Ethan Cushing is Strategic Account Director, Intelex Technologies. He started with Intelex in 2011; his 10-year work anniversary will be in December. He currently manages the APAC sales team, which he started in July 2021. In addition to being responsible for our revenue targets in the APAC region, he supports our new team members in a pre-sales capacity, ensuring they have product knowledge and support as they work through the sales cycle with prospects and existing customers.
I (virtually) sat down with Ethan recently to find out more about him and his role at Intelex.
Intelex: Can you tell us a little about your professional background and what attracted you to Intelex/technology?
Ethan Cushing (EC): I have been in technology since 2006 after deciding I wasn’t prepared to get old working in the restaurant industry. I was lucky enough to join several small businesses where I was given broad roles which covered many areas such as technical support, product management, customer success, project delivery and sales.
When I joined Intelex I didn’t know much about EHSQ but was excited about the trajectory of the company and the energy of the team. We were less than 150 people at the time and the team was very supportive of each other.
Intelex: If you were going to fill out this statement, what would you say? “We are Intelex and we are…”
EC: We are Intelex and we are going to shake up the EHSQ world in Asia Pacific!
Intelex: Intelex recently has undertaken an expansion in the APAC region. Can you tell us a little bit about that? What is the strategy behind this expansion? What are your goals for this year and 2022 in the region?
EC: Intelex has delivered on an amazing growth initiative in EMEA and I’ve been excited to see if we can try to replicate that on a smaller scale in the APAC region. We think there is a huge amount of potential in the region and that topics such as the digitisation of EHSQ and ESG are starting to get traction with large- and medium-sized businesses in the region.
As a configurable and broad management system platform, we are in a great position to help introduce the market to how a system like Intelex can help their organisations. To help achieve this, we have added several team members in the Customer Acquisition team, growing our headcount by 150% and having Intelexians on the ground in Asia for the first time.
We have received great support from ISC Asia, who have helped introduce us to markets where they have a presence and where we can deliver a cross-sell across the product lines.
In the second half of 2021, we are working with several Intelex teams such as Marketing, Partners & Alliances and Global Services in order to fine-tune our go-to-market strategy. We will continue to grow our revenue base with what looks like a record year for the region.
In 2022, we will be targeting several key areas in the APAC region where we think Intelex can have the highest impact in the region. Our focus will be on increasing our customer base in Asia while continuing to grow our presence in ANZ.
Intelex: How will the expansion help customers and potential customers?
EC: Our existing customers are excited to hear about Intelex’s commitment to the region. Growing the team in APAC will increase the focus on the region and deliver great outcomes for existing clients. Having more team members in the region will increase the amount of support we can provide as customers continue to scale their systems.
Key stakeholders, including potential customers in EHSQ leadership roles, will benefit from the increased amount of content that will be aimed at the region. Hopefully, they can use some of this content to highlight the benefits of their programs and the importance of their programs to their organisations.
Question: What are the key outcomes you’re hoping to achieve?
EC: Ultimately we want to continue to deliver value to our customers in the region. By growing the team, we are hoping to reach more customers and continue to deliver on our vision to eliminate death in the workplace by 2050.
Intelex: Are there partnerships, with ISC for example, that could be key to really innovative or positive outcomes for customers?
EC: We are working with ISC on highlighting our connected workplaces messages and increasing visibility of the outcomes we can achieve with integrated hardware and connected work. HazardIQ is a great example of that and we hope to put that story into practice at more organisations in the region.
We are also excited to work with regional subject matter experts, providing them and their customers with another tool to help improve their EHSQ performance. We’ve been very excited to see the level of interest from regional SMEs and how they are eager to introduce their customers to new possibilities in their EHSQ growth.
Intelex: Do you have any interesting or enlightening customer stories/comments you can share with us?
EC: We’re lucky to work closely with leading companies in EHSQ of all sizes who gain success from Intelex in a wide variety of ways.
A customer who provides engineering services on a global scale implemented Intelex and the system delivery was led by a fantastic woman with no previous system implementation experience. While the system is very intuitive, there is a lot to learn and we were blown away by the level of confidence and commitment which drove the adoption of the system throughout the organisation. Systems are only as good as the people behind them and sometimes the best people to lead the project are not who you would expect.
One of the world’s leading producers of steel has included Intelex in their rethinking of how safety should be understood and shared throughout their organisation. Changing the message of how safety is perceived, viewing safety reports as positive outputs and not just a metric or at worst, a negative outcome, will redefine how companies improve their safety performance and ensure their employees go home safely every night.
My favorite stories are about how companies use Intelex in innovative ways. Our best customers are constantly innovating, improving and finding new ways to generate value from the system. Talking with an IT leader who has used Intelex for over 6 years, he mentioned how, around two years ago, Intelex achieved critical mass. They had enough people using the system, they had an administrator who could easily make changes to the system to fit business outcomes and they had management support.
He said they add new forms and processes to Intelex every couple of weeks and highlighted how that flexibility allows them to continue to scale Intelex at a minimal amount of cost while constantly increasing the value they receive.
We are proud to have great team members like Ethan who contribute to customers’ efforts to achieve operational excellence and who support the mission to eliminate death in the workplace.
