How affordable technology is helping small businesses every day, interview with Sage Partner, Stacy Schuettler [Podcast]

This episode of the Sage Advice podcast features Stacy Schuettler, the president of LBMC Technology Solutions, LLC. LBMC was founded in Tennessee is 1996. Under Stacy’s leadership, LBMC Technology Solutions has grown significantly and is continually recognized on a national level as being a top-performing IT consulting company, due to its depth and breadth of technical expertise and customer satisfaction and retention levels in the SMB space.  In 2017, Stacey was acknowledged for her great work as a recipient of the Sage Intacct Jered Cady Award. Stacey is an entrepreneur at heart and passionate about the growth of SMBs, disruptive and affordable technology. 

What makes your business a differentiator in the marketplace?

Stacey Schuettler: We are a single-source technology provider for our clients. This has always been our competitive advantage and our differentiator. I believe that holds true more today than it ever has.

We are always looking for new opportunities to continue to challenge the status quo to ensure that we’re providing exceptional services to our clients and that we’re continuing to evolve our portfolio of services and products and technology solutions, and staying relevant to our client base.

We do have a few of ERP and CRM solutions that are more appropriate for just enterprise-level clients, but for the most part, the SMB space is where we live.

Why are you excited about the SMB space and disruptive technology?

Stacey Schuettler: Well, “disruptive” is right, isn’t it?! The thing that excites me most about the last two or three years is that the price point of many software and technology solutions has become much more affordable for small and mid-size businesses. For instance, business intelligence tools, or cloud solutions, or enterprise management, content solution tools, CRM tools, the price points have become low enough to where smaller organizations can afford them.

It is always exciting to see the changes that increased efficiency has, not only on the bottom line. I mean, obviously, that is extremely important, but we are working with and we are helping people at a human level every day.

One of my favorite stories is a single divorced mom. She said she was skidding into daycare every day, at 10 minutes past six, and having to pay extra, and feeling guilty. We implemented this very, very complex CRM system, and we’re doing a debrief of the project, and we’re celebrating with the CFO, and the VP of sales, in terms of what it meant to their bottom line and client retention, and then this mother pulls me aside and starts crying and says, “I get to the daycare now 10 minutes early!” That literally just impacted me almost more than hearing the great things on a business level.

It is just great to see that we can help people make their businesses run more efficiently, which results in, for an organization, maybe more profit, or more employee satisfaction, or for a not-for-profit, it might mean the donor dollars go to the mission more than they did before. So that is what I am really excited about these days.

Why do you love what you do?

Stacey Schuettler: I was an accounting major in college that landed a co-op position at IBM, and they put me in the sales bullpen, and it was like a scene out of the movie. The lights went off, music started playing, and I’m like, “Wow, I am with my people.” I immediately went back to school and picked up marketing as a second major, and I think, ultimately, I do what I do because I just love the art and science of capitalism, and expanding on that, even helping not-for-profits. I just love helping businesses we are organizations run more efficiently, and technology just happens to be the paintbrush of my palette, I guess.