If you pause to consider the growth of HCSS over the past 37 years, it’s absolutely staggering. With over 70,000 unique users today, HCSS has become a household name among those in heavy construction, providing a remarkable solution in the technology sector for the many companies that are building North America’s ever-evolving infrastructure.
With so many companies continuing to migrate to new digital solutions in lieu of paper’s numerous inefficiencies, HCSS isn’t slowing down any time soon. To help more and more companies accelerate their performance, the executive team at HCSS sought out a new Chief Revenue Officer in Lauren Chacon, who the company could not possibly be more excited to introduce.
Bringing a Wealth of Knowledge & Experience
Before joining HCSS last month, Lauren put her B.A. in Economics from the University of Massachusetts to use within numerous organizations over a storied career spanning nearly 30 years. Most recently, she served as Senior Vice President of Operations at Aura Software, a digital security company in her hometown of Boston, Massachusetts.
Prior to Aura, Lauren was instrumental in growing the email marketing company Constant Contact as Chief Sales Officer. During her tenure there, she instilled the team with a mission of winning, and accountability, and created a structure to steadily improve performance.
Lauren even played a crucial role in the reigning days of tech giant Monster.com as SVP of Media and Global Account Sales, managing around 200 employees and overseeing almost half a billion in annual accounts. Prior to this experience, she gained a different perspective in Latin America working for Star Media, taking their operational sales from nothing to approximately $50 million.
Also vital to note is that during a time of digital transformation, Lauren grew a new line of revenue for The New York Times Company as the first digital sales executive for The Boston Globe and eventually as VP of Advertising. To put her legacy at the paper into perspective, Netscape and AltaVista were still the browsers of choice with Google yet to come along. The news was just moving online, and Lauren helped transform their digital sales department from $0 annually to a $40 million business unit.
Why Join HCSS?
Not being a direct replacement to any executive, the role of Chief Revenue Officer has been created specifically for Lauren Chacon, and she will report directly to CEO and President, Steve McGough.
Holding so much experience and never backing down from a challenge, Lauren is open about why she chose to join HCSS.
“I know where I perform best and that’s when I’m with the right company, team and with an amazing product,” Lauren states. “I very much feel that way about HCSS. This is something special.”
Citing how so many of the roads and bridges she drives on daily were constructed by HCSS customers with the help of HCSS software, she quickly fell in love with the mission of the company – and that’s playing an important role in building America. Getting the opportunity to carry on that mission was too appealing to pass up.
“Striving to make sure our customers are armed with the right product and the right solution is my job,” Lauren adds. “The voice of the customer is exceptionally important to me. With that mission in mind, if we have that voice, we’ll make HCSS a better company and a better partner.”
This overall philosophy can best be described as customer-centric, always having their most beneficial interests top of mind.
“Nobody likes to be sold to,” Lauren laughs. “I hate being sold to, but if it’s something I need that’s going to make my life better, I want that product to be available to me. That’s another thing that attracted me to HCSS. We are fortunate to have an amazing suite of products.”
Unexpected Leadership Lessons
Having a sister who lives in London, it was only natural that visiting her there would reinforce Lauren’s longstanding love and appreciation for English gardens. Over the past few years, she decided to undergo a massive project of installing a huge perennial border along the front of her Boston home.
“The perennial border is interesting,” Lauren says. “The trick to make it ‘wow!’ is you want something blooming at all times. Being in New England, it’s not like you just put a bunch of annuals in. There’s a lot of process and planning for when the different plants and blooms are going to be firing and it requires a lot of pruning along the way.”
Gardening is a phenomenal way for Lauren to get outside and decompress, and the most rewarding feedback she ever got was from a woman seeing her garden and automatically assuming she must work at a nursery to have fine-tuned something so elaborate. As an ongoing process, the attention to detail and the patience required are a direct parallel to how Lauren ensures success.
“In terms of how I think about leading a team and growing an organization, there are a lot of seeds we have to plant today that are going to be blooming later. They might not give you the show you want right now, but months from now, it will pay off.”
Being a regular Boston Marathon participant, Lauren’s other favorite hobby is running. The value there is transparent, just like Lauren herself always is.
“Unless you’re an extraordinary athlete, which I’m not,” she jokes, “there’s no shortcutting it. You do the work and you run the marathon, or you don't do the work and you don't run the marathon.”
Staying Positive
Everyone faces varying degrees of adversity in life, and if there’s one parting message Lauren wants to share, it’s that we all have the ability to reimagine our own stories.
“How one manages that narrative in one’s life is really important,” she says. “My father faced a lot of tough stuff in his life, but he was endlessly optimistic and he was always kind. Finding that optimism and finding that kindness in any situation just helps me stay positive.”
If you enjoyed reading about new CRO Lauren Chacon and would like additional material about the mission behind the company, including the friendly faces who occupy fellow leadership roles, we encourage you to learn more about HCSS.
