information-technology Archives

As IT Sector Grows, Attracting New Talent Is a Constant Challenge

By Kailey Houle January 5, 2023

Tech Foundry helps people find jobs in the IT workforce.

Securing a Workforce

Tech Foundry helps people find jobs in the IT workforce.

The information technology (IT) field in the U.S. is crying out for new talent, with hundreds of thousands of job openings and average salaries ranging from $86,000 to over $163,000. So why aren’t more people entering the field? A look at the local landscape sheds some light.

“Even prior to the pandemic, employers were having trouble filling their open positions, and that certainly has been exacerbated since,” Tricia Canavan said. “We saw from the early days, and continuing to the present, that available workers are not filling the numbers of the jobs that are available.”

For every two job openings, one person is applying to be part of this rapidly growing workforce, said Canavan, CEO of Tech Foundry in Springfield, an IT-focused workforce and economic-development organization that connects people to training support and career opportunities in the IT field, while also working with employers around the region, from nonprofits and higher education to medical organizations and corporations.

She explained that a lot of workforce-development organizations are not seeing quite as many people engaged in training as they’d hoped for.

Tech Foundry offers about 50 open slots with everything included: a laptop, one-on-one mentoring, internships, and more. Canavan thinks people don’t necessarily see themselves in the IT field, with the exception of those who have a love for video games and technology. But her organization’s mission is to connect people to living-wage jobs in IT; increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the IT sector for underrepresented and underserved people; while also helping companies thrive by being part of their talent solutions.

“Everybody in the world is completely and totally integrated with computers, and everybody’s work is supported by technology. So, regardless of the organization, you have a need for IT support staff or IT support functions specifically.”

Tricia Canavan

“Everybody in the world is completely and totally integrated with computers, and everybody’s work is supported by technology,” she told BusinessWest. “So, regardless of the organization, you have a need for IT support staff or IT support functions specifically.”

Matthew Smith, director of Cybersecurity Graduate Studies at Bay Path University, agreed, noting that IT is one of those unique arenas that touches every industry: technology, financial services, healthcare, education, law enforcement, and more. And he stressed that cybersecurity is one of the most important sectors of IT at the moment.

“There’s not one industry that’s not touched by technology or cybersecurity,” Smith said. “And if you think you’re not, you’re fooling yourself because you’re just one intrusion of your company away from going down. Everybody is getting attacked.”

IT still grapples with a significant gender gap, with girls tending to lose interest, compared to boys, around middle school, though Bay Path, as a women-only college on the undergraduate level, is working to change that trend locally.

In Bay Path’s graduate studies, men and women are able to learn from both teachers and IT professionals about the technical world around them.

Smith explained that, in technology, especially in cybersecurity, the information changes rapidly, so before running each course, and even during the semester, he and his colleagues look at the content and tweak or change it to what’s currently relevant.

Just like Tech Foundry, Bay Path is preparing students for the workforce, providing internship opportunities for real-world experience. And any experience is important, as many corporations are requiring a bachelor’s or master’s degree to even get an interview, or requiring two to five years of experience for those who don’t have a degree. So a degree alongside actual workplace experience is a definite leg up.

For the past 25 to 30 years, there has been an ongoing debate over whether certifications or a degree is better for the IT industry. But certifications only cover certain niches. Smith explained that someone who secures a Microsoft certification and works for someone that uses Microsoft is in good shape. But if they apply for a job that uses strictly Apple sources, they may be out of luck.

“It’s kind of like you’re hanging all of your hats on one cert, but if you get your degree, it’s more broad, more spectrum … and then you can jump into that specific corporation, and they train you internally on what they’re using and what they can embed in,” he said.

Smith went on to tell BusinessWest that knowledge and experience outweigh everything. For example, in 30 years, an expert with only a high-school education is still an expert, but times have changed; people changing careers to secure opportunities in the IT workforce have to know more than people did 30 years ago.

And times certainly are changing in other ways. After the pandemic, more companies are relying on hybrid work models, allowing their employees to work more from home. But this creates a whole new set of issues.

