Alsbridge CEO Steers His Company To 740% Growth

Alsbridge CEO Steers His Company to 740% Growth

Ben Trowbridge started his Dallas-based IT and business process outsourcing consulting firm with little to no capital.

Eight years after its inception, Alsbridge Inc. has hit $33 million in annual revenue from its global operation and is a contender for work typically reserved for one of the big four audit firms.

We are all things outsourcing, said Trowbridge, the firms CEO. Clients are increasingly wanting to get our kind of help. The decision is not an easy one, it is fraught with pressures from talent, people and individuals concerned with jobs. Outsourcing is a very emotional subject to talk about. We try to take the emotion out of it. We try to take it back to the facts.

The consulting firm offers strategic outsourcing and offshore and shared services advice, then builds decisions around deep analytical information, he said. The analytic work is produced by Alsbridge-acquired company Pro Benchmark, which is now based in Dallas. And the firm in the past year acquired Dallas-based TAG to provide telecom network expertise.

The two acquisitions were part of the company's strategy to continue to grow and provide customers with multiple data-rich services, Trowbridge said.

With the troubled economy bringing renewed concern for the bottom line, the job sourcing market is in flux as companies try to outsource shared services or bring previously outsourced business back in-house, according to industry officials.

Alsbridge's revenue grew 740 percent between 2007 and 2009, Trowbridge said.

Outsourcing brings a business a typical cost savings of 25 percent to 40 percent, which is a huge incentive, he said.

Linda Kinder, vice president and chief financial officer of Kellwood Co., said by using Alsbridge, the St. Louis-based apparel retailer was able to bring IT work back in-house, which generated $3.6 million in annual cost savings.

The Alsbridge benchmarking program ran two scenarios for the company and offered information to help make the call, Kinder said.

It wasn't a pipe dream or vapor savings, she said. It was a real return.

But building Alsbridge's customer base wasnt easy.

The challenge with starting a small consulting firm is what the business doesn't have, Trowbridge said. You don't have a brand, you don't have customers, you don't have a methodology and you don't have a fact base, he said. But now, we have all four components, and we are now one of the companies that come to mind for this type of work. Now clients simply call us.

While the company didn't have startup capital, there was a deep desire for success that drove the business forward, said Trowbridge.

We were funding on cash flow and we just did it, he said. We effectively ran on zero and we ran that way for three years.

When the company began operations in 2003, several big-name clients hired the firm and the business grew, he said.

After a few years, Alsbridge needed funding to tackle a rapid expansion. The company got help from Morton Meyerson, a longtime leader in the industry, who led the initial investment round for the company. Meyerson is currently the nonexecutive chairman of Alsbridge.

The rapid growth didn't faze Trowbridge, who spent 12 years as a U.S. Marine commander of four military companies, including a rifle and special operations company. The adrenaline rush was addictive, and when Trowbridge returned to civilian life in 1990, he was up for another challenge.

Trowbridge joined the then-Plano-based EDS development program, which prepared him for the competitive business environment of closing big sales deals, he said.
It was a heck of a way to start a civilian career, he said. It was a tremendous drink from the fire hose.

The program prepared him for a move to London-based Ernst & Young as a managing partner. After investing in various dot-com businesses, Trowbridge became chief executive officer of United Messaging. In 2001, he sold his interest in the company.

After that, Trowbridge spent 30 days skiing 10 mountains in the United States, working through plans for the future, he said. He began to build a business plan for his client-focused outsourcing venture.

As Alsbridge continues to grow, Trowbridge is shopping for $10 million in operating capital to acquire two more businesses this year and add roughly 30 sales employees in Dallas and London.

While he wouldn't give specifics on the acquisition targets, he did say, "They will nest nicely with what we do."