Growing IT firm resolves to ‘onshore’ jobs locally – Dayton Daily News

By Dave Larsen,



Staff Writer
























2:24 PM Saturday, May 19, 2012

WASHINGTON TWP., Montgomery County — A local information technology company is seeking to grow jobs in the Dayton area by attracting work that might have been outsourced to another country.

But developing and retaining area IT talent is critical to that effort, officials said.

Illumination Works, a data-related services provider that serves both federal and commercial customers, has tripled in size over the last two years to 35 employees.

The company plans to hire an additional four to five people over the next six months, and continue at a strategic annual growth rate of about 60 percent.

“We have set a goal to be around 120 to 150 people here in five years,” said Jon Mitchell, president and chief executive.

Mitchell launched the company in 2006 as a “one-man shop” from his house and within a year had expanded the size of the company to eight employees.

This year, Illumination Works is on track to reach more than $6 million in revenue, he said.

The key to achieving that growth is “onshoring,” or attracting software development and consulting work here to be done remotely from the Dayton area.

“Our ultimate growth model is to find ways to bring work that is not being done here to this area so that we can employ people in the Dayton region and in the Cincinnati region,” Mitchell said.

IT and advanced data management last year accounted for 23,000 jobs in the 14-county Dayton area, according to the Dayton Development Coalition.

That number is projected to grow by 17 percent to nearly 27,000 jobs by 2016.

Illumination Works provides software development and IT-related process improvement consulting.

The company’s specialties include data management, business intelligence reporting, integration and architecture services, and custom program services.

Illumination Works’ consulting model runs counter to that of many firms, which encourage their consultants to stay with a customer “for years on end,” said Jerry Hamberg.

Hambert is the company’s vice president of commercial services.

“Our model is go in and basically try to work yourself out of a job,” Hamberg said.

Instead of trying to hold on to a piece of that customer’s business or IT positions, Illumination Works consultants work to solve problems and improve the customer’s business.

Mitchell said Illumination Works has a 95 percent customer retention rate.

“Everywhere we have been with a single (consultant) or small team, our customers have always come back and said, ‘We need more help because you guys get the job done,’ ” he said.

Most of the company’s work has been for the U.S. Department of Defense, primarily as a subcontractor for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

However, it has diversified during the last year into the commercial sector, which now accounts for about 35 percent of its business.

Most of its commercial customers are Fortune 500 or higher organizations, Mitchell said.

Illumination Works in February moved to new corporate offices at 8070 Washington Village Drive, having outgrown its former facility, also in Washington Twp.

The company also has established a Cincinnati office, where Hamberg works along with a full-time recruiter.

Mitchell plans to expand to Columbus next year to have a regional focus in Southwest Ohio.

Illumination Works’ staff is largely comprised of senior- and mid-level employees, with a small number of young people in the early phases of their careers.

The company will continue to recruit at all levels, with a greater emphasis on junior-level employees.

“We are going to be actively bringing in recent graduates to add to the team,” according to Mitchell.

The company also will add three college interns to its staff.

The company is doing this as part of a Southwestern Ohio Council for Higher Education initiative to increase the number of area interns to 20,000 by 2020.

Hamberg said the availability of local IT talent in some areas is “tight” because fewer students in recent years have pursued IT careers, in part because many of those jobs were being moved offshore.

The growth of the Internet, mobile and cloud computing has increased demand for skilled IT professionals.

“For companies here locally to compete in the global market they need that talent here that can help them use technology to efficiently grow their business,” according to
Mitchell.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2419 or dlarsen@DaytonDaily News.com.