If Patricia Bramhall does her job right, her clients won’t need her anymore. That may seem like a risky proposition for an information technology management company, particularly at a time when the whole industry appears to be under siege from outsourcing. But it suits Bramhall just fine. In her view, it is the inability of IT departments to show corporate management their value and worth to the business that has led to the recent surge in outsourcing. So her company, Thousand Oaks-based Tydak Consulting Services Inc., seeks to teach clients how to align themselves with the bread and butter issues of the company, providing them with the tools not just to communicate with management, but to tie their performance to that of the company as a whole. Since she founded Tydak, five years ago, Bramhall has built the company’s revenues to about $600,000, with a client list that includes Amgen, Nestle and Honda. And it has done so despite a field of thousands of competitors and a push by many companies to outsource their IT functions to India and other nations where labor is far less expensive. “She’s very articulate,” said Danny Pinchasi, vice president and director of information technology at LandAmerica Southland Title, one of Tydak’s clients. “And she knows what management is looking for and she knows how to speak with the engineers. By understanding the engineers and knowing what management is looking for, she’s almost a translator in getting both to understand each other.” Long career Bramhall started her computer career while still in high school when she began dabbling in some computer programming and data processing classes at a nearby occupational training center. After college she landed a job at what is now Countrywide Financial Corp., where, over 20 years she rose through the IT ranks overseeing the transition of the company from a mortgage banking organization to a multifaceted financial institution with a gaggle of branches and remote locations all connected by technology. As Countrywide’s business changed and developed, so too did its technology needs. And Bramhall was front and center as the IT department sought to develop in ways that would mirror the evolving business. By 2000, Bramhall figured she had a marketable skill that was in short supply throughout the industry, but by the time she made her move and launched Tydak, which is named after Bramhall’s two sons, the Internet bubble had burst. The first few months were tough it was four months before Tydak picked up its first client but not as tough as they might have been. “Most IT companies were selling web development, ASPs, ISPs,” said Bramhall, referring to the information technology companies that had emerged on the scene around the Internet frenzy of the late 1990s. “Tydak doesn’t do that. We talked about the organization within an IT department. How do you get the most from that? How do you keep yourselves from being outsourced? What service are you delivering? What does it cost and how does it improve the value of the company?” Bramhall started out working solely with subcontractors and doing a lot of the IT work herself in addition to the prospecting and marketing. She even took some sales training courses. The small company, without many expenses, was able to barely make a living for the first few years. But by 2003 the industry was in a deep recession and Tydak, like most IT companies, was hard pressed to find any work. “Over the years recruiters had called me and in 2003 I would say, ‘okay, what do you have,'” Bramhall recalled. But each time she got close to going back to the corporate world, a small contract would come through, and she stuck it out. Although she focused on mid-sized companies with 500 to 1,000 employees, she often found that larger companies were anxious to hire her because of her experience working with those kinds of corporations. Today the client list is a mix of very large and mid-sized firms, but the company’s focus remains targeted on helping in-house IT departments communicate with the organization. Communication tips Clients note that what their management often remembers is the times the system is down, not all the time that it is working, and Bramhall has taught them ways to counteract that tendency. “It’s almost like a (public relations) thing,” said Pinchasi. “She’s shown us how to put in place a way to get those reports out on a regular basis, so you’re hearing about the department and all the things that are working.” Bramhall contends that when corporate management doesn’t understand the IT department, it’s easy to decide that it would be cheaper to run it from another country like India. By the same token, when IT departments don’t shape their business to meet the needs of the company, it’s difficult to justify the costs. Not so if the two departments speak the same language and work toward the same goals. “One of our goals is to leave the company,” said Bramhall. “It is not our goal to be with the company forever. It’s to teach you to do it yourself, not to introduce some proprietary measure that keeps us there. The departments that do that eventually they’ll be found out and be outsourced. But if you align yourself with the business and understand their needs, they will love you forever” One of the things a visitor to the company’s Web site will find is an “IT to English” dictionary, designed to help managers understand the fundamentals of the function and what so many of the acronyms mean. At the same time, Tydak teaches its clients how to talk to corporate management without the jargon. “You’re not going to buy a car if you don’t understand what the salesman is saying,” Bramhall said. Similarly Tydak works with the IT department to learn to deliver the data it collects in ways that are meaningful to decision makers. “One of the things that Tydak has done is brought business intelligence into IT,” said Bramhall. “Take all this data and turn it into information shown in a framework so that it is useful to management.” That, Bramhall said, is becoming more and more important as chief information officers and other corporate managers are increasingly under the gun to justify expenses. As business has grown, Bramhall has begun to hire some in-house staff, although she continues to run her business from her home office. Earlier this year, Bramhall hired a part-time administrative staffer to handle billing and help with other financial tasks as well as assist in writing proposals. In September, Tydak hired an inside sales person to prospect potential clients, and in the coming months, the company expects to add an outside sales person. Bramhall’s hope is that she can release many of the day-to-day duties she has maintained in favor of overseeing the operation, but she adds that entrusting those responsibilities to others is not easy either. “I realized I can’t work this many hours, and I’m not being effective anymore,” she said. “When you start a business, it’s will I ever find business? Then it shifts to how will I get this business done? I knew I needed to hire somebody when I knew there were not enough hours in the day.” Tydak Consulting Services Inc. Owner: Patricia Bramhall, president Year Founded: 2000 Revenues in 2000: $25,000 Revenues in 2005: $600,000 Employees in 2000: 1 (owner) Employees in 2005: 13 (including subcontractors) Driving Force: More and more CIOs are being asked to prove the value of the department; business intelligence is coming to be recognized as an important need; and outsourcing is an increasing threat. Goal: To be able to retire with Tydak and have it continue beyond that as a going concern.
