At Titan Cloud, nothing is more important to us than our customers; their success is our success. To ensure that each receives the personal attention, technical guidance, and positive experience they deserve, we rely on our Manager of Client Support, Jordon Sendecke.  

The Beginning: Chicago to Nashville

Jordon recently celebrated seven years with Titan Cloud. Not bad for someone who started with the company on a whim and only saw himself staying in Tennessee for a year.  

“I was in college when I heard from a buddy of mine about an open call center position at JMM Global. I got the job and stayed in that role for a few years, up until Titan Cloud acquired JMM,” says the Chicago native. “At that point Titan asked if I’d be interested in staying with the company and invited me down to Franklin to check out the area. I’d never lived outside of Chicago, so I thought why not? I’ll give it a year. Two years later I bought my house.” 

During that time, Jordon’s career grew within the company. His call center role led to an opportunity as the customer care subject matter expert for the team; he then moved into an account manager position. Today, Jordon is Titan Cloud’s Manager of Client Support, a job he says is equal parts project management and people management.  

“I have a team of eight support specialists. We work with customers on how to make the software work best for them, address questions, and take on some special projects,” he says. “Having started out answering phones, I learned a lot about the industry and what types of issues come up. That experience has helped me understand the needs of our customers today.” 

Serving customers and building a team.

While growing his career with Titan Cloud, the only thing Jordon says he values as much as client success is helping nurture the success of his teammates.  

“The most satisfying thing about my job is supporting my team. Recently, one of our staff members was on a call with a client and wasn’t sure how to help with a particular issue. I showed her in real time, the customer was thrilled, and she got great feedback,” he says. “She and I went over all of it later so she fully understood what we had done. Next time she’ll be good to go. That’s what I want: To see the people on my team, notice their hard work, support them, and help them get to where I am—or to surpass me!”

Enjoying Tennessee life 

Outside of work, Jordon can often be found playing with his dogs, golfing with friends, or traveling to the midwest to visit family with his fiancée Taylor, a NICU nurse who works at a hospital in Nashville. The two of them also like to golf together, and recently tried their hand at gardening, something they’ll be working on again this spring. 

Moving away from home, buying a house, growing in his profession, and now planning a wedding—Jordon has hit several milestones during his time with Titan Cloud. He looks back on all of it with gratitude. 

“I’ve always seen my career trajectory a certain way, and it’s going exactly how I want it to. Without Titan, I may not have ended up where I wanted to be professionally,” he says. “It’s a really good company and I just love working for them.” 

Here at Titan Cloud, we know that we are only as good as our people. Luckily, we have some of the best people around! Our team has decades of experience working with all types of businesses, from major enterprise companies to independent operators. What they all have in common is helping these businesses set records year after year as the best one yet.

One of the best in the industry is Jeff Sexten, our VP of Solutions Consulting. He’s worked in compliance for over 28 years, with the last decade working for fleet companies and now he brings that expertise to Titan Cloud, helping our customers and soon-to-be customers understand how they can use our product to solve their problems. As someone who’s also been a Titan Cloud user for 10 years, bringing Jeff onto our team was a no-brainer.

Get to know Jeff by reading the interview below and you’ll understand why we’re so glad to have him on board. 

Tell us what you do in your work for Titan Cloud.

I am currently the VP of Solutions Consulting for Titan, which basically means I’m a utility player. I mainly work with our Sales leaders developing business cases for potential customers and with our customer success team ensuring our customers are using the software to the best of their abilities. I help them create processes and find solutions so they work more efficiently. I also work on a number of special projects.

When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I grew up on a farm and when I was little, I wanted to be a farmer and own my own combine.

While not at work, you can find me:

I would like to say on the golf course, but golfing has taken a backseat in my spare time the past few years. In reality, you can find me doing DIY house projects and watching sports.

Why did you choose to work at Titan Cloud?

I was a decade-long user of Titan Cloud and I’ve always said that the people at Titan Cloud are awesome to work with. When an opportunity came up to make a career shift, I didn’t hesitate. Knowing the quality of people working at Titan Cloud, I knew it’d be a good place to work.

What is your favorite part of your current role?

As you can maybe guess, I would say my favorite part is working with the various Titan Cloud team members, but I also enjoy helping others find solutions to their problems.

What is your favorite part of working in environmental compliance?

I love knowing that what I’m doing will have an impact on future generations.

