While consulting demand may be sluggish, there are certainly a number of firms that are far outpacing the market. IData, a five year-old IT consulting firm focused on higher education clients, has doubled its revenue and headcount every year. To better understand how it’s growing so fast in a poor economy, Consulting’s One-on-One sat down with the firm’s president Brian Parish.

Consulting: A lot of consulting firms serve colleges and universities, what’s different about IData?

Parish: Our firm is comprised of 17 consultants, located around the country. Most of us work from home offices. So, we benefit from having low cost overhead. We don’t’ have marble floored offices we need to pay for. In addition, all of our consultants have either worked at a university or for one of the key software vendors to higher education. We all understand that purchasing decisions are not a top-down process on campuses. We understand that the business cycles are built around the academic calendars.

Consulting: The last few years couldn’t have been easy for a firm that’s just getting started. What was your strategy for navigating the downturn?

Parish: In a downturn there are only three things a business can do. First, you can hunker down, retract and cut your losses. We were not interested in that. Second, you can operate as business as usual and hope that that’s enough. But we knew that was not the right approach either. The third option is to be aggressive and adapt. And that’s what we’ve done. Instead of cutting recruiting, training, marketing, and other costs, we invested more in all of those areas.

Consulting: How have schools’ needs changed during the downturn?

Parish: We held company-wide brainstorming sessions to come up with new products and services that would best help our clients. We invested in offerings around fundraising and enrollment assistance as well as cost and data analysis of existing campus services. When rolling out those services, we looked for opportunities to build long-term client relationships. When we have more than one client that is looking for the same thing, we get them together and ask if they want to split the cost.

Some would have say that’s leaving money on the table; we could have done the same work twice and collected twice as much. But we’re more interested in developing loyalty. When there’s an upgrade, during an upturn, we think they’ll remember us. The schools that are buying from us are being told to cut their spending. We have to continue to provide good work. We have to continue to invest in client relationships.

Consulting: Which schools make for the best consulting clients?

Parish: The big, public state schools are in the worst shape right now: they’ve get more students and less money. Most of their budget comes from the state, but states have less money. They also have really large RFP processes. Private schools with high endowments took a beating during the downturn. When the stock market took a huge hit, they saw their endowments take a hit. Small private colleges, which base most of their budget on tuition dollars, have been relatively steady. The for-profit institutions – like University of Phoenix and DeVry – have more students and more money. We serve all of those, but private colleges and for profit school are good clients right now.

But regardless of the type of school, they all have similar challenges. Even some of the smallest schools out there still need to manage financial aid, run transcripts, run GPA reports, etc. The core issues are the same as what we see at the University of Texas [which enrolls 50,000 students]. But staff size is dramatically different. Our big question is: Do they need us? Generally, there’s less need from public schools with big staffs. Small, private colleges and universities are better clients for us in that they need more help.

Consulting: Where are you considering expanding next?

Parish: We see some opportunities in the K through 12 market. We are keeping an eye on that and are starting to build relationships there. But as much as I’d like to jump head on into that marketplace, I’m not ready to lose focus.