Serve and Protect

The emergence of COVID-19 early in 2020 brought sudden demand for remote access. Fortunately, advancing technology made it easier to access a corporation’s network from any device at home or even on the go.

“Prior to that, I think people were a lot more resistant to remote workers. And it seems to be hanging on,” said Charlie Christianson, president of CMD Technology Group in East Longmeadow. “I think that, for a lot of our clients, the concept of a hybrid environment is where it’s going to settle out.”

Sean Hogan, president of Hogan Technology in Westfield, agreed. He told BusinessWest that he allowed remote work “before it was cool,” and that working for a smaller IT-support business in Western Mass. allows flexibility for his employees because of how often they are on the computer. As long as they have good security and bandwidth, they can work from anywhere.

“I’m a firm believer that, as a small business, we can grow in a down economy. In fact, over the years, every time we’ve seen a major downturn in the economy, we’ve come out of it very well.”

Charlie Christianson

“On the flip side, though, with clientele, now we’re expected to support everybody’s house and laptops, so that’s a little bit more challenging because it’s a non-controlled environment, quite often, where folks are working,” he said.

Christianson added that he has to help clients understand the implications of letting someone use a home computer to access a corporate network as opposed to providing them a computer, or, in many cases, using a personal cell phone on a corporate network.

Over the past several years, CMD has spent a lot more time working with clients on the importance of cybersecurity. Recently, the company has observed a drive to adopt better practices, especially in the insurance sector. Many clients approach Christianson and his team with questionnaires provided by insurance agents to create better security measures in case of a data breach or hack.

Smith said a lot of companies have outdated security plans, some being 10 to 20 years old without any updates on the current technology available. Other businesses don’t have security plans in place at all.

Cybersecurity can be expensive, he noted, and a lot of companies feel like they can’t afford it. For small to medium-sized businesses, it’s tough to allocate money they need to direct to sales and marketing to drive their product, so cybersecurity often falls by the wayside — until a hack or attack happens. Then they recognize the importance of a proactive investment.

“If an incident were to occur, that can bankrupt your organization. You can be offline for 48 hours,” Smith said. “And by the time you pay that ransom — or you don’t, and you don’t have the specific backups to recover from — then you’re out of luck.”

Bay Path graduate students are trained to understand what to look for and how to rebuild that specific security incident plan to today’s standards, so they can incorporate that knowledge and bring it into a profession where they help protect individuals and businesses.

But companies, like CMD and Hogan, that help those businesses succeed are also focused on a threat of another kind: talent recruitment and retention.

“I think IT as a whole has a challenge for retention because you get a certain talent and a certain personality, and they’re always looking for bigger, better, smarter, faster,” Hogan said. “What happens is a lot of the folks that you bring in are looking to work in corporate America, and they want an enterprise-level job, and they want a big budget. They want to work at a big business. So you lose some folks to that.”

Even at a time when many IT professionals can work remotely, he noted, the key to retaining employees is hiring the right personality, and among the key traits is accountability to oneself. He also said new employees should pass the “beer test,” especially if they’re spending more time at work than with family at times.

“We’re looking for the person that wants to work in a flexible environment that has the right culture. In an interview, I really try to understand if they’re going to fit into our culture or not,” Hogan said. “Are they going to play well with the team? Are they a good fit? Do I want to go out on Thursday afternoon and have a beer with that guy or gal? That’s important to us because we work a lot.”

Progress Report

Among those hundreds of thousands of IT job openings in the U.S., employers are trying to fill about 675 vacancies in Springfield alone.

But despite that national challenge of hiring and retaining staff, both Christianson and Hogan reported a successful year.

In the past couple of years, Hogan told BusinessWest, one could hear a pin drop in his office in the last two weeks of December. This year, however, he’s been busy onboarding clients, closing deals, and seeing lead generations popping up left and right.

Christianson added that he had increased staff considerably this past year and plans to continue to do so in 2023.

