Collaborative Consulting’s participation in the “onshoring” trend brought significant growth to the Burlington IT company’s staff in 2012 — and to its revenue.
John Williams, the firm’s senior vice president of services, tells me that the company currently employs about 310 people, up about 50 percent from the same time a year ago. The firm’s annual revenue, meanwhile, has risen by about 20 percent to $52 million for 2012, Williams says.
Much of the growth this year was due to the company’s decision to get into “onshoring,” or “rural outsourcing” — that is, providing a low-cost domestic option to work that is currently going overseas — to augment its main consulting business. To that end, Collaborative Consulting opened an IT support center where software development, testing and other IT work gets done in Wausau, Wis., in February. About 55 people have been hired to work there so far, Williams says. He says the company is looking for another low-cost location to open a second center in mid-2013.
Hundreds of thousands of IT jobs have shifted overseas to India and other countries where workers earn lower wages than they do in the U.S. But a number of companies — others include Rural Sourcing Inc., CrossUSA and Eagle Creek Software Services — are bringing the work back home. Williams says pay rates have risen at a faster rate in many overseas locations than they have here, and rural areas (such as Wausau) offer low real estate costs. Bringing these jobs back to the U.S. also helps eliminate communications issues and time zone problems. Plus Collaborative Consulting can work with clients of almost any size, unlike its competitors in other countries: Williams says many overseas contractors don’t want to deal with small businesses because it’s not worth the effort. Collaborative Consulting is still generally more expensive than most overseas rivals, Williams says, but there are enough other factors to prompt clients to increasingly turn to U.S.-based alternatives instead.
Source:http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/bottom_line/2012/12/burlingtons-collaborative-grows.html