About Compass Apex Technologies

Compass Apex Technologies is a technology advisory firm for small businesses in the Triangle and surrounding areas. We help owner-operators make good technology decisions without having to become technology experts themselves.

The Problem We Solve

Small businesses get the worst of both worlds when it comes to technology. Too small to justify a full-time IT director, too complex to run on guesswork and whoever’s nephew is good with computers. So the decisions get made by whoever’s selling hardest that week — and the bills quietly grow.

We’re the alternative: an experienced technology leader on your side of the table, at a fraction of what one costs full time.

How We Work

1. Assess — a plain-English look at what you actually have and use.
2. Recommend — clear options, real trade-offs, no jargon.
3. Handle it — we manage the vendors and the implementation so you don’t have to.

Bob Robinson, Principal

Bob has spent 35 years in technology — selling it, supporting it, implementing it, and running it. That combination is unusual. Most technology consultants have never carried a quota, and most salespeople have never administered the systems they sold.

Most recently he served as Vice President of Information Technology for a mortgage lender, leading the company’s highest-priority technology initiatives and investments. That’s the perspective he brings to a ten-person practice: the same rigor a large company applies to its technology decisions, sized and priced for a business that doesn’t have an IT department.

He holds an MBA from the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and a BS in Mechanical Engineering, with honors, from NC State. Based in Apex, North Carolina.

Experience That Started Where You Are

He’s owned a small business. From 2005 to 2011, Bob started, ran, and grew a profitable small business of his own — named Franchise of the Year in 2006 after better than doubling year over year. He served as a founding member of the franchisor’s technology advisory panel, consulting on technology across the network, and replaced his own company’s paper-based order process with a web-based system that cut input time and improved accuracy. He has sat in the owner’s chair, making technology decisions without an IT department to lean on.

He’s advised them. For three years afterward he consulted independently for small businesses — networks, hardware, cloud software, websites, and the processes running on top of them. One of those clients eventually hired him.

And he’s scaled one. That client was a mortgage lender with seven branches. Bob joined as its first IT hire and built the technology function from one person — himself — into a department of eight, as the company grew to 40 branches and more than 200 employees. He finished as Vice President of Information Technology.

That meant doing the work, not just directing it. Moving the company off an aging on-site phone system to a cloud-based one. Consolidating software licensing that had sprawled across departments. Replacing servers, standardizing desktops and laptops, and building out networks at roughly 20 locations on modern cloud-managed equipment — including a second internet provider so a single outage couldn’t stop business. When headquarters expanded into three new suites, he designed the buildout and ran the cable himself.

It also meant serving as lead administrator for the company’s loan origination platform, rewriting the processes and business rules around it so the software matched how the business actually worked — while monthly loan volume grew from $8 million to more than $100 million.

So when we tell you a phone migration is more straightforward than it sounds, or that your licensing is bloated, or that your network needs attention before you add headcount — it’s because we’ve done it. At a company the size of yours. While it was growing as fast as yours.

What You Can Expect

• A trusted advisor, not a salesperson. If the answer is “keep what you have,” we’ll tell you that.
• One point of contact. We manage the vendors, contracts, and projects. You talk to us.
• Enterprise experience, practice-sized. Decades of technology leadership at small-business scale and small-business pricing.
• Local and accountable. Based in Apex, serving the Triangle and surrounding areas — including Pittsboro, Siler City, Sanford, and Southern Pines.