“I’m a firm believer that, as a small business, we can grow in a down economy,” he explained. In fact, over the years, every time we’ve seen a major downturn in the economy, we’ve come out of it very well.

“I think, as small business owners, we just have to put our blinders on and not listen to the news and not get caught up in the hysteria around the economy and go out and do what we do every day. If you do that, you’ll be just fine,” Christianson added. “And the same applies to our industry. If you go out and work hard and treat your customers right and do the right things, you’ll grow.”

Whalley Computer Continues Its Strong Growth Pattern

By Contributor May 26, 2022

Special Coverage Technology

Making IT Happen

By Mark Morris

Mike Sheil, president, Whalley Computer Associates

Mike Sheil says he enjoys his work because his business — information technology — is always changing. And he acknowledges that this is an understatement, as recent events have shown.

Sheil, president of Whalley Computer Associates in Southwick, began his career with the computer reseller right after graduating from North Adams State College, now Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. After four years, he left for a medical device company where he stayed for another four years. Sheil returned to Whalley 24 years ago and rose through the sales ranks until being named president in June 2020.

His relatively new position comes with a lengthy job description, but, overall, he is charged with authoring the next chapters in what has become a long-term success story — a company that has grown exponentially from its humble roots over the past 43 years because of its ability to adapt to that constant change he mentioned.

The past two years, dominated in every way imaginable by the COVID-19 pandemic, provide a dramatic example of the company’s ability to respond to change, and, in many respects, lead clients through it.

“Before COVID you would get a quote, get a PO, order the product, it comes within a week and we can install it the next week. If we can get back to that type of normal business environment, I believe our company will experience tremendous growth.”

Indeed, a banner hanging in the production area reminds employees that, when in doubt, they are to do what’s right for the customer, the company, and the individual. This clear guidance turned out to be valuable when COVID hit and flooded Whalley with sudden demands for products and assistance. With millions of employees suddenly leaving the office to work from home, Whalley clients needed the resources to make that happen.

“We helped companies with thousands of workers to get their folks set up at home,” Sheil recalled. “Some needed monitors and docking stations, while others sought upgrades to their data center because so many more people were tapping into their bandwidth.”

In one instance, a higher education client was looking for 400 laptops to outfit staff members who had been sent home to work.

“I received the request on a Saturday,” Sheil recalled. A colleague found the product, provided a quote for what it would cost, and sent it to the client. “For the first time in my career, I received a purchase order from a public university on a Sunday.” By Monday afternoon, 400 laptops were shipped to the university.

Mike Sheil, left, says Whalley Computer Associates’ new building will allow the company to better serve its clients.

Looking ahead, Sheil said Whalley will soon begin to grow its physical presence with a new 84,000-square-foot building next to its current headquarters in Southwick. Plans call for locating the OEM division in the new space as well as expanding warehouse storage and improving delivery options.

“The new building allows us to go to our clients and let them know we can do even more for them, so that’s exciting,” Sheil said. “This is an opportunity to grow our business in North America while showing our commitment to Southwick and Western Mass.”

For this issue and its focus on technology, BusinessWest takes an in-depth look at Whalley’s long and intriguing history, and at what’s next for a business that helps its clients get it — and IT.

Taking Big Bytes

Tracing that history, Sheil noted that, in the early 1970s, Agawam math teacher John Whalley purchased a small software consulting firm that had a few clients. Working out of his basement after school and during the summer months, Whalley began to add customers, and by 1979 established Whalley Computer Associates.

By 1984 he moved the business out of the basement and in 1985, left teaching to concentrate on growing his company. Whalley is now CEO of the company, which is located in a 62,500-square-foot state-of-the-art building where 200 employees provide products and services to more than 20,000 customers around the world.

Whalley customers range from small businesses to corporations, as well as educational institutions and healthcare organizations. Clients tell Whalley representatives what challenges they need to address in their computer systems. Whalley then orders the product, configures it to fit the client’s needs, then delivers and installs the product at the client’s site. There are other resellers who simply order the product and send it directly to the client, who usually don’t have the space to handle a computer system shipment. Sheil said Whalley is different because it takes a hands-on approach.

