Back before the turn of the century, before the widespread use of direct deposit, we used to print paychecks every two weeks. It was a big production, loading up the laser printer with blank checks, printing off envelopes and then stuffing the checks and paystubs. Everyone wanted those checks in their hands as soon as possible. Likewise, my parents loved to connect with the employees, catch up on their lives and hear how things were going with their assignment. Thus, the tradition of hand-delivering the checks to employees was born.

One of my first Murphy & Associates missions involved delivering paychecks, when, for one week in 1990, I was the only Murphy Family Member in Seattle. At the ripe age of 19, I was designated the interim paycheck delivery guy. It was actually a lot of fun; back then you could freely wander through office buildings and cubicles, so I got my first taste of office life. What really made it fun, however, was the fact that all my delivery targets were happy to see me. I was giving them a check, after all.

With Direct Deposit, the need to hand deliver checks evaporated. Direct Deposit is certainly a huge convenience, but we felt that there was also a loss of connection. With that in mind, we updated the tradition by transforming it to the "monthly check-in".

Even though nearly thirty years have passed since my first foray into check-ins, I find that I still really enjoy the opportunity to visit and connect with people at work. I am always so impressed by the caliber of people that are in our network, their wide range of skillsets, and their friendly openness. Over the course of an afternoon, I get the chance to learn about projects that touch anything from airplane performance to regulatory compliance to hardware testing. Invariably, I walk away from these conversations with a better understanding of our clients, and on occasion, I get a better sense of the challenges that our consultants face.

Ultimately, the check-in tradition is simply a means for us to stay connected with people in our network and make sure that we are doing all that we can to support our employees. That said, we know that people have busy schedules, so the monthly check-in is entirely optional. If you are too busy to meet, there won’t be any repercussions for taking a pass… it’s not like we are going to withhold your check or anything…

As one of the two founders of our company, Donna Murphy has observed a lot of changes in the Technology and Business Consulting ecosystem. Her first contracting role was as a technical writer, and for the first 20 years of Murphy & Associates, she played a key role in the company’s growth.

With her unique experience, Donna has insights into the parts of our business that haven’t changed over the years. Inspired by Hit Refresh, the part-memoir/part-inside scoop book by Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, Donna shares her thoughts striking a balance between changing with the times and adhering to core principles of the business.

Last fall, Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, published his fascinating book, Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone. It is a compelling read about how Microsoft has navigated technological and cultural shifts over the past twenty-five years, and how Nadella has revitalized the business.

When reading a review of the book, I couldn’t help but think about how Murphy & Associates has changed over the years. When we started M&A in 1980, RAM was measured in bytes, not gigs. Terminals were connected to bulky mainframes, not the ethereal cloud. No Web, no social media, and Space Invaders was the pinnacle of gaming. Oh, and our sons who now oversee the business, ranged in age from 9 to 13. We too have had to “hit refresh” a number of times, but, just as importantly, we have deliberately “hit save” to preserve the foundations of our business.

M&A Refreshes

Staffing: Whereas it used to be just the two of us founders collecting hours, running payroll and making placements, we are now fortunate enough to have a team of dynamic professionals handling operations and sales now. We couldn’t be happier with the team that we have in place.

Location: We have moved from a spare bedroom to Carillon Point. The view is better, the location more central (i.e. not on a cul-de-sac at the bottom of a massive hill). Oddly, the in-office silverware and coffee mugs are the same.

Technology: Initially, the business was run on green-screen spreadsheets. Multiplan, Microsoft’s precursor to Excel, acted as the initial IT backbone of the company. Our internal IT systems have gone through a series of updates, to the point where we have a proprietary system that seamlessly manages every facet of our business.

M&A Saves

Transparency: From day one, we have been fully transparent with our employees. One of our primary goals was to ensure that contractors that work through M&A receive a higher percentage of their bill rate…. We will not see the need to hit refresh here.

Focus on Consultants: Since the company was founded by a couple of contractors, our goal has always been to meet the needs of our consultants first. We rely heavily on word-of-mouth marketing, so our focus on the best interests of our consultants is the cornerstone of our business strategy.

Family Oriented: We started the company as a family. For the first several years of our company’s existence, we had to balance the needs of the business with the needs of our young family. To this day, we try to incorporate partners and children into our summer events, whether it be a picnic at the beach or an outing to a sporting event.

Final Thoughts

As with most companies M&A has room to grow. There’s much more to tell about the inside of M&A, and it’s good to know that we can “refresh” our culture. We are grateful to our Associates who have supported our purpose and joined us to create a company in which we can take pride.

Finally, for those of you interested in reading Satya’s book, you’ll notice he discusses his early Grace Hopper debacle, when he told an audience at the celebration of women in computing that women should not ask for raises, but instead trust that hard work and the long-term efficiency of the system would reward them. Satya recounts that as an embarrassing and painful episode, yet one that ultimately led him to “confront an unconscious bias” and grow as a leader.

