Another gear

Two fresh moves at Datum Corp., an IT services firm with a multifaceted business model, illustrate how fast the company has recently expanded — and the pace of growth to come.

One move is more of a prediction: Datum CEO Tom Frost says the firm aims to hire a full-time, in-house training coordinator by early 2015.

Based out of an office in a Lakewood Ranch corporate park, Datum has about 80 employees, up from 60 in the middle of 2013, and has multiple openings in several departments. The company utilizes a technology as a service model, where it does everything from IT to software consulting for a monthly fee. Datum lays cable and fiber optic lines for clients, and it also develops and installs point-of-sale systems. The firm, with clients that include First Watch, Beef 'O' Brady's and Roy's Hawaiian Fusion, performs IT services in nearly 3,500 client locations that support more than 145,000 employees.

Frost, like many executives, says hiring and training the right employees is his biggest challenge, so addressing it is his biggest sense of urgency. “It always goes back to training,” says Frost. “We want to get smart, highly driven people and train them in the way of Datum.”

Big move No. 2 is a star-studded advisory board Frost assembled this past summer. “As you get bigger,” says Frost, “the decision-making process needs to be more thought out.”

The panel of advisers consists of Sarasota native John Chidsey, onetime president and CEO of Burger King Corp., who has also held top management posts with PepsiCo and the parent firm of Avis Rent A Car; New York attorney Stephen Cohen, who specializes in venture capital raises, public offerings and corporate finance transactions; and Rob Campbell, a Sarasota resident and longtime technology executive who has worked directly for Bill Gates and Steve Jobs in his career. Campbell, chief strategy officer at Datum since early 2013, also previously helped run Voalte, a fast-growing Sarasota-based firm that helps health care employees communicate using smartphones. The fourth member of the advisory board is Frost, who founded Datum in 2003.

The trio of advisers is the top of the business-growth counsel mountain for Frost. Working with Cohen, says Frost, is “like going car shopping with a car salesman” because the attorney knows all the pitfalls of raising capital. Campbell brings focus and order to Datum. “Rob pushes us to be where we need to be,” says Frost. “He makes us eat our broccoli.”

That plate is about to grow. Datum plans to open a second office, in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Tampa, in 2015 to handle some of the growth. Frost says the firm will buy a 4,000-square-foot building there for a price in the mid-six figures. Around 10 Datum employees currently work on accounts for Tampa clients, and Frost says the company could easily handle more work to support at least five additional employees. “We are very client intensive,” says Frost.

Datum, which doesn't disclose annual revenues, has other clients and a presence in southern California, Phoenix, Dallas and Honolulu. Frost's biggest worry on the long-term future of Datum is something outside technology, in that 70% of the firm's clients are restaurants. That cluster could become a concern Frost puts in simple terms. Says Frost: “If restaurants are innovative, that's good for us. If restaurants are struggling, that's not good for us.”

Follow Mark Gordon on Twitter @markigordon