WashingtonExec Series: GovCon Awards:
The finalists for this year’s Greater Washington Government Contractor Awards were announced last month, and as promised, WashingtonExec is bringing you its annual series with GovCon Awards nominees all this month before the winners are unveiled November 1.
The winners will be announced at the annual gala at Marriott Wardman Park hotel in Washington, D.C., and the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, Professional Services Council (PSC) and Washington Technology magazine will present the awards. With over 1,300 business and public sector leaders attending the event, our series will keep you up to date with all the finalists for this year–who they are, what they do, and why they are worthy of winning.
Today marks one of our last submissions in the series, and presents Craig Parisot, Executive Vice President and COO of Intertix. Invertix is nominated for Contractor of the Year in the $25-$75 million division.
WashingtonExec: How do you differentiate your company from its competitors? What is unique about your approach?
Craig Parisot: At Invertix, we do things differently – On Purpose. We sincerely believe that our view of the market, technology and customer challenges offers us an unconstrained pathway as to how we choose to engage. Under the leadership of our Chief Scientist, Dr. Dan Law, we organized our technology offering across what we have called since 2010 “The Technology Continuum.” This is how we strategically align talent, facilities, and processes with our technology development activities and services offerings. We have the good fortune of being largely a prime contractor. Therefore, our conversations with customers are direct and we are able to present ideas and collaborate to come up with a solution that is better than if either of us had done it alone. If you go to our website (www.invertix.com) we have our vision video linked and you can see how we view our business and focus on “what matters.”
WashingtonExec: How have you grown the company as the government asks the private sector to “do more with less?”
Craig Parisot: We are a company of entrepreneurs, so when it comes to doing more with little, it’s an environment we understand and our customers see that. We have never been afraid to prove our value by starting with a smaller technology development effort with gates for additional period of performance and funding upon achieving project milestones. We are well resourced and able to make investments that get us beyond the PowerPoint presentation to the demonstration very quickly. When you show a customer that the technology really works, they are far more inclined to start a new effort and make the investment in not only the technology, but in the people of the company. We are also big proponents of open source technology and leveraging public and private partnerships. If something already exists that will serve a need, then we’ll use it performing solely the development necessary to bridge gaps to meet a customer’s exact requirements. In addition, an “open” approach drives innovation, promotes security, and keeps costs down. It is exactly what is needed at this time.
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“We are a company of entrepreneurs, so when it comes to doing more with little, it’s an environment we understand and our customers see that.”
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WashingtonExec: What is the fastest growing component of your business?
Craig Parisot: We are growing across the board, but cloud and big data technologies represent a large part of our 2012 revenue. We are very active in this space and have been so for the past 5 years before “Big Data” was cool. People will hear me say that we got dirty with the cloud early. What is meant by this is that we were involved early on in helping many major players in the government cloud today develop architectures and new technology to get this revolution off the ground. Knowing where our customers have been and why we are where we are is priceless. As a result we’ve been able to help bring many organizations up to speed, so to speak, and begin migrating legacy applications into this new environment. We are also very active in redefining how our government uses and analyzes open source information by developing new tradecraft and technologies. This is a very exciting space as well.
WashingtonExec: Obtaining top talent in government contracting is fierce -how is your company able to not only recruit top talent, but also retain it?
Craig Parisot: Given the space we are in, there is substantial competition for talent. However, we feel we do have an edge by taking our offers seriously by making sure that we have a great cultural fit before inviting someone to join the company. We start by offering highly competitive salaries, but resist the temptation to go overboard (something which many of our competitors give into since they aren’t able to complete the entire formula). We can do it because we offer great benefits, in an environment that provides individuals the opportunity to excel, to earn performance based incentives, work in top-notch facilities, supporting the most relevant customers, on the most critical projects in our government. But more importantly, top talent looking to advance their career and to work with people like them where they can both make meaningful contributions as well as learn from their peers know that Invertix is the place to be.
WashingtonExec: How is your company involved in the community?
Craig Parisot: We believe it is essential to invest in the communities in which we live and work. We also believe that as Executives, we need to give our time and energy to various causes important to our business and personal interests. For example I serve on the Boards of both Volunteer Fairfax (www.volunteerfairfax.org) and the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (www.insaonline.org). Bryan Judd, our CFO, sits on the Board of the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce (www.fairfaxchamber.org). We are also responsible to our company to both bring volunteer opportunities forward as well as be open to ideas that employees of the company initiate. I believe we’ve been rather successful with both. Over the past year we have supported multiple organizations from AFCEA and MICA to the Army Ten-Miler and the Boy Scouts of America. We engage not only locally in the Washington D.C.-area but also at each location where Invertix has a business presence. For example, we’ve been active in the Las Cruces, New Mexico area since 2007. Our CEO, Art Hurtado, is on the Board of Advisors for the New Mexico State University College of Engineering. Our senior manager on-site and lead for our Southwestern Operations (AZ, NM, TX), Peter Kane, is an active supporter of the Mesilla Valley Economic Development Authority (MVEDA) and recently spoke on a panel addressing business opportunities in the local economy.
