Providing a guiding light

CHAMPAIGN

David Vickery has an understanding that each business is one of a kind.

“Every business has their own unique way of delivering their product or service in their own unique way,” said the founding and managing partner of IT GuidePoint Corporation. “Each business has their own unique way of
taking an order and their own unique way of confirming it. They have their own way of manufacturing the product or delivering the service and there is a process to that.

Every business still operating after the pandemic should be proud that they are still going and the way they treat their customers is the main reason for their success.”

Vickery grew up in East Central Illinois and attended the University of Illinois. He then joined an information technology consulting firm and saw it rise from a firm doing $10 million in business per year to $1.2 billion. But there was something that didn’t feel right to Vickery.

“What I saw was the fact that as we went from dealing with smaller corporations to the larger corporations, we got away from our client focus and we are a client-focus business,” he said. “When recruiting a new business, you can’t bring in your ‘A’ team to get the commitment, and then bring in your ‘C’ team, which may not be your brightest or more experienced employees, to do the work. When I saw that was happening, I looked at it as a positive and saw a real business opportunity.”

He created IT Guidepoint Corporation in May 2008 and still has his hands on as many projects as possible. “We are a small consulting firm and we are focused on you,” he said. “I still get on the calls with the clients and that surprises some. They appreciate that the founder of the company still takes an active role in the process.” Vickery believes technology and the associated software should always fit your business needs. IT Guidepoint Corporation serves mid-market companies and divisions of much larger firms that are underserved by global consultancies.

“We have client and employee relationships that are decades long,” Vickery said. “This is rare in our industry, and we are proud of always being client-focused and doing what is right. It is just good for business in the long run.” Vickery says the success of the business is attributable to
his central Illinois roots.

“I focus on the markets that the bigger companies don’t,” he said. “When they get asked where Neil Street is, they don’t have an answer. I was fortunate enough to go to the University of Illinois and there are a lot of family-owned small- and medium-sized businesses that need our help and
we are proud to serve those companies.”

Visualization is a key component of his consulting work. “A picture is worth 1,000 words,” he said. “When I show our clients a picture of what their current system looks like, it is usually met with a lot of curse words. I have had people tell me that it makes sense why they are screwed up. Clients in the Champaign-Urbana region hire us because they are tired of the limitations caused by their current business systems and need someone to help them make sense of what they have and what new and improved technology options are available to them.”

Vickery hopes to one day expand in central Illinois. “My plan is to open a division that provides our clients with a call center of highly trained, local-time zone consulting talent from central Illinois,” he said. “Our goal is to train a diverse group on relevant technologies such as Salesforce and Workday to compete with global consultancies that utilize H1B resources that are rife with turnover and lack the consistency of service our clients
need for their operation. Our position is that all firms in this region could benefit from utilizing local talent and that the community benefits from having a highly trained workforce that lives and invests in the local economy. Our plan is supported by many local universities and economic
development groups. I am really looking forward to seeing this happen.”

But Vickery says technology is moving quickly, but the key to staying competitive and unique is to have a plan. “People get all excited about the technology, but the technology is downstreamed from the way you do each step in your processes,” he adds. “We capture each of those steps like a schematic and not like those bad instructions you get for a Christmas toy, but a step-by-step guide to show this is how you build something.”

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