“Once we receive the product it’s completely handled by Whalley employees,” Sheil said. “From the engineers and technicians who configure the products, to the people who drive our trucks and install the systems, everyone has a vested interest in doing it right.”

And during the pandemic, the company’s resolve to do it right was certainly tested, a test Sheil said it has passed.

“COVID and supply chain issues have been challenging, yet we experienced growth during that period,” he told BusinessWest. “It’s all thanks to our people who were flexible and willing to respond to all these requests.”

The OEM division of Whalley provides custom design of technology systems for clients. When COVID hit and a major customer temporarily shut down, it affected several employees who worked directly with that customer. Instead of laying off those employees, they were sent home with a laptop and a project to work on to benefit the company.

Heather Kies was given the assignment to plan several events for the company. A project manager with OEM, Kies also had a marketing background and enjoyed getting back into this area. She handled the assignment so well, Sheil promoted Kies to Marketing Manager in January and asked her to run the company’s new marketing department, which previously existed only informally as part of business development.

Mike Sheil says Whalley Computer Associates has a long track record of adapting to change and being nimble in its efforts to serve clients.

These days Kies is working on various company events, including preparations for a major tech conference that takes place in December.

“I’m also busy getting the word out on who we are so people understand all the services we can provide,” Kies said.

While the height of COVID brought unspeakable horrors, it also forced companies to think differently about how to stay in business and meet customer needs. Sheil is one of many who believes that making the pivot and finding new ways to get the job done is a silver lining to the dark cloud that has been with us for more than two years.

“When COVID hit we had to patch different products together because we couldn’t get the materials we wanted,” Sheil said. “As a result, our people figured out how to get clients what they need despite supply chain issues.”

One of the most profound changes since COVID is the growth in hiring people who work far away from the company’s headquarters.

“Since the pandemic, we’ve brought on new employees in Tennessee, Florida, and Texas,”
Sheil noted. “We can now hire folks out of the region to grow our reach.” Whalley won a recent contract in Pennsylvania and is seeking a salesperson for that area.

“This makes sense for us because these folks live there, they know the area and we can support them from here.”

Whalley offers clients different options to store data on the cloud. Sheil explained some clients want to store all their data remotely in the cloud, others choose to split between the cloud and on-premise servers, while other clients prefer to keep their on-premise storage. Having expertise in cloud storage has helped Whalley clients get around some supply chain issues.

“When clients order a storage device and then learn it will be up to six months before they see it, we can offer them cloud storage while they wait,” Sheil said. “When their device finally arrives, they can take it off the cloud. It gives them flexibility.”

In addition to shipping products out the door, Whalley has seen growth in its managed- services area, which Sheil explained as the first line of defense for the client.

“With remote workers logging in at all hours of the day, internal IT staffs are straight out keeping their systems going,” Sheil said. “From our data center, our managed services staff may see a problem developing before it actually becomes a problem.” Using the example of a defective hard drive, Sheil said his staff would notify the client’s IT director and immediately replace the device.

“In many cases, before the client is even aware of a potential issue, there’s an overnight envelope on its way with a new hard drive,” Sheil said. “In this way we can be an extra set of eyes for them.”

Security is an area that continues to grow and remains essential.

“We’ve seen tremendous growth in the products we sell for cyber security,” Sheil said. “We also provide knowledge to our clients so they can prevent ransomware attacks and other threats.”

Screen Test

When he looks to the future, Sheil admits that as a sales professional for 34 years, he always sees the glass as half full. After Whalley found success despite a pandemic and a supply chain crunch that continues, he believes the company is now poised for explosive growth.

“Before COVID you would get a quote, get a PO, order the product, it comes within a week and we can install it the next week,” Sheil said. “If we can get back to that type of normal business environment, I believe our company will experience tremendous growth.”

In seven years, the company will celebrate its 50th anniversary. Sheil said he’s excited about the upcoming anniversary while he reflected on how far Whalley has come.

