“I’m a business starter, not a business manager,” concedes

Vilnis Ezerins, the founder and owner of AccuData America, as he describes his

business skill set. He might well have

added that his ability to hire and promote the right managers has been the

catalyst that is driving his company’s growth. In 2000, Cape Coral-based,

AccuData America pushed past $30 million in revenue and 200 employees. Even Vil

would probably not have predicted such a steep growth trajectory, when he sat

with just 3 employees and $500,000 in sales back in the early 1990s.style="mso-spacerun: yes">

Today, AccuData America is the largest independent seller of

marketing data and database analysis services in the U.S.—with 20,000 clients

throughout the country. AccuData successfully positions itself as a

comprehensive marketing solutions company. It is a relative giant in a segment

that has traditionally been highly fragmented among small players that saw themselves

simply as sellers of mailing lists. Named as one of Inc. Magazine’s ‘Inc.

500’ list of fastest growing small companies for the past four years,

AccuData envisions annual revenues of $50 million within two years.

A Modest Beginning

in 1990

Vil Ezerins had moved down from Massachusetts in 1990, after

having run a successful advertising and marketing firm where he had developed

highly respected database and direct marketing expertise. Back in the 1980s,

using the venerable database software tool, dBase II and the CP/M operating

system, he could sort 10,000 business records overnight on a microcomputer.

That was pretty hot stuff at the time. Almost everyone else was using expensive

mainframes and minicomputers to do the work

When he opened the doors of AccuData America in Cape Coral

in 1990, he leveraged his technical expertise to concentrate on the direct

marketing business. He realized that

comprehensive direct marketing and database expertise was in short supply. Vil

was able to provide it both directly to business clients and to resellers of

business data. But this didn’t translate into overnight success.

When Mary Jo Yafchak walked through the doors in 1993

AccuData America was growing, but slowly. Vil was still doing his own data

processing and accounting. She was employee #9 as the company was finally

approached $1 million in sales. Mary Jo

was hired as a sales rep, after a successful sales management career in the

medical supplies industry. She saw an

opportunity to make a difference at a young venture that was still struggling

to boost its growth rate.

Vil quickly recognized her ability to drive more revenue to

the company. More importantly, he recognized her leadership potential.style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Vil gradually shifted more responsibility

her way. Within a year, he knew that Mary Jo was the kind of leader he needed

to take AccuData to its ultimate potential. He named her President in

1994. In December 2000 she became Chief

Executive Officer of both Accudata America and its spin off, Alvion

Technologies (See Sidebar).

Continuous

Reinvention Key to High Growth

What Mary Jo and her team have accomplished since the early

90s is a continuous reshaping of the organization in order to benefit both

clients and employees. What began as a relatively simple business--providing

mailing lists to business clients--has become a highly sophisticated enterprise

that fully leverages both sophisticated database and Internet technology. It

also deploys best practices in customer relationship management. Needless to

say, this didn’t happen overnight.

Once she took the helm, Mary Jo began to focus on improving

customer service in order to retain clients and to increase their lifetime

value to the company. At the same time, she began formalized training of the

employees who were expected to grow sales and keep clients happy. As she puts

it, her objective was to “give them the tools and motivation to succeed.”

Paul Theriot, promoted to President of AccuData in December

2000, joined the company shortly after Mary Jo. He, too, quickly became a sales

standout. Commenting on fundamental elements of their success from his earliest

days, Paul notes about clients, “If you build a strong relationship and help

them build their build their business, it is hard to lose the account.”

As this client-centric perspective became the

norm—form-fitting the data to the clients’ needs rather than force-fitting

off-the-shelf products—a hockey stick curve began to take shape. The growth

curve is nothing short of astonishing: $2 million for 1994, $6 million in 1996,

$16 million in 1998, and $30 million in 2000. According to Mary Jo, “I still

don’t see a limit to our growth.”

AccuData’s success stems from the fact that they live rather

than parrot best practices. This is especially true in terms of sales &

marketing, technology, and human resources. For example, Paul stresses that

everyone lives the one-to-one marketing mantra by putting themselves in the

minds of their prospects. And, on the human resources front, Mary Jo adds that

the result of looking after their employees is that “People love coming to

work.” The energy and enthusiasm that abound among employees interviewed

certainly support her remark. As for technology, their interactive database

capabilities have positioned them effectively on the Net. It has also spawned a

new company, Alvion Technologies, to sell that capability to other large direct

marketing users and resellers.

More than enthusiasm and energy are at work. AccuData has

become very sophisticated in selecting the right people for the right jobs. The

results speak for themselves, particularly in the sales arena where top

performers have formed the infrastructure for 21^st century growth.

