I laughed when Dave Hartman told me recently, “I am not a geek.” The joke was on me, though. As the President of Hartman Business Technology, it turns out that Dave knows far more about business strategy than he does about programming. And that’s making a big difference for the companies he’s seeking to help.
Anyone who’s worked with true IT geeks, (please don’t take this personally, CIOs and other IT geniuses) knows that expertise in one area – programming – doesn’t guarantee proficiency in the other – business strategy.
After earning his MBA and a stint at Anderson Consulting (now Accenture) he founded his now 18-member consulting firm in 2005. While gee-whiz technology was dominating the discussion at many organizations, he saw the often-desperate need for mid-market companies to utilize the broad potential of technology to further their business goals.
“We specialize in turning cost centers into value centers,” Hartman says. “Every challenge is an opportunity to change the game for our clients – to turn their IT investment into a return on their investment.”
According to Gartner Technology Research, most mid-sized organizations only use about 30% of their current software systems’ capabilities. When Hartman’s team starts working with a company, they utilize their proprietary evaluation formula to compare the company’s use of technology with its business goals. Most times, according to Hartman, since companies tend to take a scattershot approach to technology, the resulting systems are often largely out of alignment with their business goals.
“There are plenty of IT experts,” Hartman says. “And big companies have the resources to have a full-time CIO to make things happen. But when it comes to mid-market companies, few can afford or even need a full-time CIO. Most companies hire a technician or vendor to implement a particular technology solution, but they lack the IT leadership to see it through. The all-too-often result is overspending and unmet expectations. With the right leadership, we believe IT can be a real catalyst for business efficiency and innovation.”
Hartman calls it “moving the needle” for their customers. In one case, it meant helping a pool contractor modify core processes and select a new business management software that helped increase gross revenues over 75 percent with only marginal increases in their cost of service. For another company, it meant streamlining a critical customer survey process to free up valuable consulting resources. It also doubled their client's bottom line profits on each sale.
Here’s where the Hartman approach gets strange, at least compared to a lot of other technology consultants. They’re 100 percent independent. The company refuses to accept payment from any technology solution or service provider. They get paid only for the time they’ve spent consulting for their clients. In fact, when one of the vendors they recommended recently sent them a “thank you” gift, they donated it to charity in the vendor’s name.
A former U.S. Navy flier, Hartman enjoys talking about his “claim to fame” in the service. In 1989, he’d been assigned to track Soviet submarines and was on a mission over the Mediterranean Sea. As soon as the fall of the Soviet Union was made official, the submarine he’d been tracking simply turned around and headed home to Russia. That made Dave Hartman the last mission commander ever to track a Soviet nuclear submarine.
These days, he’s still on a mission. Just don’t call him a geek.
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