April 2010
Omaha World Herald

A nationally recognized information technology consulting firm in Lincoln has blossomed through the recession by adding personality and long-term strategy to a field known more for servers, complicated network glitches and frustrated computer users calling national “help desks.”

This month, the Small Business Administration recognized Five Nines Technology Group, founded in 2006 by James Bowen and Nick Bock, by naming it the SBA Nebraska Small Business of the Year for 2010.

The company, which employs about 26 people, does all the high-tech work typical of IT firms. But Bowen and Bock say the company strives to stand out by bringing catered strategies and hands-on business relationships to their approximately 300 regional clients, a third of which are in the health care field.

That approach has helped Five Nines grow, earning it the 394th spot last year in Inc. magazine's 500 Fastest-Growing Private Companies in America, an honor Bock said he expects to receive again in 2010.

The owners said “doing business the right way” and being in Nebraska, where economic peaks and valleys are less drastic, are major factors in the company's success.

"Nebraska is a really good state to live in right now as far as the recession goes,” Bowen said. “We're blessed with having a lot of customers in a variety of markets, and our customers have been growing and expanding as well.”

Bock said the goal of Five Nines is “to sit down and figure out what's best for your business, not for mine.”

“We want to build a relationship and help IT be an asset, not just something that shows up on your expense line,” he said.

With offices in Lincoln and Omaha, Five Nines will continue to grow “we'll probably have more employees by the time this article is published” as revenues and client lists expand, the owners said.

From September 2006, when the company started with three full-time employees and one part-time worker, it grew to 10 employees in 2007, to 17 in 2008 and to 23 in 2009 with the addition of an Omaha branch.

A stroll through the company's main office at 1560 S 70th St., in Lincoln gives an idea how the business is structured for a collaborative, teamwork atmosphere.

Groups of computer engineers work from desks, unseparated by cubicles, above which hangs a large, flat-screen monitor that tracks how many hours employees spend on each project and presents the statistics in a bar graph.

It's a good way to promote internal competition, Bock said.

Dell computer towers line the wall of one room as several employees shuffle in and out the front door, loading computer equipment into one of the company's Toyota Prius fleet cars.

Despite their growth, Bowen and Bock said, it's imperative that Five Nines remain flexible and able to quickly adjust to changing IT trends. Examples of some current trends are cloud computing, voice over internet protocols (VoIP), and virtualization, which reduces the number of servers that clients need.

“As we grow, we're really trying to do it in ways to maintain how we operate,” Bowen said. “The whole setup of our company is really to be able to see opportunities in the market and different kinds of technology that would fit with our customer base.

“We're very consulting based, so we have to be nimble and able to incorporate new products and new technologies into everything we do.”

In December 2008, Bowen and Bock obtained an SBA-backed line of credit from Cornhusker Bank that helped add financial stability to their company, which, as a technology firm, lacks the tangible assets that other businesses possess, they said.

“We wanted to be able to know that we had a significant line of credit that we could leverage, if we needed to, as we continued to grow the business,” Bock said. “It's always better to ask and get the appropriate relationships and lines of credit when you don't need them rather than when you really do.”

Five Nines was nominated for the SBA award by Marisol Rodriguez, who is director of the Nebraska Business Development Center's Lincoln office, because of the owners' presence in the Lincoln community in addition to their business' performance regionally, she said.

Bowen, 34, is a board member for the Southeast Nebraska March of Dimes and for Community Development Resources. Bock, 33, serves on the board for Lincoln's Seventh-Day Adventist schools, the Lincoln Children's Museum and is a business and computer science mentor at Union College.

As Nebraska's 2010 Small Business of the year, Five Nines will join other states' recipients for consideration of the national award.

Source: http://www.omaha.com/article/20100322/MONEY/703229979