108 Business View - December 2014
us there and they’ll enable us to support them there.”
The company typically pursues projects valued up to
$1 million, thought it has occasionally expanded that
threshold to $2 million for specific clients or situa-
tions. The most frequent customers, Ogburn said, are
“world-class manufacturing operations” like GE, Bec-
ton Dickson, Eaton and Kellogg.
Projects significantly larg-
er than $2 million – such
as major distribution cen-
ters – are happily left
for the competitors that
specialize in that scale of
business.
“We’re not the big guys,”
he said. “One job for
them may be $50-60-70
million and require prob-
ably as much software as
it does hardware and con-
trols. That’s not our cup
of tea. But we don’t think
there’s anybody better
than us, though, at a $1
million and smaller job.
Most of ours are well un-
der $1 million, each job.
We do best when the dis-
tribution is connected to
the manufacturing group
and the manufacturing
group has a big say about
it.
“We like to become a
member of the custom-
er’s team and do what’s
best for the specific job.”
No significant changes are planned to the one-contact
business model anytime soon, Ogburn said, though he
admitted he occasionally hears it described with terms
like “antiquated” and “dinosaur.”
One area where the company intends to maintain a
LOGISTICS
