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We’re now accepting entries for the 2015 RCP/RRCG Award. Here’s a peek at why HMB Inc. was one of last year’s three winners.

We’re now accepting entries for the 2015 RCP/RRCG Award. Here’s a peek at why HMB Inc. was one of last year’s three winners.

This award, sponsored by Redmond Channel Partner magazine, and Revenue Rocket Consulting Group, recognizes and honors excellence in growth, and will be awarded to up to three IT services companies whose innovative business strategies resulted in sustained growth over a three-year period.

Last year the award went to three deserving companies, PowerObjects, located in Minneapolis, MN; HMB, Inc., in Columbus OH; and Milwaukee, WI-based Concurrency, that we will be profiling in this blog over the next few weeks.

Why HMB, Inc. won in 2014.  When the company was founded in 1994 and up through 2010 the company’s culture was one of all hands on deck, everyone worked at client sites, including the three founding partners. The impending retirement of one of the partners was a wake-up call for CEO, Tom Harris. “At that time, everything ran through us—recruiting, sales, account management, accounting.  We did everything,” he says, “it was how we’d been running the business.”

It was a case of a company culture that had been great at one size, but was preventing HMB from finding another gear. The company took on a restructuring effort to, among other things, create lines of business with profit and loss responsibilities that put leaders in charge of them. Another cultural shift was recognizing the value of sales efforts. “The majority of our business prior to 2008 was referrals. Just committing to sales was a big deal for us,” Harris says.

Those changes paid off with a 13.5 percent growth in 2011, 22 percent growth in 2012, 9 percent growth in 2013. A company that was stuck at around 40 employees through the 2000s is now at 165 employees, with an announcement to hire 75 more employees over the next few years.

To read more about the winning strategies for these three firms click here for the article that profiled these companies in Redmond Channel Partner magazine.

 

How you can enter for the 2015 Award.

The 2015 award is open to all U.S.-based IT services companies with annual revenues between $5 million and $75 million that provide a 1-2 page case study describing their business strategies, and how they have resulted in growth over the past three years. Deadline for submissions is May 1, 2015.

The award will be evaluated on two key criteria:

First, the strategies. What unique combination of strategies did you employ to generate the results you achieved? This section will constitute three quarters of the evaluation as we are most interested in understanding what and how various strategies drove success.

Second, the results. What did your company achieve over a three-year period in terms of revenue, profit, and other relevant metrics you deem appropriate? This will account for a quarter of the evaluation.

To be considered for the 2015 RCP/Rocket Excellence in Growth Award, please submit an essay, in case study format, that documents and supports your company’s growth for 2012, 2013 and 2014.

The format of the case study should include:

  1. Company Background: Describe how you are positioned and differentiated in the market in terms of vendor alignment, technology focus, geographic reach, vertical emphasis, etc.
  2. Strategic Initiatives: Identify the key strategic initiatives that your company implemented and how they drove your business over this period. This could include mergers and acquisitions, geographic expansion, new service line offerings, sales and marketing programs, key hires, etc.
  3. Performance: Describe your company’s performance over this period, including revenue, profit and any other metric that makes your case.
  4. Lessons Learned: What have you learned as a result of this effort?

In addition to an award plaque, winners will also be the focus of an article in a future issue of Redmond Channel Partner magazine and have a donation made in their name to a charity of their choice. Send submissions to sbekker@rcpmag.com.

The winners will be announced during the Microsoft Worldwide Partners Conference in July. The winner’s profile will appear in the October, 2015 issue of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.

On Wednesday, April 15 read how Concurrency won its award.