MBS moves HQ to Colorado Springs

Fort Collins has received a number of economic accolades in the past few years: Most innovative and entrepreneurial area in the country from the Small Business Administration; one of the 50 best places to live from Men’s Journal magazine; one of the top 20 places to live and work in America from Employment Review magazine.

However, that doesn’t mean the city isn’t at risk of losing some of its business gems, such as Managed Business Solutions LLC.

In April, the IT services company quietly moved its headquarters to Colorado Springs. While MBS continues to maintain its Fort Collins office with 30 to 40 employees – including a second and third shift for client support – a few employees transferred to the Colorado Springs office, a choice given to all corporate level employees, said president and CEO Richard Noe.

MBS was founded as Managed System Solutions in 1993 by Jim Franzen, a former Hewlett-Packard Co. employee. Franzen merged his firm with human resource outsourcing firm The People Business in 1998.

Franzen, a Fort Collins resident and philanthropist, is still majority owner of the company. He did not return calls seeking comment in time for publication of this article.

Noe said there was no single reason for the move, but rather a series of events. When the company opened its Colorado Springs office last year, it was intended to be a sales office with the possible addition of a technical help desk.

“When we initially put the office there, we found a lot of the people we were recruiting in Denver, Colorado Springs and Castle Rock were easier to attract,” Noe explained.

In addition to easier recruiting in-state, Noe found it was easier to attract out-of-state candidates as well.

“We found people were more willing to move to Colorado Springs than to Fort Collins,” he said.

But recruitment issues weren’t the lone reason for the headquarters relocation.

Noe recognized that Colorado Springs will be a more strategic location.

“We anticipate more growth in Colorado Springs as we launch our new strategy,” he said.

The new strategy for MBS is to launch into the market for federal government contracts – Colorado Springs is a major center for military facilities. Noe didn’t give any details of the MBS strategy, except to say that the company would begin the endeavor by the third quarter.

Healthy competition

The loss of the MBS headquarters is a blow to the region in that Fort Collins will no longer be able to claim the international company.

“As an economic development organization, we always want to see the presence of corporate headquarters here for the businesses in our community,´ said Jacob Castillo, director of business development for the Northern Colorado Economic Development Corp.

While the Northern Colorado EDC does work to keep corporate headquarters and business offices in the region, Castillo said the in-state competition is healthy and far from cannibalism.

“What’s good for the state as a whole is good for Northern Colorado,” he said.

The Northern Colorado EDC and Upstate Colorado Economic Development – Weld County’s economic development agency – are both members of the Denver Metro Economic Development Corp. The organization is a compilation economic development agencies in Metro Denver and Northern Colorado. The Greater Colorado Springs Economic Development Corp. is not listed as a partner of the organization on its Web site.

As members, the organizations have agreed to a code of ethics that requires them to promote Colorado as a whole first, before their respective regions or cities. The code stipulates that members will not recruit from one community to another without following proper channels.

MBS isn’t the only company to move its headquarters out of Northern Colorado recently. In October, Blue Sun Biodiesel relocated its Fort Collins headquarters to Westminster to be closer to key customers and reduce commute times for a number of its employees. Earlier in 2005, racing team RuSport announced it would move from Loveland to Broomfield. The company moved for a number of reasons, one of which was to attract more sponsorships by developing closer ties to Denver.

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