Like many fledging companies in their early days, CCB Technology started in the basement of Chris and Patti Booth’s house.
Fast forward 24 years later, and the technology provider has approximately 60 employees in two Racine locations; serves 40,000 clients nationwide; and forecasts climbing from $34 million in annual revenue last year to $40 million in 2015.
The family-owned company has also been named a Microsoft Partner of the Year four times and a recipient of the Top Microsoft Revenue Reseller Award three times. Plus, it was recognized by the Wall Street Journal as a cloud innovator.
Additionally, CCB has its sights set on doubling its revenue and employees in the next five years.
“I was talking to somebody a year ago who said, ‘Where the heck did CCB come from?’” said president Patrick Booth, who succeeded his father in 2013. “We’ve been around. We’ve just been serving our customers faithfully and working hard.”
CCB, originally called Consistent Computer Bargains, was founded in 1991 after Chris, a corporate business executive in the automotive and publishing industries, realized that nonprofit organizations had significant IT needs, yet lacked the necessary funds.
Chris went on to secure authorization for charity pricing from major software manufacturers and to partner with Microsoft to write its charity program. With that, the company became the first to provide discounted software pricing exclusively for nonprofits.
Today, CCB still serves the nonprofit community, with clients ranging from community churches to World Vision Inc. and Susan G. Komen.
While the Booths maintain that serving nonprofits has and always will be CCB’s “heartbeat,” the company has evolved in a number of ways over the past quarter century.
For instance, CCB extended its IT solutions to small and medium-sized businesses in 2011, the same year it opened an IT services division. The latter has allowed CCB to become a one-stop shop for all of its customers’ IT needs.
“People are saturated in their everyday responsibilities, and they need a partner to help them get there. That’s where we come along,” Patrick said. “We don’t replace people. We’re just there to help you and help your organization grow, so you look like the superhero to your customers.”
Patrick likens CCB’s services to a wheel that begins with consulting and assessing. While he said not every client needs every service, the following stages include: designing and procuring; deploying and installing; optimizing; supporting; and managing.
CCB Technology was also once known as CCB Inc., but it took on its current name earlier this year to better reflect its inclusive technology support for all businesses and nonprofits.
While the addition of corporate customers and the opening of the IT services division are among the factors behind CCB’s growth, the Booths also attribute the company’s growth to being an early adapter to cloud computing and partnering with Microsoft to grow the Office 365 business nationwide.
By moving more than 55,000 users into Office 365, CCB is considered one of the top 10 Office 365 partners in the country.
CCB’s growth also is evident in the number of employees it has hired in the past five years. It has tripled the number of employees from 22 in 2010 to about 60 today. Seventeen employees were added in 2014 alone, around the same time CCB expanded to its second location at 405 Main St. in Racine. Its main location is at 2823 Carlisle Ave.
Additionally, CCB has a partnership with an IT engineering firm based in Vancouver, Canada, that allows a network of 250 service engineers throughout North America to do work for CCB’s clients.
Moving forward, Patrick said the company’s growth strategy includes continuing to provide IT services and building more of a presence in Milwaukee and across Wisconsin.
“There’s a lot of need for IT in Milwaukee. I want to see growth happen in the state, and I would love to see CCB Technology be tied to that,” Patrick said. “Milwaukee is on the verge of CCB being able to explode in a partnership together. The technology is there. We just have to continue to educate the community to know how they can embrace it.”
Education is an important aspect to CCB itself, as technology is always evolving. Therefore, Patrick, a member of Microsoft’s advisory council, said CCB always has to be educating, learning and partnering.
To help further those initiatives, the company hosted its second annual CCB TechShowcase on April 28 at Miller Park. The daylong event drew 1,000 attendees who came to see the newest hardware and software presented by leading IT companies like Apple, Dell and Microsoft.
“Are we a secret now?” Chris asked. “Not after being in Miller Park.”
