Mitch McLeod established ARCOS as a custom software company in 1993 in the basement of his home. Little did he know that a one-off software request would eventually propel the Columbus-based firm into 23 states.
In 1997, Wisconsin-based Alliant Energy approached McLeod about building an application to help manage crews called out to repair lines during power outages. The problem: Dragging line crews out of bed in the middle of the night can be hit or miss without an organized way of doing it.
"In 1999, two more companies came to us and they said 'we want what Alliant Energy has,'" McLeod recalls. "So we built a little more general purpose version of the product."
Unprepared to market the product full-force, "I went to the Ohio Foundation for Entrepreneurial Education and rewrote the business plan," McLeod says.
The market research conducted as part of his plan revealed that most utility companies were using manual call-out processes using notebooks and spreadsheets, or home-grown systems that left a lot to be desired.
With four more utilities in the pipeline for his software, McLeod's company dove headlong into fully developing a marketable product. The resulting solution automates the process for identifying available line crews, contacts utility workers at home and allows them to electronically report into work. It then tracks their work so "we know that they have been called out, we know not to notify them again, and then when they're released from work we know not to call them again."
Today, the Columbus-based firm serves utilities all across the country. Company revenues have been growing at about 20 percent a year during the past two years, and McLeod is projecting 30 percent growth in 2010.
At the same time, the company has nearly doubled headcount in the last year, with 18 employees now compared to 10 in January 2009.
Source: Mitch McLeod, ARCOS
Writer: Gene Monteith