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66 PCB007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2019 Feature Interview by Barry Matties, Nolan Johnson, and Patty Goldman I-CONNECT007 Matt Stevenson, director of marketing at Sunstone Circuits, discusses investments into their website, the impact of moving to online quoting and ordering, and the importance of strategic staffing. Nolan Johnson: Sunstone is pretty good at on- line ordering and doing quotes over the inter- net. As you move closer into this sort of con- versation, do you expect to see some changes in how you're interacting with your customers on the web? Matt Stevenson: Yes, with everything we do on a daily and weekly basis. We try to add features to the website to allow people to do more. With that being said, we're trying to at least maintain the level of interactions where they want a customized quote. By adding more to the website, we will hopefully remove some of the burdens on the quoting team. As we add these other higher technology requirements, that burden will get shifted back to those peo- ple. We're hoping to maintain that at a man- ageable level, but we do expect there to be some definite spikes and increases as we add it to the website and our internal quiver. Barry Matties: I'm glad you brought that up, Nolan. I was thinking along the same lines. We're not looking for you to give away any strategies that you feel incorporate your stra- tegic advantage, but could you talk about your strategy with the website? That's a very well- known strategy for you, Advanced Circuits, and a few other companies that have embraced the online ordering process. We're hearing out in the industry that that strategy, while it has a stronghold, is not as strong as it previously was, and that people want more of the market- ing relationship with their suppliers. Stevenson: No problem. Approximately 20 years ago, Sunstone (at the time, ECD) was one of the first to be on the internet quoting and ordering of circuit boards as PCBExpress. We went all in with that strategy and devel- oped our business model around it. It was Matt Stevenson Discusses Online Quoting and Ordering