What do you think is the most exciting thing happening in environmental compliance today?

It’s easily the investments being made to combat the negative impacts of climate change. From the Government, private industry, and personal investments, the industry is being changed for the better.

What advice would you offer someone wanting a career in environmental?

This is a very big industry, so don’t narrow your focus and start thinking there’s only one way to do something. Use data to solve problems and be open for collaboration. 

Wrap up

If you want to get in touch with Jeff, you can schedule a meeting.

Brent Puzak has worked for convenience stores for over two decades. During that time, he learned first-hand about the challenges facing each department. So we brought him in to share his perspective on how teams of all sizes can scale their operations amidst increasing regulations. 

Read his take below.

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During my time working for convenience stores, I’ve learned that Compliance Managers face unique challenges. They need to answer complex questions and focus on the day-to-day tasks necessary to follow state and federal regulations. Finding that balance between increasing revenue while meeting the needs of stakeholders, regulators, and public health is hard.

The role of the Director and Compliance Manager is complex. Their job is three-fold:

1. Keeping stores and tanks operational while taking the pressure off store personnel. 
2. Find solutions for operators.
3. Ensure their actions comply fully with all regulations.

My tenure with convenience stores gave me a 360-degree view of these segments: employees, operators, and regulators. It allowed me to work with massive amounts of data and interpret it from many perspectives in a way that minimized disruption.

Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way.

How do regulations create challenges for compliance teams?

The biggest challenge facing the industry over the last several years is the updated underground storage tank (UST) regulations. The 2005 Energy Policy Act created a greater focus on compliance for the c-store industry. The new double-wall requirements have added a layer of complexity for compliance teams.

Because of this, convenience store owners now need to turn their attention to a new problem: How can they better manage increasing regulations? Their old ways of managing data and performing inspections are no longer sustainable. These new requirements go beyond the scope of what your average compliance manager can handle manually. 

For example, before the 2005 Energy Policy Act, a lot of people were using SIR and CSLD for their method of release detection. Then interstitial monitoring became a rule. There are more sensors in the storage tanks pulling more data than ever before and stores need to collect that data on an ongoing basis.

People who managed their data on Excel spreadsheets struggled to keep up with the workload. A lot of people looked for systems to help them better manage their business to keep pace with their growth. As you can imagine, using remote technology to access, store, and check data is far easier than checking gauges manually and sorting every spreadsheet by hand. It makes a compliance manager’s job much easier, much cheaper, and much more effective.

Because of its convenience and functionality, we’ve seen software evolve from a nice-to-have to a critical need in the industry.

How do c-store compliance teams solve these challenges?

Owners and operators have had to figure out how to manage the firehose of data. They’ve realized that spreadsheets, which they’d been using for years, weren’t going to cut it. An increase in compliance requirements means more testing and inspections. And more scrutiny means finding more issues to resolve. 

The amount of data required to meet regulations has almost tripled now that the 2005 Energy Policy Act is in place. These new requirements have placed an extra burden on compliance staff and organizations as a whole. Depending on the types of systems in operation, periodic testing and release detection must be completed to ensure overall system integrity, while monthly visual inspections ensure that irregular operating conditions are caught to minimize and prevent impacts to the environment. Many of these tests and inspections are new requirements and add additional visibility and tracking to each site.

In fact, some customers have seen an increase of 30,000 or more component tests and inspections over a two to three-year period! 

Store owners want to remain compliant, but they need help to scale at this order of magnitude. It is humanly impossible to track such an enormous amount of data without some tracking system in place. Operators need to find platforms that allow them to manage compliance aspects more effectively; the data needs to be housed somewhere, and ideally someplace that’s easy to navigate and sort.

Customers are looking to cloud technology for its vast storage capabilities. Cloud software allows them to access data remotely from anywhere and share it more globally. This flexibility gives them visibility to critical compliance information and more control over the way people work.

Once compliance teams have access to a central source of truth and have experienced first-hand the value of technology, they embrace digital transformation.

Wrap up

In my experience, it’s important to have a system in place that gives me visibility into all the data. I want to make sure I’m not missing anything that regulators need and I want a way to report on compliance efficiently.

At my last company, using Titan’s software allowed me to do that. Today, as a Titan team member, I help other convenience stores transform how they handle their mountain of data. 

Best of all, the technology will continue to evolve and grow as regulations do. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this industry–regulations tend to only increase.