Technology With a Smile?

Combining new technology and customer service is a key to success for new Indiana Growth 100 companies.

This year some of the new additions to the Indiana Growth 100 list have combined two long-standing factors of growth into a powerful new force: the use of new technology to provide excellent customer service. That was the finding of Huff Templeton, a consultant to the Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Indiana University who reviewed this year's Growth 100 companies and discussed business strategies with their management.

No longer is technology alone a deciding factor in a company's success, Templeton notes. "Today almost everyone scores well in that area," he says, explaining that it is the ability to leverage technology in other areas which helped Indiana's fastest-growing companies outpace their competition in the past year.

Jon Ruthenburg of Gray Loon Marketing Group Inc., a Growth 100 company in Evansville, agrees with that analysis and explains that the Internet has been a large factor in allowing technology to be creatively utilized. As a full-service marketing-communications firm, Ruthernburg's company has become much more competitive through its ability to use the Internet to improve both the speed and quality of its communications with customers.

From initial marketing ideas to delivery of a final project, Ruthenburg uses e-mail and electronic file transfer to keep his clients up-to-date on how their work is progressing. A few years ago that would have been difficult for clients who were across town. Today, the Internet makes it possible for such interaction with companies no matter where they are located.

"You are just seconds away with the sharing of files, looking at artwork and reviewing estimates," he says. "No longer is the customer relationship limited by distance."

In addition, Ruthenburg says, it is very important to hire creative and innovative people who can use new technology to improve all the service provided to a client. "To succeed in a fast-growing company, you have to be the innovators and not the followers" he says.

Developing the new technology that provides new and better services for customers is also a great way to experience fast growth, says Edward Grant of Spectra-Code in West Lafayette. His company created a device that uses lasers to identify plastics in scrap yards, warehouses, dismantling facilities, factories and recycling centers.

By combining scientific research that dates...