Business Tech

Catching Curveballs

Agility—it’s one of the biggest advantages of small enterprises over larger ones. All too often, changes at big corporations face mazes of red tape or layers of bureaucracy. Leaner companies can change direction quickly to take advantage of new opportunities.

For Mike Feld, CEO of Layer Eight Incorporated, this flexibility may have saved his company. “Up until 2010, 90 percent of our business was in the telecommunications industry. With mergers and acquisitions frequent in that market, we were called in to do due diligence on various targets, either acquiring or being acquired,” he said. “Now, that business has dried up. At the same time, at the end of 2010, we had a bunch of doctors' offices and small hospitals that were asking for IT assistance. And we immediately saw, with the change in the health care rules, that this was an area we wanted to pay attention to. So we basically did a 90 degree turn and went after the medical industry. It's the flexibility to see what's coming down the pike, move your business in alignment with that and just go for it.”

Layer Eight provides IT services with an emphasis on telecommunication. Feld has chosen to differentiate the company from other IT providers by offering a broader range of services. “Many of the people at our company were C-level executives at a number of different phone companies or cable operators. So the people who work on our projects have more than simply technical expertise; they have management expertise and they have financial expertise,” he said. “That sets us apart from many of our competitors. We do similar work, but with individuals who are cross-trained in many disciplines.”

The combination of flexibility and a unique service offering has helped the company to stay strong during the economic downturn. In fact, Feld has ambitious plans for growth. “We doubled last year, and we expect to double this year,” he said. “And we're still only 11 people. I think it's very possible for a firm of our size, in five to 10 years, to be somewhere in the $80 million range with a few hundred employees and be a dominant force in, for example, medical IT work. We've had some significant success in displacing companies hundreds of times our size in some of the larger accounts.”

Feld has plans to open up additional facilities and expand, specifically into the medical field for now. “But should that change,” he adds, “we'll adapt accordingly.”

For more information, please visit: www.layer-eight.com

Follow Us

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

What's Next, Updates & Editorial Picks In Your Inbox

Related Articles

© 2017-2021 Advisors Magazine. All Rights Reserved.Design & Development by The Web Empire

Search