Marlabs
It is that kind of customer experience that helped Marlabs get out in front of the growing custom applications development trend and become a fast-growth leader in the market.
When the dot-com bubble burst, solution provider Marlabs, Edison, N.J., did a strange thing. President and CEO Siby Vadakekkara went on a hiring spree, expanding the company’s U.S. workforce to nearly 400 from 50 people and opened a 100-person applications development center in India.
Much of the hiring over the past three years came before Marlabs had the business to support that growth. “[It was] at a time when everyone was bemoaning and laying people off,” said Srivathsan Aparajithan, director of life-sciences and health-care solutions. “It was a bold and calculated move that’s paying off.”
Not only was Marlabs able to capitalize on the number of talented people in the job market, but new employees brought new customers. The company also strengthened its existing client base and developed key reference sites, Aparajithan said. The result: Revenue climbed 125 percent to $22.2 million for the 12 months ended June 30, 2004.
Marlabs also bet on Microsoft’s .Net framework and today focuses on building custom applications for health-care and financial markets using Microsoft’s technology. But Vadakekkara said the key to success comes from being able to analyze the client’s business needs and align the solution with their business goals.
“If the application is not customer-central enough, there is resistance to using it,” Vadakekkara said. “The key is to educate top management and work down—hit from both sides, both the business decision maker and technology managers.”
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That approach was something one client—1-888-Ohio-Comp, Cleveland, a managed-care organization that handles worker compensation claims—appreciated. “When you’re building something new, getting the requirements right is important. One of the issues we have is we didn’t define well enough what our needs were. Those kinds of things they helped us do,” said Jim Neubart, Ohio-Comp’s executive director, adding: “They customized a solution based on our needs, our workflow, that really works, and it’s cost-effective.”