In an industry as competitive as the integration industry, growing a small business isn’t easy.
Integration firms must differentiate themselves from their competitors, bring something new to the table and continue to find ways to grow each and every year.
While many integration firms are still figuring out their key to success, New York-based DasNet found that building relationships has been vital to the company’s growth and success.
Also See: 6 Principles DasNet Swears By (and You Should Too) to Avoid Business Blunders
Sure, building relationships with partners and clients is a common goal shared among most integration firms, but DasNet takes building relationships a step further by also maintaining positive relationships with the countries by which it does business in.
CI editor Craig MacCormack spoke with David Salley, founder of DasNet, regarding the company’s focus on relationship building overseas in October’s CI profile:
Almost 20 years later, DasNet continues to grow its footprint, with the latest target market being the state government of New York, one of its few forays on domestic soil.
Although the company maintains its size of less than 100 full-time employees, DasNet calls the many subcontractors who do work on the company’s behalf “team members.”
“Not having that heavy employee load is very beneficial for us and it certainly helps with cash flow,” says Salley.
As the company has grown, Salley has noticed his relationship evolve within DasNet’s walls, going from a situation where he was helping co-workers pay their own personal bills as “more of a big brother” to a more traditional setup where the group is a team.
Erv Robinson, DasNet’s VP of strategic planning, joined the company in 2000, impressed by its international presence.
Companies such as General Dynamics, L3 National Security Solutions and, yes, even AT&T have served as partners with DasNet and “they come back to us because they know we’ll do the job right.”
DasNet has supported AT&T in about a dozen bids over the years, Robinson says. DasNet has achieved some pretty impressive accomplishments, including building the communication network in Afghanistan.
Feats like that are only possible by understanding topology and “knowing how data flows and how it all works,” says Salley.
Salley remembers one case where solar flares were causing a communications network to fail and he and his DasNet team had to develop a white paper to prove it wasn’t their portion of the work that was triggering the malfunction.
He still looks back on that effort with pride. “I’m a nerd, but I think I’m a cool nerd,” Salley says with a laugh.
Salley has had to learn to avoid getting involved in what he calls “nation building,” choosing instead to focus on balancing the needs of DasNet’s clients with continuing to build and maintain relationships with the countries in which DasNet is working.
This is especially important in the Middle East, he says, noting that area “is built on relationships.”
That’s sometimes meant doing some non-traditional, and some would probably say controversial, things, such as when he relied on friend Alan Scarborough when making pitches in DasNet’s early days because he believed customers — mostly generals and colonels — would not be as accepting of a company run by a black man and he was intent on getting the jobs.
These days, though, Salley doesn’t have those same concerns, knowing DasNet has proven itself to be a company worthy of its customers’ trust. DasNet joined USAV Group in February 2015 as the buying and integration group’s regional representative.
USAV Group CEO K.C. Schwarz is excited to have Salley and DasNet as part of the organization.
“One key role of USAV is to promote growth and leadership among our members, both as companies and executive leaders,” he says. “Several of our USAV integrators recommended DasNet because David Salley’s leadership has led to rapid growth and strong market success.”
DasNet, like most others in the federal arena, encountered many obstacles from the so-called Great Recession of last decade.
The contracting field responded and further imploded with the creating and acceptance of Lowest Price Technically Acceptable (LPTA) contracting as a measure of contract award and success.
This “doubly compounded hammer,” as Salley described it, tightened the market by forcing many firms out of business, causing larger firms to target the work of smaller businesses and creating a bidding frenzy within each market sector (small/medium and large) where every firm underbids the other to try and increase market share in hopes of being able to recoup losses through change orders.
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