25-Year-Old “Start-Up” Offers Software Consulting Services

To tell the story of Plumbline Solutions, Inc., the Findlay- based fullservice software consulting services startup, you have to go back 25 years. And for the name of the company, back to Biblical times.

In 1980 Gary Harpst, Jack Ridge, and Vernon Strong began developing accounting software for small and mediumsized companies. The firm became known as Solomon Software. Two PC Magazine articles were key to the company’s growth. “We won two editor’s choices: one in the 80s, one in the 90s,” said Eric Kurian, president of Plumbline. “And those two catapulted us into some prime popularity and helped the company grow dramatically.”

In 1997 Solomon acquired an independent developer with a strong vertical product and came out with a complete suite of project accounting and project management software.

Kurjan was recruited to Solomon in 1990 to handle sales and marketing. He ran the services part of the organization from the mid- 90s until the company was acquired by Great Plains in 2000 and then ran the entire Solomon piece of business for Great Plains until it was acquired by Microsoft in 2001.

Solomon software development and support functioned within the Microsoft Business Solutions group. But in June 2004, Microsoft decided to close its northwest Ohio facility. A large number of the employees were given the opportunity to relocate. But as Kurjan tells the story, Harpst went to Doug Burgum, former CEO of Great Plains, and said: “Do you really expect that all this intellectual capital is going to flow to Fargo, North Dakota, or to Redmond, Washington? If you do, you’re probably mistaken and you’re going to lose that intellectual capital. Hence you’re going to lose the revenue stream and the product that’s out there today. Because you won’t be able to maintain it and you won’t be able to grow it. This will be its last stand.”

Harpst proposed forming a new company. It would keep the operation in northwest Ohio, maintain jobs, and retain the intellectual capital. All for ten percent less than what it was costing Microsoft. So in the summer of 2004, Microsoft outsourced Solomon software development and support to the newly created Plumbline Solutions.

The name Plumbline comes from Old Testament accounts of the rebuilding of the temple, said Kurjan. “Zerubbabel, who was chartered with the rebuilding of the temple, stood amongst the rubble in Jerusalem.” In Zechariah 4:10 it says that “men will rejoice when they see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel.” Harpst, who Kurjan refers to as “a man of faith and a Biblical scholar,” felt the word “plumbline” represented what his new organization should be – strong and true. The company’s mission is “to deliver high value solutions that form lasting relationships.”

Plumbline has three types of customers. Microsoft is a big customer, buying mostly development services. Plumbline has direct customers like ISVs – independent software vendors and Fortune 500 or Enterprise organizations. And they offer a consulting element where they provide service to a partner who in turn provides that service to a customer.

A year after its founding, Plumbline Solutions is organized into four areas: Solomon support, Solomon development, strategic and emerging technologies, and applications development consulting.

The fourth piece of business is new this year. “We’re actually providing technical support to partners for their customers,” said Kurjan. Partners were finding it hard to train and keep support staff. Plumbline was already doing support. So in January they started doing it for four partners, who served as the pilot. “We’ll probably sign another three to four in the next couple weeks,” said Kurjan. “I think we’ve got a very solid program now.”

As a full-service consulting firm, Plumbline will do requirements analysis, write a design, do development work, do testing or training, do support. They can do any one of those individually or the whole suite. If a customer’s installation goes wrong, they’ll analyze the problem and help the customer get back on track. They can rewrite an ISV’s legacy product in NET or write a bridge from a legacy product to another product. They might write middleware software between Solomon and a Fortune 500 company’s main system. If a partner loses an employee, Plumbline can fill that gap so the partner can fulfill its commitments to customers.

Plumbline’s uniqueness lies in two areas, according to Kurjan. “There’s no other organization in the world that has the depth of knowledge that this team does,” he said. “These are some of the original authors. Who better than Plumbline if you have a question or an issue that’s revolving around the Solomon product line?”

The second area is relationships. Although Plumbline is a new company, its staff has been working with some of the same partners for two decades. “I’ve known a lot of these folks for 15 years,” said Kurjan. “And so I’ve got good, strong working relationships with them.”

This year, Plumbline was designated a Gold Certified Microsoft Partner with competencies in Microsoft Business Solutions and ISV/ Software Solutions. Kurjan compared the designation to the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. If an organization approaches Microsoft, looking for consulting, Microsoft will refer the organization to its gold-certified partners first. The designation represents that those partners have a certain skill set that others may not have achieved yet.

As for future plans, Plumbline wants to become expert at some of the elements that are part of new Microsoft releases. There are also adds to the existing Solomon product line. “So those are areas of expansion for us,” said Kurjan.

A current example is Business Portal, a presentation tool that can be customized by role and by industry. Kurjan gave an example. If you’re the CEO of a company, when you turn on your laptop in the morning you want to see your top 10 customers, that day’s outstanding invoices, current cash flow and your calendar. Business Portal builds that kind of screen. But the software is essentially a blank slate. CEOs and ClOs come to a company like Plumbline and say, “Can you write that for me?”

Currently, Business Portal is only an internal tool, an intranet product. But it will be more powerful in a forthcoming version, said Kurjan. “What people are asking for is that they make it external, so that a customer could call up a portal to get specific customer- facing information.”

With 72 employees, Plumbline is going through a careful analysis about speed of growth. “The business opportunities in front of us are tremendous,” said Kurjan. But the company isn’t trying to grow into a 500-person shop. “We think that there’s a right number and it’s not 500,” he said.

“One of the key messages that I continue to drive is, we are a small company,” he continued. Plumbline created the acronym TLO, which stands for “thinking like owners,” to encourage employee involvement. Kurjan is amazed at the number of emails he gets and the people who stop by and ask: “Why are we spending money on that?”"Good for you,” he says. “Great question.”

Copyright Telex Communications, Inc. Jul 01, 2005