Management Motivations is a new series of articles by Quectel’s senior executives that explores their management styles, approaches to the challenges of further developing the company and what drives them to lead and succeed.

Alexander Bufalino, VP Marketing

Addressing the challenges of 2020 makes everyone stronger for 2021 – and beyond

2020 has been the most unusual of years and everyone has battled to combat the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The technology industry has suffered too, facing the same challenges of protecting its workers, serving its customers and trying its best to continue business as normal. Quectel feels very fortunate that we and our people have endured only limited impacts with our research and development continuing largely uninterrupted and our teams adapting to new ways of supporting our customers.

We have grown this year against all competitors so, in spite of the crisis, we have improved our market share. We’ve been able to do this because we’re a global, lean and highly customer-oriented company that has built resilience and a structure in previous years. We have therefore been able to continue to serve clients across our portfolio with support, operational help and managerial input in order to guarantee their success.

Naturally, the Internet of Things in general has felt the negative effects of the virus and estimates such as ABI Research’s that IoT will have added 18% fewer IoT devices this year than previously projected is a headline indicator of the damage done. However, it is not all doom and gloom. I believe that IoT and the technology industry has truly demonstrated its value during the crisis.

We’ve seen technology enable people to stay home and work safely, but we’ve also seen those that have to be present in the workplace have their safety enhanced by connected devices that track and trace their movements and potential exposure to the virus. I’m proud that Quectel modules have been deployed in several of these types of solutions and that our experts have kept up the development momentum to ensure our modules can help in initiatives such as enabling connectivity for home education.

In addition, with by far the largest group of engineers in the IoT modules market and the largest FAE team in the industry, we’ve been able to show our commitment to our customers. In fact, while others are releasing people, we have kept on hiring to further strengthen the company and improve our support and service for customers.

Quectel has operations across the globe and many thousands of customers so we have a full understanding of how the pandemic is affecting people all over the world. Different areas have experienced different levels of impact but we all have the same goals in common, and those are to keep safe but also to keep working and progressing in our lives.

The pandemic, with the increased adoption of cloud computing and the utilization of connectivity to enable safe spaces to work, has revealed the best of what technology has to offer. The situation would be very different if it had happened five years earlier. I think we have learned this year that our expected lifestyle is fragile but that with effort and resources, innovation can protect us and, in fact, enhance our lives.

Quectel has taken this attitude and our innovation has seen our performance improve in spite of the pandemic. This is partly because smart connectivity is inevitably a high growth market, but also because our modules are fundamental to digitalized business of all types. In some markets, the pandemic has even accelerated adoption, while in others 2020 has been a small pause and we foresee delayed demand returning next year.

That in itself will present challenges for companies as they struggle to address 2020’s expected demand alongside 2021’s actual demands. With vaccines rolling out across the world, the situation looks far more positive for 2021 and I believe the adaptations industries have made this year will place everyone in a good position for success.

In 2021 we will introduce new products and services such as antennas, cloud and connectivity offerings to provide our customers with a better and enhanced experience. They will be able to enjoy more and more building blocks from Quectel which will enable them to achieve higher reliability, enhanced quality and quicker time to market by sourcing from only one partner vendor and, by doing so, they will beat their competition.

For Quectel, we’ll continue our normal mode of operation. Some of our people will be isolating and there will be more working from home but we will be serving our customers safely and ensuring everyone is protected. We’re looking forward to getting back to addressing the normal challenges of enabling connectivity for the hyper-connected world and collaborating with customers as deployments accelerate into the millions of devices and IoT delivers on its promise to build a smarter world.