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Catching Up with Dan

This week, the TeamConnect Maven catches up with Dan Welch, Mitratech’s Senior VP of Global Sales & Operations, who is presiding over today’s announcement of the new TeamConnect Legal Hold product.  With a background that combines engineering as well as sales, Dan is responsible for the sale, delivery, and support of Mitratech’s solutions.  In this role, he often finds his teams wrangling complex systems, a process the avid scuba diver sometimes compares to holding an octopus in his hand.  Yet, Dan actually prefers to tame the problem rather than manhandle it. “Especially for systems that have grown up out of organic needs, I like to start with the client’s pain,” he says, “and it’ll point to what’s perfect for a solution.”

Dan explains his love for underwater exploration as the result of one introductory scuba dive on a Maui vacation seventeen years ago.  He was hooked, Welch recalls, his eyes a twinkle. “We dove with a marine biologist who showed us how the nature down there all interconnects.”  Interconnectedness and complexity are big themes in Dan’s life nowadays.  Solving complex systems is what appeals to Dan about Mitratech’s new Legal Hold software, too.  “Instead of silo’d solutions,” he intimates, “the fun part of TeamConnect Legal Hold is that it forms an umbrella across multiple departments and skill domains.  It alleviates the breakdown in communication that will often occur under the pressure of litigation so that, for instance, IT can know whether or not to format a potentially ‘held’ disk drive from a departed employee’s laptop without involving them in the confidential issues at stake in the legal matter.” 

Solving these kinds of challenges is nothing new for Dan.  He brings a natural enthusiasm and curiosity to the process of facilitating rules-driven matters.  Indeed, Dan’s career has bridged the divide between Engineering and Sales for two decades as companies such as Triad, Callidus, Unify, Inference and Brightware serviced clients from auto parts megastores to American Airlines to American Express.  Nor is handling confidential material new to Dan, who has worked in previous jobs on software systems used by the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, and so on.  “We thought for years from the specificity of their questions that the Navy must be using my old firm’s product on nuclear subs, but…” he smiles, perhaps imagining the kind of marine life one could see from a Trident sub, “it was just menu preparation – although of course, that’s classified, too!”   

Nevertheless, the experience taught Dan an important lesson for legal matters, in which smooth process is paramount but content is confidential.  “The availability of TeamConnect Legal Hold tracking information is exciting,” Dan says enthusiastically. “It’s easily digestible because the system can interrogate other systems to find out, say, what percentage of personnel have received certain training,” and then, “whether all the non-compliant employees are in the Cleveland office – nothing against Cleveland, other than who wants to scuba dive in Lake Erie?”  

TeamConnect Legal Hold is also exciting “because it’s extensible,” he says.  “Like all Mitratech products, TeamConnect Legal Hold is a complete application that works as delivered, but our customers can configure the behavior of the application to meet new requirements while preserving the upgradability of the application. This truly is Mitratech’s distinctive competence.” 

But most important for solving complex systems needs for the world’s largest companies?  Availability.  “Mitratech helped a major pharmaceutical company get up, running, and rolled out in 45 days,” he says, “because our product delivered on the core requirements.  Once up and running, the customer enhanced and modified the solution through phases to where that company is now one of our most advanced customers.” 

The secret?  In TeamConnect Legal Hold as in life, says Dan Welch, “Don’t try to boil the ocean.”