IMS Technology Services is proud to be featured in Commercial Integrator.

With tough times visible in the rearview mirror, IMS Technology Services successfully reinvented itself and continues to do so.

Jul. 25, 2014 — by D. Craig MacCormack

Things have been great lately for IMS Technology Services. After landing on the Inc. 5000 in 2012 and 2013, it’s poised to bring in its most revenue ever ($16.5 million) in 2014.

Co-founders John and Jill Renninger aren’t likely to sit back, however. For them, a period in September 2001 when the company went three or four weeks without any work and wondering what they could do to make it to the other side doesn’t feel like that long ago.

“There was never a question we’d be continuing,” says Jill. Still, it was at that point when IMS did something that is often challenging for integration firms. It changed — a lot — in a relatively short period of time.

It was at that point in 2001 when the company went from a wholesale rental house to local event staging. Today, the company offers integration, managed services and event staging.

Related: IMS Technology Services is Industry Leader in Corporate, Higher Ed Markets

What continues to set IMS Technology Services apart from other integration firms in 2014, however, is its ability to recognize areas in which it needs to change and commit to doing them as well as or better than anyone else.

Evolving in Tough Times

While many of their competitors fell by the wayside or struggled during the most recent economic recession, IMS grew 77 percent in those years and found itself gaining national and international acclaim, including those Inc. 5000 lists.

“We did this by focusing on quality, high-ROI solutions for our clients and opening new markets,” including going national on event staging and systems integration, says John.

For the past several years, the company has invested more time, money and energy on expanding its IT offerings. That includes solutions that feature video streaming, digital signage, video conferencing and collaboration.

The name IMS Technology Services is relatively new — 2012 — and the result of its shift toward AV-IT convergence. The company was launched as Integrated Marketing Services.

“There’s a focus on driving relationships with customers,” says John. “You always need to look at something new and innovative, but something that works. You can’t survive today on standard conference rooms. AV-IT convergence is here and we are constantly expanding our personnel, training, expertise and experience to support a sustained AV-IT model in our industry.”

One area where IMS has plenty of room to grow is through its recurring revenue offerings, which encompass about 5 to 8 percent of the company’s annual revenues. To that end, the company is relaunching its managed services department.

“We’d like to see that be a lot bigger,” says John. “We’ve dabbled in it based on customer requests so far, but we’d like to see it get to 10, 20, 30 percent.”

IMS is aiming to offer solutions that manage their clients’ networks “because that is where the entire industry is charging forward full steam ahead,” says John.

That includes working on production services for video campaigns and audio in the cloud; AV design services; and owning content for installed systems such as streaming, digital signage and collaboration, says operations manager Michael Shinn.

They’ll achieve these goals through an internal production team and third-party partners, he says. IMS is hoping to see “a significant increase in the next few years” on the 5 to 10 percent of its overall revenue it sees from digital signage.

IMS will roll out its AV design managed service offering in the second quarter of this year, followed by owning content in the third quarter and meeting support services in the fourth quarter. They’ll offer other services in 2015, says Shinn.

Top-Down Management of Change

IMS Technology Services’ adaptive culture must trickle down from its co-founders, but both John and Jill are quick to deflect the credit to their management team, which John notes is “critical in a business where you have to change on occasion.”

Still, the husband and wife team demonstrate a nice yin-yang leadership approach. Since the day they launched the company, Jill has handled the finance, administration and human resources functions for IMS, while John has focused on the sales and operations side. They pride themselves on taking a slightly different approach to business than many others in the integration space.

Related: CI Businesses Keeping It in the Family

John says they “look at every position as a technical service,” while Jill notes they “look for people who want to make it a career, not just a job.” Those perspectives encompass a lengthy hiring process that includes a hiring manager whittling an initial list of candidates to three to six finalists, each of whom then interview with John, Jill and others with whom they might work if they’re hired.

“If you can get through that, you can get through almost anything else you’re going to face here,” says John.

And they’ve been successful at finding people who want to stick around for a while, with a turnover rate of less than 5 percent in almost 20 years, although Jill is quick to point out “we’ve made a few mistakes,” particularly on the sales side. IMS hired 13 people in 2013 and is ahead of that pace through the first half of 2014.

“When it comes to sales, we’re looking for someone who can focus on new business development as well as being a sales manager,” says John. “There are very few people who can do it to the degree we need it done in the first three years.”

Jill acknowledges the company has a built-in learning curve of about five years before employees reach the pinnacle of their professional careers.

“There’s a lot of training in place,” she says.

Co-founding a Company, a Marriage

There are plenty of tales about friends who went into business together, thinking their familiarity with each other would be a boon to the company, only to find a few years later, they not only didn’t have their business anymore, but they didn’t have that close friend either.

So, you’d think John and Jill Renninger would have walked quite a tightrope over the past two decades since the husband and wife decided to launch Integrated Marketing Services in 1995, renamed IMS Technology Services in 2012 after a few years as IMS Audio Visual. In fact, they say, the decision might have been the best one they ever made — well, maybe the second-best behind getting married, that is.

Jill has never worried about working so closely with her husband day to day, she says. “This is our life and it’s all-consuming,” she says. “We’re responsible not only for our family, but also for our employees and their families too.”

