Strong relationships are helping API soar

GROWING UP: American Partners Inc. saw its revenue grow by 156 percent from 2008 to 2009 and 154 percent from 2009 to 2010. / PBN PHOTO/BRIAN MCDONALD
GROWING UP: American Partners Inc. saw its revenue grow by 156 percent from 2008 to 2009 and 154 percent from 2009 to 2010. / PBN PHOTO/BRIAN MCDONALD

Finding work as an independent consultant isn’t always easy, but Rochelle Hamilton had such a bad experience with a staffing company that she was willing to put in a month of unpaid searching every time she needed a new project.
“They provided no support at all,” she said of the first staffing company she worked with. But with American Partners Inc., the Pawtucket-based staffing business that has placed Hamilton with all of her projects for the past five years, she found the service she was looking for.
“The time that I used to take in finding projects – it doesn’t exist anymore,” said the Atlanta-based consultant, who specializes in Oracle Hyperion software. “I just tell API when I’m going to be available again, and they have something lined up for me.”
American Partners prides itself on building superior relationships with its consultants and client base, and the personal attention has paid off. The five-year-old business this year topped Providence Business News’ list of fastest-growing companies with between $5 million and $25 million in sales, with $15.6 million in sales in 2010 – a 551 percent growth rate from 2008.
The company grew revenue 156 percent between 2008 and 2009 and 154 percent from 2009 to 2010.
And the company has no plans to slow down. American Partners projects $25 million in revenue in 2011, a 60 percent increase from last year, said Ron Wnek, director of permanent placement and one of the three founding partners.
The company expanded its work force to 21 in August and expects to have 25 employees by the end of the year, Wnek said.
The three partners – Wnek, Tom Leonard, who holds the titles of president, owner and higher-performance management practice manager, and Justin Franks, the business intelligence and enterprise-performance management practice director – had 50 years of experience in the staffing industry between them when they founded American Partners, Wnek said.
“We were pretty confident of what it took to be successful,” he said. “Did we foresee this great percentage? No. But we knew we could be successful.”
After Wnek and Leonard sold their previous company, The Jotorok Group, in 2004, they teamed up with Franks. Leonard and Franks received a $250,000 loan from the R.I. Economic Development Corporation to start a new business, and the budding company also took advantage of grants from the R.I. Department of Labor and Training.
“In 2007, the three of us sat there – with zero clients – with phones and the Internet, trying to find a focus and niche where we could have value in the marketplace,” Leonard recalled.
Because of a noncompete clause, Wnek could only act as an adviser and investor until the end of 2008, when he joined the company.
The trio found their niche in matching businesses with consultants who specialize in Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management software. They added a division in Oracle Business Intelligence software a year later, recently expanded to SAP software and hope to soon separate the company’s data-warehousing services into a fourth division.
The company has served approximately 100 clients in its five-year history, Leonard said.
Hyperion software staffing makes up about 75 percent of the company’s business, but the new SAP division could overtake it in revenue eventually, given the current demand, Wnek said. “That’s where our focus is.”
In addition to staffing short-term and long-term projects, American Partners offers permanent placement as a “value-added service to our clients,” though it accounts for less than $1 million of the company’s revenue, Wnek said.
Business at American Partners has boomed despite the reverberations of economic recession because management and business software becomes even more valuable to companies when resources shrink. Hiring contractors on a per-project basis can also be cheaper than permanently adding an employee to the payroll, Wnek noted.
In each of the three software systems, American Partners works with “between 200 and 300 of the top independent management consultants,” Leonard said. He estimated that one-fifth of those consultants work exclusively with American Partners, while another 60 to 70 percent “would give us preference over another opportunity.”
American Partners consultants set their own hourly pay rates – Hamilton charges between $125 and $250 per hour – and American Partners charges its clients a commission of approximately 20 percent to 25 percent of the contractor’s pay rate, Wnek said. Clients do not have to pay upfront to request staffing placements.
American Partners staffers work to build individual relationships with each consultant in their database so as to provide consultants and clients with the best placements possible. Internal staff members — who receive training four days a week – are expected to have 10 “intelligent conversations” per day with people in these software industries. This extensive research gives the staffing company insight into the market and any client or consultant’s individual needs.
“The key differentiator for American Partners is their level of service,” said Chris DeBeer, a senior manager for a global consulting firm based in New York who has used American Partners’ staffing services for years.
“They take the time to understand what the requirement is, and then they also spend time researching within their database – not just doing a query and sending you a dump of names, but actually going through and talking to people,” he said.
About 80 percent of the company’s clients are repeat clients, Wnek said.
Hamilton called American Partners’ quality of service “really rare” among staffing companies, noting that the business always pays her within 10 days and even passes along extra revenue to her if clients pay above her pay rate.
Every time Hamilton has worked on an American Partners project, a representative from the company has flown out to meet the clients and consultants.
By maintaining strong relationships, American Partners is able to create a network where independent consultants can provide each other with professional support, Leonard said.
And American Partners will continue to focus exclusively on a few software divisions rather than spread itself thin by trying to fill too many niches, as other staffing companies do, Leonard said.
“This business is not rocket science,” he said. “It’s about building relationships.” •

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