Trident trinity spears ahead with McGorian

Few women have scaled any heights of channel leadership in Australia. Most female staff in IT businesses muddle around in the marketing, human resources, administration and other ‘helpmeet’ areas.

Those job categories, while important, do not carry the kudos of public-facing, flagship roles such as general manager or chief executive.

That said, some women have managed to combine roles in more ‘traditional’ female areas such as sales with garnering some real power while still relatively young.

Katie McGorian, the 35-year-old sales director of Melbourne integrator Trident Computer Services, is one of those women.

Trident, as the name suggests, has three-pronged ownership. All three owners -- McGorian, Alex Freiberg and sole remaining company founder Mark Rak -- share decision-making and control duties. "Trident was started about 22 years ago, and two of the original owners have now retired," McGorian says.

McGorian -- a long term employee -- was offered a part-ownership of Trident three years ago in a plan to get the company running harder despite difficult economic times. She bought into the company in exchange for a percentage of her sales commission over a number of years. She did not have to pay any money up front.

Three years ago, Trident was struggling as margins began rapidly shrinking industry-wide. "Ten years ago, you used to be able to make $1500 on a notebook. These days, you’re lucky to make five percent,’ she says.

The company initially specialised in sales and support for customised accounting systems, NEC printers and PCs, but with the changes in the industry, has extended into system integration and managed services with an eye to communications, networking, database development and CRM.

"We’ve a big technical department. Now, we’re looking a little further, into managed services and voice and data integration," McGorian says.

Trident has also formed strong authorised partnerships with HP and Acer to add to its long-standing NEC deal. "Trident is in a very lucky position at the moment," she adds. "People are increasingly turning to smaller family companies. There are things a large manufacturer can’t do."

McGorian’s route to part-ownership of a successful channel company at 35 has not been typical. Two years after high school, she enrolled in university to study for a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in feminist film theory. She got halfway through before realising there were not many jobs in that area, she says, and swapping across to multimedia design.