#25: Microsoft Dynamics Partner of the Year for 2017 – Tribridge a DXC Company, with Tony DiBenedetto.

On this week's 25th episode of the Ultimate Guide to Partnering, my guest is Tony DiBenedetto, the Chairman, CEO and Co-founder of Tribridge, a DXC company. Tribridge recently won Microsoft's highest honor as the 2017 Dynamics Partner of the Year. Several of my friends in the industry recommended Tony as an interview guest and he didn't disappoint.

Tony's career is pretty amazing. A few highlights include 30 years of experience in the technology industry, the recipient of numerous leadership awards, including the Ernst & Young Florida Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and induction in the Florida State University College of Business Hall of Fame. Recently CRN Magazine ranked him among the top 25 technology disruptors in the country.

Tony co-founded Tribridge in 1998 and led the company through the successful acquisition and integration of several companies, resulting in a compounded annual growth rate of over 40% each year. Under his guidance, Tribridge has grown from a start-up to one of the leading technology companies in the United States and Microsoft Dynamics Partner of the Year status.

Tony and I had a really great conversation on Tribridge's journey to premier status with Microsoft, some of Tribridge's successful solution areas, where he sees the business moving forward now as part of DXC, his secret sauce in partnering with Microsoft and his professional journey.

You can view the full transcript of the interview in the show notes below. You can also subscribe on iTunes , Google Play, Player FM, other Android podcast players.

As with each of my interviews and articles, I appreciate your feedback. You can reach me on Linked In or on email at [email protected]. You can also review this podcast by going to iTunes and searching “Ultimate Guide to Partnering” and clicking on the album art and hitting the ratings tab. This helps others find the podcast.

Thank you for following and listening.

I hope you enjoy this episode!

Vince Menzione

Transcript of the interview

Vince                      Tony, I want to welcome you to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you here on our podcasts. Tribridge has been a premier Microsoft Dynamics Partner for quite some time, award-winning partner and your organization has done some great work. In fact one of our previous guests, Mike Bat, on episode four, specifically discussed the success with Tribridge in opening up new markets in the government space. So it's an exciting time for you, given the firm's recent acquisition by DXC and your 2017 award for Partner of the Year, so I'm so excited to have you, welcome to the podcast.

Tony D:               Vince, it's great to be here and appreciate to have the time today.

Vince M:             So I want to dive right in and have a lot of questions here to ask about you and the business so why don't we just start off with you're the CEO and co-founder of Tribridge and for our listeners I thought it would be great if you could take them through the genesis of the business from its founding and what were the early days like, your guiding principles when you started so could you do that?

Tony D:               Sure, at the time I was a partner at Arthur Andersen in the business consulting division and to be honest with you, I just year after year had a thirst for starting my own company. I had started a couple companies early in my career at Andersen and I was at that point where I knew I was going to lead. It was just a question of what.

It first started with having just some meetings at my house, where me and a couple of friends would get together and just talk about what businesses we wanted to build. We came up with crazy ideas as you might expect, some were technology and some were like a bar across from the Tampa Bay Bucs Stadium and that had a series of getting together with other entrepreneurs led to us forming Tribridge. In fact, we started our first business plan was really a mid-market, over-the-web CRM solution.