growth will come.
CEOCFO: How is business these days? Mr. Tukuru: Business is very good. Construction is moving so as a result many of our clients are hiring and expanding.
CEOCFO: What surprised you as Tukuru has grown and evolved? Mr. Tukuru: The biggest surprise is that there are not more people doing this. People are always delighted to find us so most of our clients have been with us right from the get-go. I think the fact that more people are not servicing this particular industry is a surprise. It is a nice thing but I wish there were more people to pick their brain about how to solve certain problems. We are going to have to invent the wheel and we had to do it around the changing nature of the software and hardware to reconfigure our services around the software vendors. Business is good but I think we have had to readjust to today’s reality of everything being a subscription service. That is the biggest change.
CEOCFO: Why is Tukuru Technologies a noteworthy company? Mr. Tukuru: We are a bit of a pioneer in this field so we are transitioning from being an architect to supporting architects and developing a solution to help them. The success story is an immigrant coming to New York and sort of finding my own way. I think that is the big takeaway. |
“I do not think our growth will come in necessarily acquiring more and more customers. I think the growth will come from being able to provide business solutions to all kinds of industries. If you are successful in one industry developing what a lot of people call intellectual property and standardizing your offering around that, I think that is where the growth will come.” - Jacob Tukuru
Tukuru Technologies, LLC
Jacob Tukuru 212-962-5790
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Jacob
Tukuru