Demand for computer contractors grows in NWA

When Tyson Foods Inc. purchased Hudson Foods Inc., it had to find a way to convert Hudson’s desktop computers so they were compatible with those owned by Tyson.

Tyson hired Inacom Information Systems, which sent in a crew that worked several months converting about 600 desktop computers.

That’s just one reason Tom Allen, president of Inacom, believes businesses like his will thrive: Companies are increasingly opting to contract with outside firms for information technology or information systems work.

Inacom is a national company, but Allen owns the rights to the business in Arkansas and Oklahoma. Based in Little Rock, Allen’s company employs about 100 people and has other offices in Fayetteville, Little Rock, Fort Smith and Tulsa, Okla.

It is in Fayetteville and Fort Smith where Inacom is experiencing its biggest growth, however. The Fayetteville office opened almost six years ago; Fort Smith has been open nearly one year. Allen says business at the two offices grew 300 percent in 1998 and he expects repeat performances from them in 1999.

He acknowledges it’s taken time to establish a reputation in Northwest Arkansas, where companies seem reluctant to contract out for services they believe can be done in-house.

“In Northwest Arkansas, companies try to ‘in-source’ services by doing everything themselves,” Allen explains. “They have finally learned and we have the reputation … to be able to perform these functions for them.”

Inacom’s Northwest Arkansas clients have included Arvest Bank Group, St. Mary’s Hospital in Rogers, TransMontaigne Oil Co. and Beverly Enterprises.

Allen says the primary reasons companies contract out for services are because they don’t have the skills to do what needs to be done or they have the skills but not enough people to do the work.

In the latter case, it may be that the employees are dispatched to do the computer work and an outside company, such as Inacom, is hired to do the employees’ regular work.

But Allen says companies also sometimes contract out because they have special projects.

“These are projects that may last from two to three weeks to a year and they don’t want to hire someone for that length of time,” he says. “We have outsource people to do everything from IMAC — installations, moves and changes.” Those workers, Allen says, are “fairly low-tech” personnel who can pick up a computer, move it between desks and do minor software work.

Further up the expertise ladder and also offered by Inacom are network support people who may run or manage servers for clients. This work requires much more knowledge and these workers are in demand because they’re the most difficult to find, Allen says.

“I’ve got several people of that caliber. They’re almost always college-degreed in addition to having several certifications within our industry,” he says.

The highest-level workers are consulting engineers who design networks, implementations or migrations from one system to another, Allen says. Those workers may be on-site one month or three or four.

Training is another area where companies look to outside sources. Weyerhauser Co. was one large client, Allen says.

“We’ve trained most of their employees, from Oklahoma to North Carolina.” It took nearly two years but Weyerhauser wanted every employee to see the same method presented, he says.

“We even custom-wrote the training so it was completely applicable to their system.”

Allen expects demand to grow because technology changes so rapidly and the demand for knowledge is so great.

“Today, whoever has the most information wins. That’s a fundamental business thing. Whoever’s got the most and the fastest, it’s just a fact of life,” Allen says. Companies are learning that it’s too expensive, both in money and time, to keep up.

“It’s taking too much energy from the core focus of their companies [and] they’re realizing they’re hurting their companies.”