Influence
Expands E-Business with Kansas City and Detroit Offices
Influence,
LLC, the leading Midwest business solutions provider and incubator
that creates and accelerates e-business and New Economy brands,
opened new offices in both Detroit and Kansas City.
The Detroit location responds to regional demand for Influence’s
full range of services, providing companies with the development
strategies and operational tools needed for rapid introduction
of products and services.
Rob Cerra, vice president and general manager, leads the Detroit
office, bringing more than 10 years of experience in technology
consulting management and client strategy development. Cerra
says the new office enables Influence to serve the growing need
for e-business professional services from businesses looking
to capitalize on the New Economy.
“This region has become a huge technology and e-commerce center
and Influence is responding to the need for e-business professional
services at just the right time,” Cerra says.
The Detroit office plans to expand its staff to 23 employees
by the end of 2000.
“The opening of the Detroit office continues our commitment
to build an infrastructure for e-businesses in the Midwest and
to lead the trend toward establishing Web-based businesses in
the region,” says Craig Kaminer, president and CEO of Influence.
“This location allows us to target some of the forward-thinking
ideas emerging from the academic institutions, as well as automotive
circles that are quickly moving into the e-commerce space.”
The Kansas City office serves two recently launched companies,
Transportation.com and SellMEAT.com. Influence helped launch
Transportation.com, a recent venture between Yellow Corporation
(Nasdaq: YELL), the leading Fortune 500 freight transportation
services company, and the venture capital firms, TL Ventures
and EnerTech Capital Partners. The company offers a marketplace
for shippers, carriers and private fleet operators that includes
information-rich products and services essential to growing
profitable businesses. SellMEAT.com offers an online business-to-business
exchange for the meat and poultry industry.
“Influence is the first e-business solutions provider and incubator
to focus on the Central U.S. We believe that this concentration,
as well as our proven track record, make us the best choice
for these and other Kansas City-based companies, positioning
us at the forefront as more Midwestern companies move into the
New Economy,” Kaminer adds.
Influence plans to expand to 10 other major Midwestern cities
by mid-2001, expanding its staff to 250 over the next 18 months.
Grace & Company Joins Six Market Leaders To Form Centerprise
Advisors
Grace & Company, the second-largest professional services firm
based in St. Louis, has merged with six firms in other cities
to form Centerprise Advisors, Inc., the 13th largest professional
services firm in the country and one of the largest full-service
companies focusing on the middle market. The deal is valued
in excess of $250 million.
The consolidation will benefit Grace & Company’s clients by
providing greater service capabilities and expertise as well
as wider geographic reach. Because Grace & Company enjoys strong
name recognition and a top-notch reputation in the accounting,
business advisory and IT consulting fields, the company will
continue to operate referencing its existing name, and clients
will continue to work with the same service providers that they
have in the past.
“The formation of Centerprise Advisors is a client-driven strategy,
in that it allows us to offer comprehensive, high-quality professional
services to our middle market clients,” says Larry Porschen,
managing partner of Grace Advisors (formerly Grace & Company).
“All of the firms that make up Centerprise are market leaders
with stellar reputations.” He notes that the founding companies
have been in business for an average of 25 years and achieved
a combined compound annual growth rate of 21.2 percent from
1996 to 1999.
Each founding company is the first or second largest local player
in its market. Moreover, three of the five companies that are
professional services firms were ranked among the Top 100 Accounting
Firms by Accounting Today.
Centerprise Advisors offers a wide range of consulting, accounting,
tax and related professional services. Various founding companies
have special expertise in ISO 9000 consulting, mergers and acquisitions,
strategic planning, litigation services, construction industry
services, international consulting, government and educational
strategies, and health care claims management. With approximately
1,000 employees serving clients across the country, Centerprise
serves more than 15,000 clients, including privately held companies,
governmental and not-for-profit entities and affluent individuals
and families.
Downtown Saint Louis Partnership Welcomes Regus Business
Centre
| Regus
Officially Opens Downtown. Left to right: Angela
Lieb, sales manager of Regus Business Center; Alderwoman
Phyllis Young, 7th Ward; Chuck Gillum, property
manager of TrizecHahn; Franklin Kimbrough, president
of Downtown St. Louis Partnership |
|
Downtown Saint Louis Partnership regularly welcomes businesses
to downtown St. Louis as a part of its economic development
effort to support downtown and make it a viable business center.
