Within the world of business, we generally look at growth as a good thing. This thinking goes back much further than the recent past, as evidenced by the business acumen of Alexander III (often called Alexander the Great). Not being content to conduct the business of his day (which amounted to a series of hostile takeovers) within the area near Greece, Alexander continued down into Africa as well as traveling as far east as India. However the growth of his business empire was not sustainable in the long term and the corporation began to break apart shortly after his death.
More recently, during the dotcom years of the late 1990s, companies expanded at remarkable rates. As an example, we have the creation of 650,000 new jobs in the US within the internet economy in 1999. Then, midway through 2000 everything changed. December 2000 alone saw more than 10,000 layoffs in this sector of the economy. Many of these layoffs were entire companies collapsing under the weight of unrealistic expectations.
At the same time many internet companies were racing down the highway to incredible growth; Omnitech was born. Initially, we had 7 people participating in the business either as owners or employees.
Our approach to growth has been decidedly old-school: we only add people to the payroll when we generate the revenue to pay them. Of course, this meant that while companies like Commerce One had staffed up to thousands of employees they couldn’t keep busy, Omnitech was slowly adding employees who stayed busy from the first day they came in the door.
Developing the company in this way has allowed us to be selective in our employment process, hiring those individuals who are highly qualified to provide the solutions which our clients need. In addition, we ensure that we add those employees to the Omnitech team who strongly desire to work here.
In short, since we have never focused on reaching a certain size or even expanding as quickly as perhaps we could, we have been able to put our effort into ensuring that we meet our clients’ ever-changing needs. Growth within Omnitech, when it does occur, is a byproduct of diligent endeavor and excellent client support.