“We both come from families that have their own businesses,” says John Renninger, who serves as principal of IMS. “You have to trust in each other and respect each other a great deal to make it work and to be successful at it. This is a tough business and in the early years, we relied on each other to get through it together,” he says.

Jill notes they each have individual strengths that have allowed them to find “a nice balance.” It helps that they “have 100 percent trust,” says John. “She’ll tell me when I’m right — and when I’m wrong,” he says.

In Exclusive Company

Success certainly is in the eye of the beholder, but having almost 20 years under their belts with Jill as president and John as principal is one sure way to measure that for IMS. So, too, is the fact the company has been one of the few systems integrators to land on the Inc. 5000 for each of the past two years.

“Obviously, it’s a benefit for us to be on that list, especially two years running,” says John. “Our focus isn’t necessarily getting on that that list, though. We try to focus on doing the right things with our growth that got us on that list in the first place.

“It all comes down to the people. We’ve focused on choosing people who are going to be excellent employees. We truly believe one excellent employee is worth five to 10 average employees,” he says.

So, what exactly is an “excellent employee” in the eyes of John and Jill Renninger? It’s not necessarily someone who graduated from college in three years and has made a name for themselves in the industry by climbing from company to company and job to job.

“We look for people who’ve achieved a high level of success in some status of their lives, someone who’s gone above and beyond, whether that’s as an Eagle Scout or Girl Scout, captain of a varsity sports team, any sort of leadership position like that,” says John. “We look for people who have a passion for what we do and we invest a great deal in them. I think we have something here that people want and we allow them to make a good living for themselves.”

Before John and Jill started Integrated Marketing Services (which was later shortened to IMS by customers and staff), John had worked in sales and marketing for a Fortune 500 company while Jill was raising the couple’s three children.

John’s experience and life on the road helped to plant a seed and look for a solution to a problem he encountered often.

“I had to conduct technology seminars and national account presentations,” says John. “The presentation equipment that I rented failed more often than it worked. IMS was started to fill a void in the market by renting high-quality projection technology to local hotels, meeting venues and professionals on a short-term basis.

Later, IMS evolved into a local event staging company (IMS Audio Visual) as the cost and size of projectors was reduced and clients started embracing BYOD in meeting venues. In the 2001 timeframe, a few of the company’s larger clients asked John and Jill to help them with various systems integration projects.

“We had the expertise in-house, saw the opportunity and developed a new business unit dedicated to systems integration,” says John. Today, IMS caters to Forbes 2000 clients and higher education institutions with international event staging services and national systems integration for clients in the Northeast corridor of the U.S.

Among its longtime clients is Independence Blue Cross (IBC) in Philadelphia, which has worked with IMS for more than a decade.

“They’ve helped us manage some complex communication challenges,” says JohnMcClung, VP of advertising and creative services. Most recently, IMS helped them update two in-house editing suites at its headquarters location, which opened in 1989 and hadn’t been updated since.

“Use of video is a key component for us in delivering messages to customers and employees,”saysMcClung. IMS helped IBC modernize its lighting system, video production, audio sound booth and photo studio. IMS also set up and helped them manage content for the video walls in the redesigned lobby, and helped them look at each of the conference rooms in the building’s 45 floors.

The building came away with high-performance AV capability in the spaces typically used by sales and marketing staffs and upgraded systems in the other rooms, says McClung.

“They were able to get up to speed very quickly and help us create a room that’s now very functional and very busy,” he says. Because the building has no auditorium but often hosts large groups for meetings, IMS was able to find a way to project content for meetings that include somewhere between 200 and 400 people, says McClung.

“It comes down to knowledge of the business as well as responsiveness,” he says. “They’re not recommending things that aren’t going to fly. I like that I’m working with someone who’s very understanding of what our needs are. They also understand what’s around the corner and help us take things to the next level.”

That includes discussions about how the building might fit into the proposed digital district in the Center City section of Philadelphia, although that is far from a sure thing at this point.

All About Accountability

John and Jill Renninger are proud of the entrepreneurial spirit they’ve developed among their workforce since opening the company, noting project managers and sales teams are evaluated in relation to the success of the overall company.

“The more they put in, the more they and their team will get out of it,” says John. “We’ve focused on being a high-quality design-build firm that provides end-to-end accountability with the absolute best team in AV.”

IMS “strives to own all responsibility for our clients’ business communication technology needs in order to be a reliable partner and resource for them,” says John. “We strive to provide the best professional services in our marketplace and have recruited the top talent in order to do so.

“We also are unique in that we are near equal in size for event staging and systems integration, which means we can provide all of our clients’ AV needs. This also allows us to augment installed systems with event staging solutions for one-off meetings much more easily and thoroughly,” he says.

Another area that will remain a focus for IMS is employee training and certification.

“Training is of the utmost importance at IMS and is a strong differentiator for us in the marketplace,” says John. “We require all of our employees, whether they are in management, engineering, operations, administration, sales, etc. to complete professional development throughout the year. All training is managed and developed for each individual’s unique skill sets and career goals.”

IMS’ training partners include InfoComm International, NSCA, BICSI, Syn-Aud-Con, their manufacturer partners, a sales training consultant, Fred Pryor business training, networking training partners and more.

“Our training is highly emphasized in our proposal documentation and is used as a point of differentiation with our competition,” says John.

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