As refreshing side note, we have a long tradition of supporting women in the Technology and Business Consulting field. Three out of our early contractors served as President of The Association for Women in Computing, an advocacy organization founded in the early 1970’s. Furthermore, two thirds or our internal staff is female.

I’ve had a fun, fascinating journey through many roles at Murphy & Associates in the past 20 years. I’ve been in Sales, Recruiting, led the Partner Manager teams, developed software and worked on special projects.  Last year, I took another sharp turn in my role at the company. I am now the VP of Information Technology and Scrum Master for the Murphy & Associates dev team.

People may not realize that Murphy & Associates has a 4-person development team that works on our internal systems. We use an agile based methodology, with bi-weekly Sprints, to develop, maintain, and enhance both our public facing website and our internal facing, custom built application that handles all our business need.

From its inception, Murphy & Associates has relied on technology to run its business and keep overhead low.  I remember back in the early 1980’s, our parents bought an original IBM PC. It was a big boxy thing, with two floppy drives. It wasn’t much of a gaming machine, making it a real disappointment for my brothers and me. It did, however, run a spreadsheet program called Multiplan which Murph absolutely loved. In fact, he used as a solution for every business function that he could conceive.

Great as Multiplan was, Murph eventually realized we needed a database to run Murphy & Associates. In the late 80’s, he hired a Murphy & Associates contractor, Brian Pendleton, to develop a payroll system in Borland’s Paradox. Several years later, we converted the Paradox database into an MS Access.

Erik loves to tell the story about when he first joined Murphy & Associates as internal staff in 1996. One of his first comments was, “Hey Murph, I think we should get an email address. You know, some people might want to get in touch with us that way.”  Murph and Erik also figured out how to link two computers together so they could share the same Access Database. Next thing you know, we were off and running with network computing.

At the time, I was working as a software developer for Microsoft. But on the side, I did a bit of work for Murphy & Associates, developing an invoicing system and a check writer in Access. When I came on board with M&A full time in 1998, my first job was to replace the Access system with a VB6 / SQL Server solution. This application (called Murphy Explorer) has served us well the past 20 years. Some of our critical business functions are still being run in this system today. In fact, one of the big projects our dev team is focusing on right now is to completely replace this VB6 application.

Our new application (Murphy Online Explorer or “MOE” for short) has taken us to a whole new level. It’s a web-based, mobile friendly app written in C# / JavaScript using Microsoft’s MVC, and connects to SQL Server, Exchange and SharePoint Online. It truly is a state-of-the-art application for running a business like Murphy & Associates. We’re quite proud of what we’ve created. It has enabled us to grow as a business, cater to the needs of our clients and consultants, and it has kept our overhead low. We can’t imagine working without it.

Of course, it is a work in progress. Like any good Agile based project, we are continually adding functionality and enhancing usability to make our Partner Manager, Operation and Finance teams work as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Within each edition of The Full Disclosure, we hope to give our readers some insight into the opportunities and challenges we face here at the office. For this issue we asked Judi Brittin, our VP of Partner Management, to share some of her thoughts on how the IT and business consulting industry has changed over the last twenty years:

Murphy & Associates has been fortunate to work with a wealth of clients and industries growing in the Seattle area for the past 37 years. At the core of our business is, and will always be, the relationships we build with the clients and contract associates. Over the years, however, we have seen changes in the industry which affect the process of placing contractors with clients.    

Two of the most significant changes in recent years has been the increased use of vendor management system(VMS) programs and the implementation of mandatory breaks for contractors.

Clients are deploying VMS applications and partnering with third party agencies to assist with and manage the interviewing, onboarding, and contract process. From a recruiting standpoint, this means that we are typically restricted on the number of candidates we can submit for each job, and we may not have the direct interaction with the actual hiring manager to be able to really sell them on you as a candidate. 

So please keep the following in mind as we strive to help you achieve the best opportunity for success with these clients:

• Time is of the essence! If you’re interested in a role that is presented to you, reply ASAP with any necessary resume updates, responses to questions, and the Right to Represent statement if required. 
• Put your best resume forward! To help ensure a successful screening in the VMS, be sure your resume clearly highlights the required skills and experience listed on the job requirement. And be sure to list sufficient detail for each position on your resume; including month/year for duration for both contract and FTE roles.

Mandatory breaks for contractors is on the rise with many companies in our industry. Microsoft, Expedia and Alaska Airlines are clients that have policies that may require a 3 to 6 month break after you have been on assignment for a period of 18 months. Here are some suggestions to help ensure a smooth transition as you move from contract to contract:

• Seek out client specific rules on engagement terms. 
• Keep track of your assignment dates so you know exactly what your eligibility is with each client. 
• Upon completion of an assignment, verify with the client or vendor company that your system and building access has been terminated; that is typically what drives your eligibility dates within their systems.