Next-Gen Goals

REVIEW SUMMARY
Company. DataComm Networks Inc.
Industry. Information technology organization
Key. Harnessing the latest equipment for businesses of all sizes.

Think about the fact that the technology in your cell phone filled entire rooms only a few decades ago, and you get a pretty good idea how much DataComm Networks Inc. has advanced over the last 25 years.

Brian Boyer is old enough to remember how those old computers with the oversized cables and clamps used to work, and Travis Norris is from the generation that caught the tech wave at its crest.

Boyer, the 42-year-old president and CEO, spent roughly 20 years as a salesman for the company his father co-founded back in the days when NCR was a more popular tech brand than Microsoft and Apple's main marketable product was called Macintosh.

“They were building mainframes at 1,200 bps. I remember selling 4,800-baud modems,” he says, speaking in terms that anyone born since 1990 might not comprehend.

Rather than reminiscing too much, however, Boyer and Norris would prefer to talk about exploring new possibilities for the information technology company, pushing annual sales beyond the $10-million mark and expanding beyond longtime client groups. Their latest topic of excitement is something called telephony integration, which makes the networking of voice transmissions over computers as simple and seamless as moving huge volumes of data in a matter of seconds.

Bruce Boyer and Jim Hopstetter launched DataComm in 1984 after spending their earlier careers with NCR Corp., which still makes machines for financial institutions. Their prior relationships helped DataComm build a niche market with banks that continues to today.

“Financial institutions are still the lifeblood of our company,” the younger Boyer says, “but now we want to be able to extend to new verticals such as healthcare and manufacturing.”
Even after buying out DataComm's founders in 2008 for an undisclosed price, cousins Boyer and Norris appreciate what they have inherited. “The level of trust that we have acquired in that time is immense,” Boyer says. “We have not skipped a beat since.”

Upgrading for growth
Now with 38 employees operating within the same 25,000-square-foot building at 6801 N. 54th St. that it has occupied for the past decade, tucked away in an industrial park on the east side of Tampa, DataComm is upgrading its plans for growth.

While the company's previous owners were satisfied maintaining annual sales around $4.5 million, the new owners were aiming at $7 million before the recession took its toll on last year's results. Boyer is already thinking bigger, aiming for $10 million in 2011 and $15 million in 2012.

“We've never stopped growing and we've continued the tooling needed to keep going forward,” he says. “We're still a small business, but we don't think that way.”

“We can't think that way,” adds Norris, the company's 27-year-old vice president and chief financial officer. “Our customers wouldn't be satisfied with that.”

The new principals are particularly proud of the fact that DataComm has achieved what is called SAS 70 Type II certification — a high rating under the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' Statement on Auditing Standards, which came in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals in 2002. In addition to allowing financial institutions to meet their own internal control requirements, it can be extended to healthcare and manufacturing firms for similar audits, Boyer says.

“We've done the auditing they need to have to be compliant with federal rules,” he says, noting that the certification is already attracting service requests from more than 160 potential customers.

DataComm's goal is to be a one-stop provider for all business IT needs, whether they involve voice/data integration, secure data storage or off-site disaster recovery systems, Norris says. It wants to be able to provide all aspects of business continuity for all sizes of firms so they do not have to arrange their own back-end facilities.

Because technology has advanced to the point that bigger capacity fits into smaller machines, DataComm has sufficient space to provide to customers without having to expand its physical building. Cages designed to securely hold important computer equipment are currently empty but can be filled as needed, sort of like the empty slots that commonly come with computers to allow for installation of extra memory.

DataComm's extra warehouse space is now being used for storage of an electric car that is outfitted to demonstrate its telephony integration capabilities, with the back hatch outfitted with the necessary equipment. The car fits nicely within a booth at a trade show, Boyer notes.

Employees as family
One old-school aspect of the company that the owners vow never to abandon is the way it treats its employees, some of which have been around almost as long as the company itself. DataComm invests between $3,000 and $5,000 each month in worker perks such as gift cards, bonuses and raises based on performance.

“You should treat your employees well, even when times aren't well,” says Norris, who began working at DataComm in his teen years. He points out that employees become like family members after awhile because they sometimes spend more time working together than they may with their real families.

“We want to continue with the legacy we have been left with,” Boyer says, pointing to the company credo: Promises Made, Promises Kept, No Excuses.

The average tenure of DataComm employees is 10 years, which means the company would rather hire seasoned IT veterans than graduates fresh out of tech school. DataComm promotes what it calls an “exceptional team” of technicians and consultants certified in Microsoft, Novell and Citrix solutions, along with its partnership with Sunnyvale, Calif.-based ShoreTel Inc. as its leading seller of telephony integration equipment in Florida.

“This is not a training ground or a turnstile operation,” Boyer says. “We want employees who are going to be here for a long, long time.”

At the same time, he wants to keep DataComm at a manageable size to continue to provide solid customer service. He says last year was a good time for DataComm to be able to enhance some of its newer service offerings, including offsite data storage and e-mail encryption.

“Instead of just waiting for the economy to get better, we chose to do something about it,” he says. “I believe the economy is what you choose for it to be.”

Norris notes that recurring revenue is more important to the future success of the company than trying to grow by leaps: “We're not grasshoppers, we're ants.”