“It’s good to know that we’re a company where you can stay more than 30 years and have a career,” he said. “We want to keep on growing our business while at the same time remain a great place to work in the future.” u

As Industry Needs Increase, Pixel Health Sees Considerable Growth

By Joseph Bednar June 9, 2021

Innovation and Startups

Breaking Down the Silos

Barbara Casey says Pixel Health’s companies understand the technology underpinning healthcare, but spend more time on people and processes.

For Pixel Health, 2020 was a year of growth — double-digit sales growth, in fact, and a 30% staff increase despite the impact of COVID-19 on the healthcare industry.

Or, perhaps — at least in part — because of the pandemic’s effect.

That’s because information-technology (IT) needs shifted dramatically during the pandemic, and health systems had a lot to sort through.

“There were a ton of digital-health startups funded in 2020,” said Barbara Casey, chief revenue officer at Holyoke-based Pixel Health, which comprises five separate but interconnected companies that assist health organizations in myriad ways. In fact, she noted, investment dollars in digital-health startups doubled last year, from $7 billion in 2019 to $14 billion in 2020.

“Digital health in general had a tremendous boom in 2020, which is good — and, in some ways, not so good,” Casey told BusinessWest. “It creates more noise in the market. If we can learn more about what our clients’ requirements are and what they want the experience to be like for stakeholders, we can help them sort through those vendors and see which ones match their requirements.

“There’s a ton of choice — that’s why we exist,” she went on. “There’s so much variability, so many ways you can do it. I think working with an organization like us, with as much depth and breadth as we have, is helpful to clients in finding a streamlined path to the end result.”

Pixel Health companies, which assist hospitals and health systems in creating IT infrastructure, improving operational processes, developing software, and facilitating financial efficiencies, has dramatically expanded its national client base since the pandemic began.

“Now we’re coordinating beyond the IT department, coordinating with the clinical side of healthcare, and that opens up a whole different range of consulting services we offer to healthcare providers.”

“While most healthcare-consulting groups specialize in either strategic planning or technical execution, Pixel Health companies do both,” company founder Michael Feld said.

In its marketing, Pixel Health claims its companies can “make healthcare better for patients, providers, and administrators alike by facilitating the use of technology, simplifying the process of using it, and overcoming the cultural and organizational constraints hindering its adoption. We help make the delivery of care better.”

President Brad Mondschein noted that the network’s first two companies, VertitechIT and baytechIT, “were really about how to coordinate the IT buildout and the provision of IT services to healthcare providers, and make those healthcare providers aware of what needs to be communicated internally and, frankly, even externally about their capabilities.”

With three other companies — Nectar Strategic Consulting, akiro, and Liberty Fox Technologies — now in the fold, “we’ve stepped beyond that — now we’re coordinating beyond the IT department, coordinating with the clinical side of healthcare, and that opens up a whole different range of consulting services we offer to healthcare providers,” he continued. “It’s also helped healthcare providers ensure that their IT services are focused so the clinical staff are getting what they need out of IT.”

A Quick Breakdown

The five Pixel Health companies are interconnected in some ways, but each brings unique atttributes to the table.

VertitechIT’s goal is to drive IT transformation for health systems. Its executive and clinical consultants, architects, and engineers design and implement IT roadmaps in line with the strategic plans of client organizations.

VertitechIT also touts its ability to implement transformational changes for clients at virtually no net new capital expense. As one example, a $2.5 billion health system constructed a three-site, software-defined data center and saved $8 million over previous designs with little to no impact on its budget. Senior consultants also took on interim leadership roles, working to transform the institution’s siloed work culture as well.

Brad Mondschein says Pixel Health’s “secret sauce” is being able to bring many different areas of expertise to bear to meet a healthcare client’s needs.

Meanwhile, baytechIT is a managed service provider (MSP) and value-added reseller — one of the only health-centric MSPs in the country, in fact. The company operates a call center staffed by healthcare analysts, adept at meeting the unique and often time-critical needs of the clinical environment.

