Eric Beane’s role at Synergy ECP sits where strategy meets execution. As chief operating officer, he is responsible for turning technical ambition into delivery and making sure the company grows in ways that help customers get their missions done.
His path to the role runs through hands-on technical work, proposal leadership and P&L responsibility, which gives him a clear view of how ideas move from whiteboard to contract to real-world impact.
In this Q&A, Beane talks about how he thinks about people, customers and technology, what it means to lead as a “technical COO,” and where he sees the biggest opportunities for Synergy ECP as government missions and acquisition models continue to evolve.
Tell us about your role at Synergy ECP.
As Chief Operating Officer, my role lives at the intersection of technology, growth, and delivery. I focus on enabling our teams to always push the envelope in terms of technical innovation and operational excellence, investing in partnerships, prototype initiatives, and workforce development along the way. By providing our employees with the support and resources they need, we’re better positioned to advance customer missions. That, in turn, creates more opportunities for business growth and capability expansion, resulting in a flywheel that benefits our employees, our customers, and our corporate performance.
What do you consider your top priorities in this role?
If I’m to boil things down, my single top priority is to expand our technical capabilities and solution offerings so that we can continue to serve our customers facing rapidly evolving mission needs on top of the added complexities of acquisition reform. Practically speaking, that means I’m focused on:
- Our People – creating a culture of trust and bi-directional communication so that ideas can flow freely to foster innovation, while also investing in creative workforce development initiatives through technical partnerships, incentive programs, and IRAD projects. I’m a huge believer in the sentiment of the Steve Jobs quote, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” Applying that in a GovCon services business means creating an environment where people feel enabled and empowered to bring up ideas and customer needs so that we can discuss them and decide how we can best assist. The best ideas rarely come from an executive meeting in a vacuum; they come from the people who know our customers best: our employees.
- Our Customers – understanding the needs of our customers and their evolving mission landscapes so that we can continuously develop and improve solutions and offerings. A lot has changed in government procurement over the past year, so developing a sustainable strategy for growth and delivery requires incorporation of the needs of not only our mission customers, but their acquisition counterparts as well. I’m focused on developing offerings that solve mission challenges while also providing necessary procurement flexibility and agility.
- Technology – we solve problems for our customers and create opportunities for our people through technology, so this is naturally a key focus, especially for me. I come from a technical background, and I believe that we ultimately provide the most value when we combine great people with great technology. With our corporate capabilities focused on integrated data engineering, cybersecurity, and mission enablement, there’s a lot of potential to introduce value in those areas through proven technologies such as commercial cloud architectures as well as emerging technologies such as generative and agentic AI.
What prepared you for this role?
I began my career as an MPO civilian before becoming a contractor performing various on-contract, technical roles for large and small businesses. Once I moved away from hands-on technical work, I found that my skillset aligned with both technical bid & proposal solutioning as well as P&L leadership of technical teams.
Since then, I’ve sought out positions that strike a balance of technology and business; prior to joining Synergy ECP, I spent five years as Applied Insight’s Chief Solutions Officer and held that role through the company’s acquisition. That role gave me a lot of accelerated visibility into growth, M&A, and innovative ways to apply technology as a means of strategic value creation for PE-backed organizations.
With a diverse background, the evolution into what I consider to be a “technical COO” role seemed natural, allowing me to bring a combination of technical and business acumen into the equation as we continuously evolve our strategy around both organic and inorganic growth as well as investments in technology and innovation.
What’s something people might not know about you as a leader?
While my background and education are heavily rooted in technology, I’m very interested in people and their needs, interests, and motivations. I find the subject of psychology incredibly fascinating as it really makes you stop and think about what sort of external and internal influences can inform the things that we all say and do.
I think this is a large part of what initially drew me to and has kept me in professional services organizations. If you’re able to look past the roles and titles of customers, employees, or partners and instead try to understand needs and motivators at a human level, you can start to have far more fruitful interactions with people.
Some of the most successful companies in recent history have been able to abstract themselves away from their core offering by operating and communicating in a way that is intentionally human centered. Some of this comes down to creative branding and marketing, but a lot of it is focused on solving someone’s problems and communicating it in a way that makes sense to them. I strive to bring this mindset as an element of my leadership style, one that I apply to bid solutioning, hiring, M&A diligence, teaming, and more.
Looking ahead, where do you see the biggest opportunities for Synergy ECP?
I see great opportunities to expand our current presence by developing and delivering solutions to address our customers’ cyber, enterprise IT, software and systems engineering, and data-driven needs. At the same time, we’re pursuing strategic partnerships and acquisitions that will expand our capabilities and accelerate our ability to advance mission outcomes. The future for Synergy ECP is about scaling with purpose, driving growth that creates meaningful impact for our clients, employees, and the nation.