Computer Design & Integration (CDI) has promoted many people to its leadership team after seeing tremendous growth in 2021 both organically and through acquisitions.
“I still believe in mental transformation or death,” Rich Falcone, CEO and president of CDI, told CRN. “What that does is focus and size. All of these leaders will focus on their towers so they can scale them. A business needs to optimize things in order to grow, and to do that you need to focus on your tower and focus on your work at hand. Raising everyone will allow for more focus for each individual business unit and tower. ”
The solution provider based in New York, No. 61 of CRN’s 2021 Solution Provider 500, acquired several companies in the last year or so, most recently Candoris and Clearpath Solutions. Falcone said CDI buys companies for either geographical expansion or technical capability.
“From a capabilities standpoint, if you told me in 2015 that CDI would be a select ServiceNow and a select partner in Salesforce, I would probably doubt you a lot,” he said. “But we’re here in 2022 and both statements are true. We’re big on both those technologies going forward as well as Splunk, our acquisition of Kintyre and I think we’re very happy with our digital footprint. But always there are new areas we want to expand. ”
However, more importantly, the acquired company must be a good cultural fit.
[Related: CDI’s New CEO Rich Falcone Talks ‘Change Or Die’ Motto, M&A]
“I’d rather partner with a good company in a geography we already have than partner with a company that probably doesn’t fit culturally in a new geography,” he said. “While we want to continue to expand into new geographies, and that is our goal, we will continue to double into current geographies where we think those companies are more culturally appropriate.
“We have a procurement strategy that we plan to use to generate growth and we’ve successfully done that,” he added. “It’s all about the execution and we were able to execute it successfully. However, and I still can’t believe this is the real number, we had 60 percent organic growth. I didn’t expect 60 percent organic growth, but I’m more than happy to have it. We have a great team that enabled that.
CDI also saw organic growth of more than 35 percent in bookings across all businesses with total new bookings growing by more than $ 800 million.
“We are a growing, thriving business with a lot of value that we bring to our customers,” he said. “If you’re going to bring value to your customers, you need talented people to perform against that value.”
To continue to build towards the future, CDI raised multiple positions while Falcone said growth is changing.
Vince Collado, who has been at CDI since 2010, has been appointed chief operating officer and will focus on integrating the overall strategy, vision and implementation for CDI.
“He runs anything from sales to sales operations and delivery of professional services,” Falcone said “Having that kind of knowledge in all three business units at CDI has been an absolute that suits him. “
Jason Kalvesmaki, who has been at CDI since 2012, has been appointed chief revenue officer and will fully control the CDI’s managed services, digital and security sales teams.
“Jason is a revenue machine,” Falcone said. “He did a great job managing our core sales force.”
Sam Shrefler has been appointed as the new executive vice president of digital services and will take responsibility for the digital services tower. Shrefler was the most recent chief technology officer for Candoris where he managed professional services, managed services and software engineering.
Brian Jones was appointed chief strategy officer and chief administrative officer. Upon joining the CDI team in 2020, he most recently served as chief operating officer.
“Brian Jones has been at the center of our M&A activities since he worked at KPMG [Corporate Finance LLC], ”Falcone said. “Brian is really the investment banker we used when we partnered with One Equity Partner. Brian has done a great job focusing on our M&A activity and all the growth and optimization we have in HR, legal and compliance. “
Alyssa Hall has been appointed chief marketing officer, the first position in CDI history. In his six years leadership of the marketing department at CDI, Hall has built a team of two to a team of 14 and from managing five vendor partnerships has grown to over 200.
“Alyssa was a home run,” Falcone said. “As we grow older, his group is bigger than ever so we want to raise him even more.”
“Luckily for me, these aren’t new faces in my life,” he said, adding that he has known the team for five to 10 years.
“When you’re promoting people you know, love and trust, it’s only natural and you’re very confident in that decision,” he said.
At the beginning of 2020, CDI had approximately 330 employees. So far, the solution provider has more than 600 employees with plans to bring in an additional 100. Since January, CDI has brought in 40 to 50 new hires, Falcone said.