Smart50 rank: 20
Revenue: $1,600,000
Growth: 81.83%
Founders: Lisa Borden, 43, Andrea Murray, 46
Head Office: Victoria
Employees: 9
Industry: Property and business services
Website: http://www.cciconsulting.com.au
Finding that first big customer can be a thrill when you’ve just started your own business, but as many can testify, relying on one client for most of your business usually ends badly.
CCI Consulting ran into that problem.
After scoring a contract with a large telco founders Lisa Borden and Andrea Murray thought they were running high – until their client was acquired and the new owner had a department that did everything CCI could do.
Many key client contacts were made redundant as part of the acquisition.
“This experience taught us a critical lesson about the value of a diversified client base,” Borden says.
“It provided us with a business imperative and a hunger for sales, to expand our client base.”
Fortunately, as a result of strong client relationships, CCI was introduced to a range of new businesses as employees from the teleco found new roles with new companies.
In the next year CCI won four new contracts, but the experience taught the pair never to rely on only one customer.
The business was founded in 2001, with the two partners deciding to focus on research needs of B2B organisations.
Over time it has narrowed its focus to researching user experience of technology and outsourced services, along with business relationship health monitoring services as well.
Many of its clients are large corporates, including NAB, IBM and ANZ, in the tech, financial and industrial sectors, but Borden says the company wants to start moving out and pursuing new clients through new marketing methods.
The pair is enjoying adapting the company to a changing industry as market research becomes more niche-focused and specialised.
But because most business has been sourced from existing clients and word of mouth the pair’s plan to double the business during the next 18 months can only be achieved by increasing its marketing.
“This will be achieved by promoting CCI’s expertise and services in our niche market beyond our existing client base using a range of techniques including inbound website marketing, increased external speaking, partnership arrangements and increased automation of repeatable parts of the service offerings,” Borden says.
The two say they have been able to provide a great service – and attract qualified talent with good work/life flexibility arrangements – but the next step will be reaching out to prospective partners.
“We need to increase the number of clients by making more of the right people aware of what we do and the value we add to clients by doing it,” Borden says.