The best sales people over the years have embraced the industries into which

they sold and have become invaluable to their clients—and to AccuData as

internal experts on vertical markets. Moreover, out of the box thinking that

generates customer solutions seems to be more the norm than the exception at

AccuData.

Let’s

Get Vertical! Sales Structure Reflects Client Orientation

AccuData has evolved from its one department/three employee

beginning to a sophisticated five division structure that revolves around the

size and type of clients being handled--from large resellers to small end-user

companies. In each case the goal is the same: to offer optimum customer service

based on each company’s unique requirements. It’s worth noting that each

division and group is a separate profit center with considerable latitude in

doing what it takes (including spending more money) to accomplish ambitious

growth objectives. Two recent initiatives that target particular industry

segments merit a closer look.

Building Complete

Marketing Solutions: The Strategic Alliance Division

"Let's face it, when agencies talk about the creative

genius of their campaigns, they're not talking about the data selection

process," says AccuData's National Director of Strategic Alliances Sandy

Wilson. "That's where AccuData's brilliance comes in. We honestly thrive

on coming up with the best data solutions for direct marketing campaigns.”

Since most advertising agencies don’t count direct marketing and sophisticated

list selection among their core competencies, AccuData saw an opportunity to

fill the void. Their Strategic Alliance Division, formed in March 2000, offers

soup to nuts multi-option turnkey programs to their agency clients. These

programs are created in such a way that the ad agency can, in turn, present the

complete marketing package to their own clients. This focused and comprehensive

approach reflects the transformation of AccuData into what Marketing Director,

Lara Gold, describes as “a marketing strategies company.”

Embracing Target Markets: The Premier Division Strategy Groups

What began as individual sales reps’ efforts to immerse

themselves in the businesses of their clients, has emerged as a formal sales

and marketing strategy. Because getting into the minds of their prospects often

meant understanding more that the client company—but often an entire industry--AccuData

began moving toward a vertical market strategy more than two years ago.

In January 2000, the first formal Strategy Group was formed

to target the Broadband industry which lives in a complex universe all its own.

The goal with this industry segment, as with all others, is to live in the

shoes of the industry marketers with whom the AccuData account folks work.

“We’re going to make darned sure that we’re experts,” stressed Marketing

Director Gold. The Broadband Data Group

delivered results within five months that tripled expectations. Their success

has spawned new groups in energy, travel/tourism, and retail. As many as

fifteen vertical market groups are anticipated over the next several years.

Conclusion: Growth

Doesn’t Just Happen

Great ideas don’t always spark the creation of a great

company. For AccuData America, success

required the building of a talented, driven management team that has made real

the great ideas that had first launched the company. That team, in turn,

created a corporate culture that rewards performance, out of the box thinking,

and risk-taking. The net result is a high growth company that values both its

clients--and the employees who create and deliver the marketing solutions that

bind those clients to the company.

Sidebar: Driving

Data to the Internet—AccuData and Alvion Technologies

In the early 90s,Vil Ezerins anticipated the need to enable

customers around the country to make their own list selections without human

intervention. In fact, he began working on a software solution in 1994 long

before the Internet had become the standard for business connectivity. Using

the Microsoft product, FoxPro, he built a system that permitted clients to dial

a private connection, make their request, and receive a count of names and

demographics within two hours—a big improvement over the overnight 10,000

record sort achieved in the 1980s. The next two generations of software have

moved the application to the Internet and finally enabled clients to receive

their lists in digital form with near real-time performance.

Because the required investment exceeded what AccuData could

cost justify for itself, Vil spun off a new company, Alvion Technologies. It’s

goal is to provide a turnkey eCommerce platform for other users and resellers

of list data. Alvion’s current product, 8.5pt'>ListKey 3.0,style='mso-bidi-font-size:8.5pt'> brings the full functionality of web based

querying and order processing to its customers. It’s upcoming iteration, 4.0

will offer even more functionality.

Alvion designed its

system to use numerous smaller processors and to load balance simultaneous

requests among them. This design allows for "real time" responses to

users, and has the added advantage of easy scalability. The ListKey

system is now handling 2000 queries/day—that’s a ten-fold increase from January

2000.

What is the growth

potential of Alvion? Well, it’s worth noting that Vil has recently named Mary

Jo as CEO of both Alvion Technologies and Accudata America. So stay tuned.

Sidebar:

FunWork.com

Heaven knows,

recruiting great people may be the greatest challenge of doing business in

Southwest Florida. It can be even more difficult for a rapidly growing company

like Accudata. Its website, FunWork.com does a wonderful job of

capturing the flavor of the company and displaying the quality and diversity of

its employees. After checking out FunWork.com, a prospective

applicant will have a very clear idea of whether he or she would thrive in the

unique AccuData environment.