Who We Are

We started in 1999 writing software for manufacturers whose best ideas did not fit the off-the-shelf systems they were told to buy. That is still the work. Whether the tool is a custom application, a cloud migration, or an AI workflow, we begin with your business and build toward it, not from a template we used on the last client.

We are based in Tulsa and we work where our clients are: Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Northwest Arkansas, and Kansas City. We call it localshoring, the reach of a larger firm with a team that shares your time zone, shows up on site, and stays accountable for what we deliver.

How we work comes from what we believe. SEQTEK runs on grace and trust, high expectations held in a supportive environment, and a habit of asking one question on every project: is this actually solving the business problem? When the answer is yes, our clients get more efficient, more productive, and more profitable. That is the scorecard that counts.

The name: Sequoyah

SEQTEK started life as Sequoyah Technologies. We shortened the name for a world that skims, but the original is the one that carries the meaning, and it is worth telling.

Sequoyah was a Cherokee silversmith, born around 1770. In the early 1800s he set out to do something no one had done alone: give his people a way to write their own language. He did not borrow the rules of English or bend Cherokee to fit an alphabet built for another tongue. He listened to how Cherokee was actually spoken, broke it into its real syllables, and designed a set of symbols that fit the language as it already was.

He fit the symbols to the language, not the language to the symbols.

It worked. In a few short years the Cherokee Nation went from no written language to widespread literacy. People taught one another. They printed a newspaper. Ideas that had only ever lived in the air could now be written down, repeated exactly, and carried anywhere. One person designed a system, and it became something an entire nation could use.

That is the idea we are named for. The easy thing in technology is to make people change to fit the tool. We try to do what Sequoyah did and build the tool to fit the people. We learn how your business actually works, the part that makes you good at what you do, and we shape technology around it. Done right, the result is the same: the way you work gets written down, made repeatable, and shared across your whole organization, without losing what made it yours.

The quill in our logo is a nod to that writing system. And to be clear about it: we are a non-tribal firm. We took our name from Sequoyah, an Oklahoman who solved an impossible problem with patience and respect for how things already were, and we honor his legacy by building systems that make people more capable.

Built on a gap nobody else would fix

SEQTEK begins in Tulsa, with a developer who could not stop noticing the same problem.

Hank Haines was leading a division at CIMCASE International, a consulting firm that sold and installed enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems for manufacturers. The clients were successful, often companies in the $1 to $3 billion range. They were not multinationals, though, and they did not get to set the rules. What made each of them valuable was usually the 10 to 20 percent of their operation that did not fit a standard ERP, the unique process that won them customers or let them deliver at a better price.

The software did not care. An ERP would tell a company to change its process to match the system. If the company pushed back and customized the system instead, it ended up with expensive software it could not maintain and could not upgrade through the next version. Either way, the thing that made the company special got sanded off.

Working with the early web showed Hank the answer. Instead of forcing a company to change, SEQTEK would write software that integrated with the ERP and delivered the unique 10 to 20 percent over the browser, with updates that reached everyone the moment they shipped. SEQTEK was founded on August 29, 1999. Within a year it had grown past 20 people, with work in Houston, Salt Lake City, and Austin.

Through the bust, a different foundation

Then the dot-com bust hit. Four contracts were cancelled in a single month. SEQTEK laid off around 20 people. The company survived on the strength of its customer relationships, but the experience changed Hank.

He had wrapped his identity in the business, and nearly losing it put him on his knees. Lost, he opened a Bible and started reading, and what he read did not describe him. On the Thursday before Good Friday, in a parking lot, Hank prayed and gave his life to Christ. He also gave the company away. He handed the business to God and said it plainly: this is yours, I will steward it, keep it or don’t, it is yours to do what you will.

That is not a footnote at SEQTEK. It is the foundation. It is where the culture comes from: grace and trust, high expectations held in a supportive environment, the discipline of doing the right thing even when it costs something, and a steady focus on how you respond when you get it wrong.