Tech Companies Transition in New Economy

Area tech companies were hit hard in the fourth quarter of 2008. Some owners said that’s when they first saw clients and potential clients pulling back on their budgets.

“Businesses absolutely turned off the faucet,” said Roger Thomas, co-owner of Telecomp Inc. in Rogers. Telecomp is an AT&T reseller and deals in hardware systems such as Shortel, Cisco and IBM.

But Thomas and Chris Beaty, owner of IPC Communications of Bentonville, both said they saw their business models transition in 2009. IPC is more on the telecommunications side of technology, setting up companies with hosted voice over IP phone services.

Both companies saw clients shift to repairs and maintenance of equipment rather than purchasing new systems. Thomas estimates that while his new installation business was down to almost nonexistent in new construction, his repair business was up about 20 percent. Thomas also saw a trend in clients doing more video conferencing to cut back on travel expenses, which meant many clients decided to upgrade their bandwidth to facilitate the video.

However, both Beaty and Thomas said they’ve started to see promising signs for 2010.

“It’s really picked up in the last eight to 10 weeks,” Beaty said. People are starting to at least price equipment. Beaty said he’s cautious about forecasting out too far, but he projects growth between 10 percent and 15 percent in the next six to eight months.