Strong-Bridge

Strong-Bridge co-founders Ken Simpson (left) and Brian Hartnett

The partners at Strong-Bridge have a simple business strategy that has worked for the past five years: Do a good job for the client and that spells success for both parties. But even more importantly, Strong-Bridge does whatever is necessary to make its clients happy.

“Delivering for our clients is a priority, and the quality of work being delivered is primary over everything else,” says co-founder Brian Hartnett. “If we do that well, we figure growth will follow.” And the strategy has worked—revenue was up 39 percent in 2007 to $5.7 million, and is projected to grow another 39 percent this year. Impressive for a firm with 30 billable consultants.

But don’t let size fool you—there’s a lot of experience at the helm. Co-founders Ken Simpson and Hartnett came from a telecom background, having worked together at Deloitte’s telecom and media practice for three years before deciding to start their own firm in the Pacific Northwest specializing in telecommunications and high-tech consulting. “We wanted to have a practice where we would be one hundred percent focused on client work and a little less focused on the peripheral things a big firm can keep you working on,” Hartnett says.

The partners also know growth doesn’t happen without a good team. Their recruiting process consists of primarily hiring from their personal network, so new hires are not just a competency fit, but also a cultural fit. In order to recruit these high-end people, they offer competitive compensation and flexible work arrangements as well as valuable employee feedback. Hartnett and Simpson meet with their people every other week to resolve issues, discuss risk, and assess progress at a client site and provide any feedback or coaching necessary. “We’re all about real-time, open feedback, both positive and negative, infused with the humor we instill at our company,” Hartnett says. “We try to make it fun, and that enables us to give direct feedback. By being a little humorous about it, we can take the edge off and they can take it to heart, versus feeling like they are punished. In the end, what allows me to sleep at night is the strength and capability of our people—they’re the bedrock of the firm.”

Through these regular performance reviews and QA’s, they can quickly detect if recruits’ previous training measures up. In fact, they’ve had to coach people to stop thinking about sales opportunities and instead  refocus on doing the work and gaining the client’s trust by showing that they’re focused on delivery, not on looking for new sales opportunities.

“That’s probably not the fastest growth strategy in the world, but it’s the trusted growth strategy that’s worked for us,” says Simpson.

Even though the firm focuses primarily on the Pacific Northwest, Simpson says Strong-Bridge is planning to open a second office in California this year and add 15 more billable consultants. Most of the business comes from word-of-mouth, and satisfied clients readily offer glowing testimonials without being prompted. “Most of our work comes from our people doing great work with key clients and extending our relationships with those clients—not to sell, but to make people aware we’ve done good work elsewhere,” Hartnett says.

For a recent client, a large wireless carrier, Strong-Bridge led a critical initiative to implement an outsourced distribution strategy. They knew they had to understand the business, gain strong executive support in order to make decisions and manage a large, cross-functional team. That whole concept of doing whatever is necessary to help make clients successful won the day. “There was an operational glitch due to a system problem, so we jumped on a plane at 9 p.m., were on site the next morning and not only worked through the problem, but also handled inventory,” Simpson says. That project, he adds, launched ahead of schedule and under budget.