Tech Wizards Cut Clients? Costs

Steve Hankins wants small businesses to have access to the same IT and financial acumen that was part of growing a Fortune 100 company to more than $25 billion in revenue.

One recent morning, Hankins, who’s had stints as both chief information officer and chief financial officer of Tyson Foods Inc., sipped on a 44-ounce soda from Sonic Drive-In and said, “Most businesses can’t afford a full-time CFO or CIO.”

But that shouldn’t inhibit their ability to grow like a large company.

Hankins and partner, Stan Szmyd, a former IT director for Tyson, started Springdale-based Accio.Us in August. The two have been fairly quiet about the company while gathering a few choice clients. Now they’re ramped up to offer their expertise to more companies that wrestle with the double-edged sword of technology and expansion.

The word Accio (pronounced ak-ee-oh) is plucked from fiction. In the popular “Harry Potter” series of books, it is a wizard’s spell used to summon or call an object to the caster, the duo said. So the company’s name coupled with its Web site extension is a play on words – essentially saying, “call us.”

Technology is only part of the Accio.Us business model. Talk about computers, servers or e-mail, and Hankins’ number-crunching mind immediately begins to weigh short-term and long-term costs versus realistic returns, all set against a backdrop of a hypothetical EBITA.

He’s also a CPA and he’s hard-core about returns.

A recent two-hour review of a client’s company cell phone bills resulted in $12,000 annual savings, he said.

They saved another client between $18,000 and $19,000 on a future building by scrutinizing the blueprints and rerouting the wiring diagram.

“I’m not a stand-in-line kind of guy,” Hankins said.

The two wouldn’t say what they charged the clients and they wouldn’t give a spread on their hourly rates, saying they vary depending on level of service commitment. They do not “scrape” a percentage off what they save their clients, they said.

It is clear they value frugality on behalf of their clients. Some agreements even “bank” unused hours for clients, much like some cell phone “rollover” plans.

With the average Arkansas wage for a computer information systems manager at more than $78,000 and the average accountant’s salary at more than $47,000, the two believe they can help clients keep their financial heads above water.

Techno No More

Unlike many technology firms that offer IT services, Hankins and Szmyd are technology agnostics.

They said Accio.Us has no plans to become an authorized dealer of any hardware because that can become self-serving.

Accio.Us will purchase hardware and software for a client if they want, but the focus will be to advise clients on a business-appropriate model for technology purchases, no matter the brand.

Hankins said small business owners are often under-advised and over-buy equipment. Then they typically under-utilize what they buy. That gray area of lost capital and the time an owner spends learning how to be a shadetree IT-er, can weigh down a business.

“People who run businesses don’t have time to be tech people,” Hankins said.

For that reason, much of what Hankins and Szmyd preach involves hosted services, where clients can access information, e-mail and a network via Accio’s hardware without capital purchases. But that’s only part of it, Hankins said, and not a must for every business.

“Our bias is to minimize upfront price tags,” he said.

Then, as business needs to, Accio.Us will help clients make purchases based on financial reason, not techno mumbo jumbo.

Tom Muccio, CEO of BioBased Companies Inc. in Rogers, actively uses Accio.Us.

“What I’m getting is the CIO advice,” Muccio said. “IT is very important for what we want to get done, but it’s not our core business. IT is support for us.

“I think we’re going to be a much better company because of [Hankins].”

Both Hankins and Szmyd said they have always been entrepreneurial-minded and the culture at Tyson fueled that.

“It was very much ‘this is your part of business and yours to grow,'” Szmyd said.

That experience will now help others grow, too, they said.