THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, December 18, 1995 TAG: 9512160186
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, BUSINESS WEEKLY
LENGTH: Long : 222 lines
It's 10 o'clock on a Wednesday morning, an hour before the coffee and danish cart rolls by, and the people movers of Metro Information Services are dispatching the computer-services needs of corporate Hampton Roads.
``For New Hampton, you can cross off Long and write in Sutter. That's SUT-TER.''
``Same person we proposed for HQ?''
``No, that's SOO-TER. Also spelled S-U-T-T-E-R, but different pronunciation.''
Once a week, this 10-person Metro planning group gathers round a table in their office off Lynnhaven Parkway in Virginia Beach. In a couple of hours, they divvy out the company's ever-changing stable of high-priced consultants to a hungry clientele with an acronymic soup of information-technology demands.
LAN, WAN, CICS, AS/400, VAX, SAP and HP-3000 are just a few of the communications and computer technologies that Metro's experts fan out to provide to dozens of local clients ranging from Sentara Health System to Canon Virginia Inc.
Now imagine the same matchmaking process in 19 other Metro-served metropolitan areas, some as far away as Phoenix.
Then imagine the results of all of these client-consultant matchups being punched into computers and instantly made available to the flexing mind of a man at the top of an information pyramid.
There you'll find one John H. Fain, numbers fanatic, president and majority owner of this $85 million-a-year enterprise.
In the 16 years since its founding, Fain has built what may be the most information-intensive management system of any company in Hampton Roads.
With the stroke of a few keys on his personal computer, the Metro CEO can quickly review the month-by-month profitability of every office and get a detailed cost breakdown. A few strokes more, and he can check each client's billings so far this year vs. last year.
Anytime he likes, Fain can even determine the current assignment of every Metro consultant, how long he or she is scheduled to be there, and the hourly rate Metro is billing its client for the services vs. what Metro actually pays the consultant.
It's a data man's delight. And it has given the 47-year-old Fain the knowledge and confidence to make the biggest gamble of his career - to give up the old ``We-want-to-be-the-best-regional-company-in the business'' claim that he's been making for years and come right out and say it.
Yes, yes, he admits, he intends to build the Virginia Beach-based Metro into a nationwide player. And, heck, why stop there?
``There's no reason why we can't have an office in every major city in the Unites States, Canada and Mexico,'' he says.
If Metro replicates its success in each new market, if the economy holds, and if computing technologies keep changing rapidly, Fain thinks he could be heading a $200 million operation by the end of the decade.
At that point Metro would be one of the leading national players in the field known as information-technology services, which covers everything from developing customized computer software to installing and tuning computer networks.
Not bad for a guy who grew up on the lower end of the middle class in a South Carolina paper-mill town. Not bad for a guy who scratched up dollars every which way - from delivering papers to mowing lawns to selling pots and pans - to earn himself a college degree in computer science.
Now he heads an outfit with 1,300 employees and that counts a couple of hundred Fortune 1000 corporations as clients: names like AT&T, Citicorp, Motorola and Walt Disney.
He's made his fortune without being flamboyant, without being loud or abrasive, without rolling over anyone.
Instead he has quietly, methodically gone about the job of developing systems and controls and nurturing a organizational culture that has bred success.
It wasn't easy. It meant forcing himself to grow into the role of sure-sounding leader. ``For a long time he was very uncomfortable standing up in front of groups of people,'' says Metro vice president Andy Downing. ``He just didn't like it. He really worked hard at it.''
It meant owning up to mistakes - like the time Metro tried to develop its own software to sell to builders and ad firms. ``A distraction,'' Fain now says.
It meant reining in his own enthusiasm for numbers - like the time he trotted out a commission formula that was so complex some of his most loyal managers complained they couldn't understand it.
``I was always in awe of his numerical abilities. And he was always an incredibly good technician,'' says Chris Crumley, who co-founded Metro and sold his interest in the company to Fain four years ago. ``But he's grown. He's grown well beyond that. Now he's just an incredibly good manager.''
``He's the guy,'' adds Bert Reese, Sentara's corporate director for information systems. ``Somehow John's been able to keep the entrepreneurial spirit alive as the company has grown.''
The can-do spirit that John Fain has instilled at Metro developed in him at an early age - in spite of, perhaps because of, his modest upbringing in Georgetown, S.C.
When he was 2, Fain says, his parents divorced. He was raised by his mom, a clerk in the local Selective Service office.
His father wasn't around much. ``I would see him once in a while, but he never supported us a bit,'' Fain recalls. ``And I was pretty hellbent to never be like that . . . I wanted to be something better: to be a family man, to support the family and, hopefully, build a business.''
Eagle Scout. High-school athlete. Math and science standout. Young John achieved. He started putting away college money from paper routes and lawn mowing early in his teens. That and scholarships helped put him through the University of South Carolina.
Even in the off hours from his first job out of college, as a computer manager for Duke Power Co. in Charlotte, he worked side jobs. He taught and did some part-time computer consulting.
Within a few years, that part-time consulting became full-time and Fain spent six years traveling up and down the East Coast helping corporate clients update their computer systems. Along the way he married and settled in Virginia Beach. He and his wife, Joyce, have two children.
Fain wanted to build more than a one-person business, but he knew he needed someone with the skills to market his and other technicians' services. That led to his partnership with Crumley in 1979.
