The “good old days” are tomorrow says Chris Ichter

Microsoft's freshly minted SMB partner director says New Zealand doesn’t invest enough in productivity tools

By Vera Alves, Auckland | Tuesday, 10 May 2011
The newly appointed Microsoft director for small, midmarket solutions and partners believes it is time for New Zealand to start investing more heavily in productivity tools, to avoid falling behind in the world market.

Chris Ichter joined the Microsoft New Zealand team in 2007, fresh off a plane (or two) from his home country, France.

He and his wife initially thought about staying for two years and then returning home. But they quickly changed their minds; they fell in love with the country. For Ichter, New Zealand has everything one needs to live a happy life, but as far as business goes, the bar needs to be raised.

“This country doesn’t invest enough in productivity tools and IT,” he believes.

“In France, people care about their long lunches, their strikes and their six to eight weeks of holidays and yet they are very productive. They are always looking for tools to increase that productivity, to allow them to do more with less time.”

The director suggests IT in New Zealand is still viewed as an expense rather than an investment and that this is to blame for the low levels of productivity.

“You have to raise the bar and become more productive,” he says. “It is a worldwide market. Customers ask all the time why they should upgrade to the latest product. It’s because you have to stay on top of your game. ”

He says it is fundamental for New Zealand businesses to be quick to adapt to change. While he attributes his own success to his ability to focus on targets “like a missile”, he also credits an ability to adjust to new situations because, “the target keeps moving”.

When Ichter was discharged from the French army and it was time to get a job, he only knew that he never wanted to work in sales. He set his sites on becoming a German language teacher, but that didn’t work out.

“I saw an ad for a company in the newspaper, but I didn’t know what they did,” Ichter says. “The company was called Xerox. I arrived for the interview and there were 30 candidates. Twenty-nine who probably really wanted the job and me, who didn’t even know what the company did.”

In the end, the man who only knew he did not want to work in sales ended up getting the Xerox job, selling photocopiers to small businesses.

“It was a wonderful time, I learnt the job on the field, got ‘rookie-of-the-year’ and really got into sales,” he says.

Ichter lived in different European cities —Berlin, Paris, Strasbourg — as his career progressed with roles at ICL, and later Compaq. When Compaq merged with HP, Ichter followed his boss to Microsoft and after some time, decided he needed to have his “OE” and started to look for roles outside of Europe.

“My primary target was Canada, but there were no interesting jobs advertised there,” he says. “My boss in France suggested New Zealand and I thought ‘why not’,”

Ichter and his wife now live in Northcote, on Auckland’s North Shore, a 10-minute drive from Microsoft’s central-city waterfront location.

His three adult children currently live in Canada, Spain and France, respectively and the couple compensate for an empty nest with an active social life and a lot of outdoor activities.

“This is paradise,” he says. “Why would we want to leave?”

He recognises the difficulty of balancing one’s career and private life, but it is a value he cultivates in himself and among his team at Microsoft.

“I don’t send any emails at night or on weekends,” he says. “I don’t call my team during those times. People need their private time.”

He started here as Microsoft’s enterprise and partner group director, but shifted to the new role of managing partners in the small and midmarket areas.

“It is different from enterprise, where you go deep on a small number of accounts, but in both cases, you are working with partners,” says Ichter. “This is a more reactive model, the other was more proactive.”

Dealing with partners is, in fact, one of the best parts of the job for the director.

“We’re running a people-business here, whether it is customers, partners or teams. You need a good product but it is the interactions with people that make the difference,” he says.

And speaking of good products, he is as quick at pointing out Microsoft’s successes – Windows 7 – as he is at pointing out the failures – Windows Vista. “Windows 7 is, by far, the best product we have ever made,” says Ichter. “We learnt from our mistakes. Since 2001, we have been putting a strong focus on security. Windows 8 is going to be even more secure.”