NexusTek buys out c3 Technologies Inc.

After more than two decades running an IT services business, Dave Herzfeld decided it was time for a change.

Herzfeld founded c3 Technologies Inc. in 1984. He grew the company by adding new services as more advanced technologies became available. In the past year, the company expanded its services to include Voice-over Internet Protocol and consumer support. But when the opportunity arose for c3 to merge with a larger company, it was too good for Herzfeld to pass up.

“After 22 years of doing something, in the back of your mind there’s the idea that it might be time to do something else,” he said.

Effective July 1, c3’s 125 clients became the responsibility of Centennial-based Nexus Technologies Inc.

“We saw a lot of opportunity up here in Fort Collins,´ said NexusTek CEO and President Rob Burkholder.

Both presidents described the transaction as a natural evolution in a relationship that began three or four years ago. The companies worked together, sharing best practices, and it became an unspoken reality that not only did Burkholder want to expand, but that Herzfeld might someday want to sell.

NexusTek, founded in 1996, is a young enterprise compared to c3, but the company has not been slow to expand geographical or technologically.

The company has closed on three other acquisitions since 2004, all in the Denver area. The company has also recently added remote service capabilities.

“Our recent investments in IT tools allows us to work with customers all over the world,” Burkholder said. “We’ve made a significant investment in technology.”

Because of its remote service capabilities, NexusTek will not maintain c3’s Fort Collins office. In 2005, c3 had 10 employees, but that dropped to five in 2006. Longtime c3 employee Sheri Giles will continue to work in Fort Collins as the business development and marketing manager for NexusTek.

Remote services now

In the old days – which in the technology world is a couple of years ago – NexusTek physically deployed its engineers to fix customer problems.

“It’s very costly to do it that way,” Burkholder said.

Not only do customers have to pay more for an engineer to come to their office, they also are typically down longer due to travel time and troubleshooting. One of the largest costs for a business is downtime.

With remote services, IT companies are able to pinpoint a problem quickly and often fix it without leaving the office.

Several IT services companies in Northern Colorado are already offering some form of remote services, a number of which are referred to as Helpdesks.

“We’ve been offering a Helpdesk for about nine months now,´ said Ted Warner, president of Connecting Point in Greeley. “The Helpdesk solution is the natural progress of offering managed services.”

Now, more than 60 percent of Connecting Point’s customer issues are solved remotely. A majority are simple fixes such as problems printing and issues with password or log-ons.

Before the company instituted the Helpdesk, Warner estimates that 80 percent of an engineer’s on-site time was spent trying to diagnose an issue. With remote monitoring, pinpointing a problem is usually a much more precise process.

Remote services isn’t just about fixing, it’s also about monitoring. Front Range Internet Inc. remotely monitors the circuits of its customers on T1-or-better systems. The monitoring services can be beefed up, depending on customer needs, to monitor portions of a network and bandwidth use.

“We’re giving them basic information on the health of their circuits,´ said Bill Ward, CEO of FRII.

Ward said his company’s remote capabilities can also perform such tasks as router upgrades.

Decision not easy

The ability to keep up with the newest must-have technology played a part in Herzfeld’s decision to sell to NexusTek.

“Certainly, the added resources that NexusTek has allows them to do things that we would have done eventually, but they can do immediately,” Herzfeld explained. “It was a good opportunity for me and our clients.”

The decision to sell was not an easy one for Herzfeld to make.

“You start something, you see it through for so many years,” Herzfeld said. “You wake up and say, ‘What am I going to do now?'”

For Herzfeld, that is still up in the air.

“At this point, it falls into two categories,” Herzfeld said. “Something in IT or something not in IT.”

He added that some days the idea of working for a larger company sounds appealing – being able to focus on a project and not having to worry about the day-to-day realities of running a business. But he also thinks that after so many years of being the boss, making that transition would be difficult.

Right now, he predicts that his entrepreneurial spirit is likely to prevail.

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