New SII chief operating officer puts the accent on customers
DES MOINES, Iowa -- If Erika Williams had chosen medicine instead of computers, she would have had the perfect bedside manner.

A diminutive woman with a wide smile and a presence that radiates confidence while inviting contact, Williams brings to System Integrators a history of trying to do things right -- and succeeding.

Her first statement to SII customers stunned them.

"I'm not afraid to say 'I don't know,'" Williams told the System Integrators Systems Users Group in a question-and-answer session at its fall meeting, a statement that ran counter to most people's experience in dealing with SII, long noted for selling great products with a lousy attitude.

A bit later, she illustrated the magnitude of change at SII when she told the group she believed in "a novel concept -- listen to your customers."

In the Q&A talk, SII's breakfast with users and an interview, Williams laid out her expectations for SII -- which she had acted on feverishly in just six weeks with the company.

She joined SII after 17 years at Amdahl Corp., which recruited her while she was getting a master's of business administration at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- on top of her bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science, conferred by Boston College.

At the computer and software maker, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., Williams started as corporate program assistant to the vice president of engineering, moved up to direct 120 people engaged in product software and diagnostics, then directed the $2 billion mainframe product business.

She left Amdahl as senior vice president and general manager of the storage systems division, with revenues of $350 million and a 700-person staff.

Stepping into a top post at a business that this year expects to top $42 million in sales and add 25 people to its current payroll of 325, Williams became instantly responsible for SII's day-to-day operations and just as quickly took charge, using "action items," talking of "mandates" and "charging" people with tasks to pursue SII's major new goal: reconnecting with its customers.

"We want to get back to the position of helping our customers be the premiere providers of information in their community," said the Bolivian-born Williams, who attributes the accent "people say I have" to having learned English at German schools in her South American homeland.

Noting that it's "publishing now, on-line tomorrow," Williams said, "we want to be there with them -- a little ahead of them, if you will."

During the users group sessions, she frequently prodded customers to provide feedback, even asking the group to consider allowing SII to observe -- "not participate, not argue, just listen" -- roundtables that traditionally are flaming bitch sessions closed to SII.

Her "gauges of success" include revenue, customer satisfaction, profitability, product quality, timeliness of products -- and employee satisfaction.

"We have very bright, talented folks and we want to keep them," she said. (At least nine people who had left SII earlier this year have returned, including Styl guru Frank Pazoureck.)

Having worked at Amdahl on a project that "taught us quality as a religion," Williams was not sanguine about SII's problems with products that almost don't quite work. Software quality, she said, has two parts: