K-TEK Solutions Q2 2007 Newsletter
From Cathy's Desk
Hello from K-TEK, and welcome to our latest quarterly newsletter. It's been an incredible and busy spring as I look back at the past five months since I became K-TEK's new President and COO. I'm excited about our recent accomplishments, and would like to share some of them with you.
I spent much of March and April meeting with past and potential K-TEK clients, Autodesk partners, and friends within Autodesk. During Autodesk's One Team Conference in Las Vegas, I became a regular at the MGM's Starbucks, hosting over 40 meetings in three days. I attended Tech Camp in Orlando; I visited Autodesk's Manchester office for FMDesktop training, and more.
These meetings really helped me bring our strategy into focus, and I'd like to share with you my vision of K-TEK's future.
The word for the next year will be focus, and there will be two primary areas where you'll see K-TEK focused on strengthening our capabilities and growing our range of services. The first strategic focus will be in the Civil Engineering space, and K-TEK will double-down on our Civil project delivery capabilities and expertise. We've added Civil Engineering PEs to our team of consultants (see article), and we've expanded and better structured the range of civil-related services we can provide (see article). Our second strategic focus is in the geospatial market. K-TEK brings some unique capabilities and practical expertise to this market, particularly around solutions where multiple Autodesk products like Map 3D and MapGuide need to be integrated to distribute a client's content over the web for access by users and citizens.
Beyond this strategic focus, K-TEK is also working hard to grow our base of satisfied clients. We're currently working on over five projects for three different clients, and several of these projects represent repeat or follow on business. I'm pleased with this trend; it tells me that we're both expanding the business, and leaving our clients satisfied and interested in additional services.
Finally, we've been investing in the business. Members of our consulting team have received Oracle DBA training and training on Autodesk FMDesktop. We've improved our back-office procedures with a goal of streamlining our operations and simplifying how you can work with us; this includes attaining Autodesk's qualified vendor status and implementing a Master Subcontract Agreement that allows us to subcontract with Autodesk Consulting when appropriate. Last but not least, we've refreshed the entire K-TEK website, with updated information on the kinds of services we can provide.
All of this can be summed up by our new tagline, which is now part of the K-TEK logo: K-TEK - where Knowledge meets Technology. It's my goal to make sure we have the knowledge that you can tap, so you can take full advantage of your Autodesk technology investments.
Regards,
Cathy Wagenaar
K-TEK President and COO
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New Consultants Join the K-TEK Team
The K-TEK consulting team continues to expand. In the past four months, K-TEK has signed on seven additional consultants to bring the total up to ten. In keeping with our strategy, K-TEK consultants have expertise focused in geospatial solutions and civil engineering. Our consulting capabilities include in-depth professional engineering knowledge to strategy, marketing, process design, and project management.
Adding new consultants has also expanded K-TEK's product scope, and we now have expertise on staff covering the following key Autodesk products
- Civil: AutoCAD Civil 3D, AutoCAD Land Desktop
- Geospatial: AutoCAD Map 3D, Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise, Autodesk Topobase
By adding more qualified Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) on our team, K-TEK is better positioned than ever before to help clients leverage Autodesk technology and empower their staff to increase productivity and deliver quality results.
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Recent Wins and Projects
In the past few months, we've been busy on a number of projects. Here are a few highlights:
- Courseware - K-TEK consultants have been busy building learning content for one of our customers. These include courses on Map 3D, Civil 3D, AutoCAD MEP, and AutoCAD LT. K-TEK also developed the e-Learning pre-work content for Map 3D for Autodesk's Tech Camp. In addition, K-TEK has been contracted to act as the external SME on Autodesk's Civil 3D ICE Update project.
- Process design - K-TEK has been involved in two different projects focused on documenting and improving process. This includes a project creating a complete consulting project management infrastructure for an Autodesk reseller, and a second project documenting operational procedures for sales incentives. K-TEK brought senior-level expertise to both of these projects, helping clients identify process gaps and providing recommendations on process improvement.
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Civil Highlights
Part of the K-TEK strategy is to reinvigorate our expertise and delivery capabilities for civil engineering solutions. This has been a strong area for K-TEK in the past, and to improve our services in this area we've added four new team members to our consultant roster, including two Civil PEs. We have also added a Civil Practice Manager, Dan Leighton, to the team.
By ramping up, K-TEK is now ready to help clients take full advantage of Civil 3D. K-TEK can provide a range of implementation services, for example:
- Implementation - K-TEK can work with your team to help you quickly get started with Civil 3D, and devise a strategy to ramp up use of Civil 3D's productivity features in a way that makes sense for your organization and your specific project requirements.
- Training and skill-gap analysis - The skills your staff has will vary from person to person. K-TEK is now using Knowledge Trax - a modern tool to help measure and assess your team's expertise - to perform a skill-gap analysis specific to your staff and help provide training to raise staff proficiency in a fast and cost-effective fashion.
- Process improvement - Tools like Civil 3D can provide big productivity gains, especially when you adapt your design process to take full advantage of this capability. K-TEK can analyze your existing software, standards, and procedures and identify ways of improving current processes to best leverage what the software can deliver.
Of course, K-TEK has a track record of providing additional Civil Engineering services as well, and can help mentor your staff, configure custom styles and assemblies, provide backup and support to your team, and more.
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Geospatial News
We currently have a small, strong Geospatial team that's been kept very busy for the past few months. Over the course of the summer and early fall, I will be actively building K-TEK's geospatial delivery capability and customer base. During that time, I will act in the Geospatial Practice Manager role, working with the team to build out the geospatial service offerings.
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Summary
As you can see, K-TEK has made significant progress on multiple fronts since January of this year. We look forward to working with you in the coming months and years! In the meantime, come and visit us at www.k-teksolutions.com
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