It was a modest beginning. The first office was a spare bedroom in Crumley's Kempsville home. They threw a sheet of plywood over two black file cabinets for a desk and put a phone on it. Then Crumley started calling.
Within a year he'd landed enough clients to hire four more technicians and Metro had an office in Norfolk's Koger Executive Park. By the fourth year, the employee count was in the dozens and Metro started branching - with new offices in Richmond and Raleigh.
There's been no looking back ever since.
The growth rate since then has been one or two new offices a year in major Southern markets. Then this year the pace exploded to four new locations and the company expanded beyond its regional boundaries: into Chicago, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and Phoenix. Fain says four offices a year should be doable the rest of this decade.
Many of Metro's basic strategies haven't changed from the start.
The early Fain-Crumley teaming of technical and marketing specialists has been cloned throughout the organization.
The company has always avoided federal contracts, Fain says, because the low-bid, high-churn nature of that business doesn't fit Metro's strategy of building long-term customer relationships.
And though Metro typically deals with large companies, it has not specialized by industry type. Its clients range from banks to biscuit makers. Also, Metro consultants' skills range across all computer types: mainframes, mid-range systems and PCs.
One result of its geographic reach and generalist approach, Fain says, is a wide client base. Metro's two largest - Newport News Shipbuilding and Northern Telecom - each account for only 4 percent of its annual revenues.
He likes having a ``breadth of clients,'' Fain says. ``When we've had an economic downturn we've sailed through quite nicely because of it.''
Metro's culture may be the biggest key to success.
It has a corny can-do veneer to it. Managers, who tend to be called coordinators, hand out ``YO'' awards - ``You're Outstanding'' for jobs well done. The term was coined from Fain's fondness for ``Yo'' as a greeting. His computer e-mail box chirps ``Yo, Metro!'' It's on his license plate too.
Beneath the surface, however, is a rigorous commitment to making good on company promises and not to overpromise. Recruits run a phalanx of interviews and skills and personality tests before they're hired. Fain says one aim is to sift out the ``doers'' from the talkers. But honesty, he contends, is the key trait the company looks for.
The most intensive indoctrination is reserved for directors of new offices. Two ``expansion directors,'' one technical, one marketing - and both longtime Metro employees - sit by their sides for six months.
But even lower-rung Metro employees say they feel the hand of Fain at the tiller. They're expected to keep a tight ship.
Company executives shoot to keep Metro's overall productivity rating, the percentage of consultant hours for which it actually bills clients, over 99 percent.
``If I lose a quarter of an hour somewhere and can't account for what I was doing, I have to answer for it,'' says staff-support coordinator Laura Zimmerman.
Still, Zimmerman, like others interviewed, praises her employer. Metro has never ``misrepresented'' her skills to a potential client, she says. And the company's elaborate controls have paid off not just for Metro but for its employees too, she says, because they enable Metro to keep them working.
Indeed, Fain says the company's largest layoff was three people in Greensboro. ``And that was after they sat on the bench for six months.''
Metro's turnover rate - about 25 percent a year - is half that of many competitors, Fain says, largely because it manages its workload so well.
What makes this skilled juggling all the more remarkable is that there's no typical assignment.
Some consultants who specialize in certain types of mainframes may spend years working on projects for one client. Others, like computer-networking specialists, could bounce to as many as 20 clients in one month.
Zimmerman falls somewhere in between. In 6 1/2 years, she has spent the largest chunk of time at Sentara, but in a half-dozen assignments, several of which were extended beyond their initial periods.
As Metro expands, perhaps its biggest challenge is to find many more people like Zimmerman to fill its talent needs.
The company has an extensive database of prospect resumes that's pounded daily by 28 full-time recruiters. Typical consultants earn $40,000 to $60,000 a year.
But hiring and holding onto good people is getting harder, says Janet Ellis, director of Metro's Hampton Roads division. Even database administrators for ancient mainframes are juggling offers. Ellis says as young entrants into the business shun mainframes, that puts the dwindling number of specialists in the field in the driver's seat.
Still, Ellis says she is confident Metro will outmaneuver its competitors. She says John Fain has built too good a system not to succeed.
``Metro is his life,'' Ellis says. ``He makes good decisions.''
Fain himself doesn't sound concerned. ``You take care of the details and make sure that things gets done. Follow through: if you do that time and time again, you will be rewarded with continuous business.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo on cover by Steve Earley, The Virginian-Pilot
John H. Fain made Metro Information Services a leading consulting
company in Hampton Roads.
Color photo by Bill Tiernan, The Virginian-Pilot
Janet Ellis, director of Metro's Hampton Roads division is confident
Metro will outmaneuver its competitors. She says John Fain has
built too good a system not to succeed. "Metro is his life," Ellis
says.
Color photos by Steve Earley, The Virginian-Pilot
In the 16 years since its founding, John Fain, president and
majority owner of Metro Information Services, has built what may be
the most information-intensive management system of any company in
Hampton Roads. Metro is an $85 million-a-year enterprise.
With a few keystrokes, Metro CEO John Fain, center, can review the
month-by-month profitability of every office and get a detailed cost
breakdown. Fain stands with programmers John Jensen, leftt, and Bob
Taylor.
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by CNB