Cover Story
Team innovation
Jim Laber and Jay Mellon want employees to be innovative at AtNetPlus Inc.
Smart Business Akron/Canton | October 2009
2009 Business Growth Awards: Technology Category - Employee GrowthWith an investment market that has recently been unstable to say the least, you might be better just handing over your money to Jim Laber and Jay Mellon. Their company, AtNetPlus Inc., was established in 1998 with an initial investment of $250 from each of the founding partners, and today, it is a multimillion-dollar corporation with almost 20 employees. Laber and Mellon, both partners, continue to grow the IT services company, with sales increasing by 132 percent and employee growth climbing 125 percent in the last five years.
That growth can be contributed to hard work and dedication, but it’s also a result of Laber and Mellon motivating employees to bring ideas to the table.
The company has an initiative called “pet projects,” which encourages the staff to be innovative.
Each member of the technical team has a target utilization to meet each week, but the members are also urged to pick a pet project on which they can spend up to four hours per week that does not count against their utilization. With the approval of their manager, they can break the monotony of the daily grind and choose any type of project for which they have interest. The employees can investigate ways to use that technology to provide a product or service offering that would be of benefit to the company’s client community. Sometimes this involves identifying and testing a new service for a vendor or it could be writing a custom program to solve a problem.
The initiative has produced useful ideas that the company can implement.
An example of a recent success of the program is the company’s implementation of m0n0wall, which is a firewall. The company’s AtNetGuard service was designed by one of the company’s IT specialists and offers exceptional firewall protection to clients.
AtNetGuard employs an open-source firewall product on top of low-cost hardware, resulting in a unique, low-cost solution with the same functionality as devices that typically cost over three times as much.
Because of the innovation of the AtNetPlus team, its clients are able to enjoy the benefits of cutting-edge technology that is traditionally too expensive for small and medium-sized businesses to employ.
How to reach: AtNetPlus Inc., (866) 500-7652 or www.atnetplus.com