Elected officials and neighboring businesses were invited to
celebrate a recent arrival to the city, Regus Business Centre—one
of the world’s leading providers of fully furnished, staffed
and equipped offices. The company moved into 27,000 square feet
of office space on the 22nd floor of the Metropolitan Square
Building. Regus provides the area’s fast-moving companies with
the flexibility and tools needed to compete in today’s hyper-competitive
marketplace.
Regus’ clients range from multinational Exxon Mobil to local
powerhouse start-up Birch Telecom. Regus expects most of its
St. Louis clients to be members of the area’s developing e-commerce
and Internet technology industries. The new St. Louis center,
consistent with all Regus locations, is outfitted with state-of-the-art
telecommunications technology for instant LAN and T-1 Internet
lines for WAN access. The center features high-quality furniture
and office equipment, fully furnished reception areas, training
facilities with audiovisual equipment and videoconferencing
capabilities, lounge areas and a cyber café.
Regus Business Centre was established in 1989 with its first
business center in Brussels, Belgium. Regus now operates a global
network of 270 centers in 48 countries.
The Downtown Saint Louis Partnership, Inc. is a private sector
downtown economic, management and development organization representing
the interests of downtown businesses and property owners.
Fru-Con Awarded AGC National Safety Recognition
The Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) selected
Fru-Con Construction Corp. as a national safety award recipient
among construction managers with the largest yearly revenues
in the country.
Criteria for the award includes a review of written safe practices
and levels of safety training in the organization. The AGC also
takes an in depth analysis of each contractor's safety statistics
including the Recordable Incident Rate (RIR) and Lost Time Incident
Rate (LTIR). Finally, judges review the contractor's contribution
to innovation in creating safe workplaces for the construction
industry as a whole.
Fru-Con's innovations in behavior-based safety through behavior
feedback programs and safety task assignments at every level
of a job help cultivate the top safety program in the country.
"I am glad to see the AGC moving beyond use of safety statistics
and recognizing behavioral-based safety innovations," says Corporate
Safety Director Elbe Watkins, who has been published in various
safety publications including a recent "Winning Safety" column
in Compliance Magazine. "While statistics may help focus a program
in the direction of preventing the hazardous situations of the
past, behavioral-based systems get to what we're really after-preventing
at-risk behaviors before they occur, for an accident-free workplace."
In addition to the obvious benefits of a safer workplace for
employees, Fru-Con's excellent safety record allows for insurance
savings to be passed on to its clients. Fru-Con's RIR was lower
than one-tenth of the national average and the LTIR was one-twentieth
of the construction average.
Fru-Con is a multiple recipient of the Business Roundtable's
Construction Industry Safety Excellence award, two-time winner
of the Anheuser-Busch "Proud to be Safe" award and has been
recognized on several occasions by Procter & Gamble for safety
performance internationally and domestically.
Bradford & Galt Expands IT Consulting Service to Encompass
Outsourcing
St. Louis-based Bradford & Galt Consulting Services, a division
of Bradford & Galt Inc., has added outsourcing to its menu of
information technology consulting services.
A $27 million-plus firm established in 1984 as a permanent placement
firm for information technology professionals, Bradford & Galt
has offered information technology consulting/temporary staffing
services since 1990. These services now make up 75 percent of
the firm’s business, with about 200 of its consultants working
at Fortune 500 and other large-to-mid-sized companies on projects
ranging in length from six months to five years.
“Although the terms consulting and outsourcing are sometimes
used interchangeably, we believe there is a distinction and
that outsourcing is a different product,” says Steve Ecker,
branch manager of Bradford & Galt’s St. Louis office. “The main
difference is that with an outsourcing project, we manage the
work, gather information about end user needs and report accomplishments
and recommendations directly to the client’s management. The
project manager is a Bradford & Galt employee.”
Bradford & Galt’s outsourcing service will primarily encompass
networking functions. Although many of the firm’s clients for
standard consulting services are in the Fortune 500, Bradford
& Galt anticipates greater success at marketing outsourcing
to smaller companies with revenues ranging from $100 to $800
million.
“Firms in that range are less likely to have the extensive internal
IT management resources that you expect to see at a very large
company,” Ecker says. “In some cases they lack the internal
resources to quickly learn about new technologies that they
purchase and to ensure that technologies are used as effectively
as possible to impact their bottom lines.”
