By Aaron Cahall — A ferocious economic downturn has run wild through the herd of American businesses, bringing down not just the weakest of the pack but some of the strongest, too.

Some companies have had to fend for themselves and learn the laws of the business jungle alone. Their hard-won experience has streamlined their operations and given them the best chance to weather what remains of the current recession.

But others have sought a quick-fix to their current dilemma rather than a more effective back-to-basics look at their whole operation, said Hollis Minor of The Minor Group, an Annapolis-based firm that advises businesses of various sizes.

“What we’re seeing is a lot of decisions are being made, a lot of moves being made without a strategy,” she said.

As the economy worsened, some businesses grew desperate and latched onto any source of aid promising a quick boost to their company. But Minor urges those seeking help to carefully weigh the costs and benefits.

One of Minor’s clients who embraced that message is Nabil Sheikh, president of Millersville-based OmegaCor Technologies. Several years ago, the company was a retail operation that bought and sold computer parts.

Sheikh decided to branch out and turn the company into a virtual IT department, filling that role for other businesses.

OmegaCor completed the transition despite the economic slowdown, Sheikh said, because the company took a hard look at its internal organization and focused on its customers, slowly growing to meet their needs.

Some of those customers are going through major reorganizations themselves, providing OmegaCor with a chance to work with them on IT solutions from the ground up.

But those companies still working their way up the food chain face tough circumstances, said Sarah Djamshidi, executive director of the Chesapeake Innovation Center. The center was created by the Anne Arundel Economic Development Corp. to assist early-stage technology companies working in the national security sector.

“If you were in the process of developing a product, you need capital to bring it to market,” Djamshidi said.

Many smaller companies have had to seek other forms of financing or turn to strategic partnerships to stay alive. Djamshidi said her organization created an advisory committee and hosts regular functions to bring business leaders together to exchange ideas.

Despite the difficult times, she said Anne Arundel’s fundamental advantages for tech companies remain: a close proximity to Washington and the National Security Agency; and a diversity of companies with which to seek partnerships.

“There’s a lot of opportunity for big companies to partner with younger companies,” Djamshidi said. “It no longer has to be the big fish and little fish, it can be medium fish.”

Among the companies the center is assisting is Exponential Storage, a nearly 4-year-old firm that offers products and assistance for large-scale storage of digital media. The company’s original plan called for it to raise a round of venture capital to finance development and marketing costs, according to CEO Wick Keating. But as man planned, the economy laughed.

The company’s founders dug deeper into their own personal equity to bankroll the firm, and each dollar spent took on a new importance. Keating said the company focused on the potential customers most likely to sign a contract rather than chasing a golden goose with slim chances of paying off, such as big banks, which face major problems of their own.

The common thread present in each company staying alive in this economy is determination, a belief in the service or product they provide, and a desire to truly serve a customer, not just sell them something.

“Recessions generate good companies,” Keating said.    

Staying alive

1. Get by with a little help from your friends. Increasingly, companies are working out strategic agreements and sharing their specialties to achieve what neither has the money or resources to do alone. “Rather than hiring too many people that we cannot sustain, we’re looking to multi-party agreements,” said Nabil Sheikh, president of Millersville-based OmegaCor Technologies.
2. Be discerning. Just because business contacts are polite doesn’t mean they’re interested. It’s more important than ever to maximize the use of your time and identify those who are most likely to become customers, rather than casting your net wide. “You have to quickly figure out who’s not a candidate,” said Wick Keating, CEO of Annapolis’ Exponential Storage. “Everyone’s always polite.”
3. When trying to save, think big. Cutting out a few boxes of paper here and a couple of coffee filters there may be enough for some businesses to stay in the black, but most need to be creative and look at their whole process, said Mike Galiazzo, president of the Regional Manufacturing Institute of Maryland. “There’s no logic in [those who] keep cutting, that’s as dumb as it gets. You need to attack the whole system.”

— February 2010 print edition