LANSING — For the third year in a row, Envisage Information Systems was included in Inc. Magazine’s Inc. 5000 list, which honors the fastest growing private companies in America. The software-development company, which has additional offices in Syracuse and Endicott, ranked number 883 on the list with three-year revenue growth of 504 percent. Revenue jumped […]
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LANSING — For the third year in a row, Envisage Information Systems was included in Inc. Magazine’s Inc. 5000 list, which honors the fastest growing private companies in America.
The software-development company, which has additional offices in Syracuse and Endicott, ranked number 883 on the list with three-year revenue growth of 504 percent. Revenue jumped from $2.8 million in 2009 to $17 million in 2012.
Over the past five years, employment at the firm has grown from 30 people to 260 employees, says Steff McGonagle, principal and co-founder of Envisage.
In 2012, the company ranked number 382 on the Inc. 5000 list and placed 808th on the list in 2011.
“We’ve been very blessed,” McGonagle says of the company’s inclusion on the Inc. rankings.
Founded in 1990, Envisage specializes in software that provides web access, data connection, and workflow automation products to the retirement industry. With an increasing number of people participating in retirement plans as well as the complex nature of the industry and its regulations, Envisage has seen success by offering products that help make solving complex problems easy for the companies that manage those retirement plans, says Daren Free, Envisage’s COO. “That capability is rare in our industry,” he says. “That’s a big piece of what’s driving that demand and that growth.”
McGonagle says he expects that growth to continue as Envisage continues to gain market share. “We’re looking to double in size again over the next 18 months,” and then double again after that, he says. He expects the company will have added a total of 100 employees in 2013. Annual revenue is now above $20 million and growing.
Surprisingly, Envisage does not have a sales force and gains the majority of its new clients through word-of-mouth marketing and recommendations from current clients, he says.
Inclusion on the Inc. 5000 list certainly helps win new clients over, McGonagle says. Being on the list has also become a valuable recruiting tool as the company looks for new employees, Free adds.
“We are constantly looking to hire developers, business analysts, people who really understand this retirement space,” he says. The company looks frequently to new college graduates to fill those roles, he notes, but in the past it wasn’t always easy to convince them to come to Ithaca. “People are starting to understand who we are and seek us out,” he says since the company has made the Inc. 5000 list three times. Now, Free says, when he encounters soon-to-be college graduates, not only have they heard of Envisage, but the often know someone who is working there and may already have plans to apply for a job themselves.
The Inc. 5000 list has also benefited the company in another way, McGonagle says, and that is boosting current employee morale. “It feeds the culture of people having autonomy and self-direction and pride of accomplishment,” he says.
Envisage prides itself on its laid-back and family-like work atmosphere, says James Mandle, head of marketing and communications, for the company. “It’s not the typical corporate America,” he says. With a “fun room” where employees can take breaks, a family atmosphere where everyone goes by their first name instead of a title, and heavy emphasis on teamwork, Envisage’s work environment is more of a Google-type workplace, he says. Google is known for its employee perks that include things like game rooms, massages, and the like.
This past spring, Envisage was named one of the top 10 companies in the Central New York’s Best Places to Work awards for employers with 51 or more employees. More than 1,100 employees participated in the surveys conducted by Research and Marketing Strategies Inc. (RMS), which determined the top ranked companies. CNY’s Best Places to Work is a BizEventz and Central New York Business Journal event.
Headquartered at 31 Dutch Mill Rd. in the town of Lansing, Envisage (www.envisagesystems.com) also has offices at 306 E. Main St. in Endicott and in the Jefferson Towers at 50 Presidential Plaza in Syracuse. The company employs just over 20 people in each of those offices.
On its website, Envisage describes itself as the largest independent software development company providing web, common remitter, and workflow solutions for the retirement industry. Since 1995, it has been exclusively serving mid- to large-scale record keepers and financial companies.
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