Mike Maiolo, CEO of Vesta Partners, spends a lot of time these days staring at the clock on the wall. Actually, clocks. In the firm's Stamford, Conn,-based office, Maiolo has at least a half dozen of them—New York, Toronto, Amsterdam, Melbourne, Singapore and Dubai—representing the markets and time zones where the IT, Strategy and Operations firm does business. Pretty impressive for a 150-consultant firm launched in 2006.
"One of the biggest challenges is that we have a business with around the clock operations when you look at all of our regions," Maiolo says. "Just being able to sync up with all the regions logistically is a challenge—the cultures are different, the people are different, sometimes the work days of the week are different. But we've had good success, and were very happy with the progress we've made."
That progress includes two new geographies when Vesta opened offices in Singapore and Dubai in 2014. That expanded geographic footprint is one of the key factors to the firm's 40 percent revenue growth.
Vesta is an SAP Services and a Select Consulting Partner focused on delivering results in Enterprise Asset Management, assisting clients build solid business practices that are enabled by the right technology applications. Vesta's clients include BHP Billiton, Unilever, PG&E and BNSF, among others.
In 2015, Vesta is projecting 25 percent growth, mainly from existing regions and a strong pipeline, "but we certainly think there's an opportunity to exceed the growth we're projecting," he says. "The big focus is getting to $50 million in 2015. We'd like to be $100 million by 2018."
To reach that point, he says, the firm would probably need to be about 300 consultants. And it would probably have a few more clocks on the wall, possibly in South America and Europe, to name a few.
One of the keys to the firm's success, he says, is its very close working relationship with SAP. "We often steer the direction of what's coming next with SAP. We're so focused on the one piece of their business and we're the experts so we actually get to provide some direction in terms of where the market is moving. That SAP connection is absolutely critical to who we are and why we're successful."
Another key is Vesta's senior-level model. Because Vesta's model is so top heavy, Maiolo says the firm doesn't typically take on the 15 or 20 person engagements like some of the bigger firms because it really doesn't have junior consultants.
"Often we'll hire people with 20-plus years of asset management experience but they've never been a consultant, and that's fine, we can teach them that," he says. "Our competitors will offer the typical off-shore SAP implementation, but if you don't understand the business, the enabling solution has little chance of being successful."
People come to Vesta, he says, because the firm is purely focused on the business of asset management and the technology that is SAP. "That's rare," he says. "People come here knowing they're going to be laser focused on the one thing that they want to do great, and they know they'll get the training to grow their career."
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