Information Technology

Like many small businesses in Michigan, MicroMax is completely self-funded, largely out of a desire to maintain control. Rachel McCormack, MicroMax's president, also notes the difficulty in collateralizing receivables for services businesses. Service businesses typically have few sellable assets, and banks are concerned that customer service fee revenue will dry up, leaving them nothing to collect if the loan goes south.

Kevin Phillips, founder of LTI-IT, believes in setting a point on the horizon and then sailing for it (download 7 minute iPod compatible video, 34MB). He began his journey 12 years ago as an internal IT technician for LimnoTech, the parent of LTI-IT. After 3 years, he had succeeded in getting LimnoTech's network to a very high level of performance, and he was ready to leave.

LimnoTech countered with an offer to let him start a division. Five years ago, they made the decision to start spinning that division out to a separate company. In the next 5 years, he would like the company to go national. He believes their training advantage will enable this move, and they already have projects in Washington, D.C., and Tijuana, Mexico.

Like any service business, LTI-IT's success depends on its people. In this segment, Kevin Phillips, LTI-IT's founder, outlines how the firm hires and trains its staff (download 10 minute iPod compatible video, 50MB). The best hiring scenario is for LTI-IT to take on high quality staff from its clients as they move to an outsourcing model. When LTI-IT hires from the public at large, a rigorous process is used to eliminate all but the best candidates who will fit well with LTI-IT's culture and provide excellent service to clients.

Training is the second element in ensuring client satisfaction. Training at LTI-IT focuses on two areas. The first is technical competence, largely centered on networking technologies. This level of technical competence gets LTI-IT to the table with its clients. What keeps clients coming back for more is LTI-IT's level of service. LTI-IT has developed a multi-step procedure to help systematically ensure client happiness and holds refreshers on this procedure every Friday.

Kevin Phillips, founder of LTI Information Technology, wants to help frustrated companies manage their IT infrastructure (download 7 and a half minute iPod compatible video, 39MB). LTI-IT, with its focus on infrastructure is an interesting addition to our series on small information technology services firms. These firms have been growing rapidly as small to medium sized businesses discover that in-house staff and departments are insufficient to keep up with their increasingly diverse technology needs. Kevin views three targets for LTI-IT's services:

• Companies with small overwhelmed IT departments that want to move their staffs into LTI-IT and then purchase back the services they need from LTI-IT.
• Smaller companies who do not have the resources for an IT department to begin with but need IT services.
• Companies whose IT departments need augmentation and polish.

As we have seen before, to thrive in this space, a service provider needs to be fanatic about service quality. In future segments, Kevin will go into detail on his service and training concepts.