Nectar specializes in applying technology to serve the quadruple aim of healthcare delivery: delivering the right care at the right time, at the right cost, and improving the clinical experience in the process. It offers a boutique consulting environment, offering a unique perspective on unifying technology and driving healthcare transformation to achieve clinical objectives.

“Nectar is about the digital-health experiences of consumers, patients, families, but also clinicians, nurses, doctors, and other professionals,” Casey said. “There should be ease of use and frictionless quality with how those experiences happen for all those different stakeholders. That’s where Nectar comes in — we do know a lot about the underpinnings of technology, but we spend more time on people and processes.”

Next, akiro tackles the needs of healthcare from the revenue cycle and financial management to government-program assistance and complex merger-and-acquisition support. “They really focus on the business side of healthcare,” Mondschein said, “and they’re helping healthcare providers manage their mergers and acquisitions.”

“I don’t want to say we’re the only company that does it this way, but we think what we do is very unique.”

Finally, Liberty Fox, the only Pixel Health company acquired by the network and not developed inside it, takes a boutique design approach to software development, touting itself as a one-stop shop for all things technology and providing software solutions and recommendations that improve clients’ business.

“They can create software from scratch, write apps, but also do integrations between each system,” Casey said. “They make sure the integration that needs to happen on the patient-clinician side is seamless and makes sense.”

Some clients take advantage of the services of multiple Pixel Health companies, Casey said. “For example, Behavioral Health Network is an organization where baytech is helping them with delivery of IT services, Vertitech is also helping them with several things, and Nectar is working with them on telehealth strategy and implementation. So, several entities are all working in that organization.”

The model is an attractive one for clients, Mondschein said.

“I don’t want to say we’re the only company that does it this way, but we think what we do is very unique. There are MSPs out there that do some of these individual things, but don’t combine it the way we do it. Our secret sauce is our ability to take the different expertise we have in each of our subsidiaries and bring all of them to bear on an issue or a problem or project that a client might need.

“One thing that’s really important to remember is, at the same time we’re providing services, the goal is to make healthcare a better experience for patients and clinicians,” he added. “That’s our mission.”

Growth Potential

It’s a mission that has led to considerable growth, Mondschein said.

“Internally, we’re looking at how we can expand the services we’re offering while attracting really good employees and really good technicians as well. The large majority of our staff work in Western Mass. and provide services in Western Mass. We certainly have a national presence, but Western Mass. is still our headquarters, and we still have a great affiliation with the practices here in Western Mass. and with Baystate.”

As noted earlier, the pandemic didn’t slow the pace of growth.

“We were fairly lucky — we were well-prepared for the remote working environment because we do so much work around the country, not just in Western Mass.,” Mondschein explained. “Much of our staff was already remote; we were able to collaborate remotely prior to the pandemic.”

What became evident during the pandemic is that improvements in healthcare technology are allowing remote collaborations to work even better than they did prior to the pandemic, and that’s good news for providers.

“For our clients, the need for the telehealth strategies accelerated significantly, and the ability to go mobile and have the mobility pieces in place significantly increased,” he told BusinessWest. “Certainly, telehealth is going to be here a long time, so patients been very fortunate as well, because not everyone has access to healthcare, and telehealth can give people access they didn’t have before.”

And the increasing presence of IT in healthcare — not just in telehealth, but in any number of applications — has positioned Pixel Health well to help organizations turn all that ‘noise,’ as Casey put it, into solutions that work for everyone.

“We have the ability to translate among those different domains,” she said. “A lot of our clients have been operating within a lot of silos — operations does this, clinical does this, IT, marketing, strategy, all these pieces. Especially in digital strategy, they often don’t have the staff that can translate among all those different components. We’re able to translate and accelerate that implementation.

“That’s hard, and there aren’t a lot of other firms out there doing that,” she added. “It’s something that really differentiates us.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

As IT Sector Grows, Attracting New Talent Is a Constant Challenge