Eagle reaches $110M in annual revenues
Elizabeth Howell, Ottawa Business Journal
September 22, 2011
Staffing firm’s decision to diversify led to milestone: founder
Ottawa staffing firm Eagle has achieved more than $100 million in revenues for the first time on the back of a decision to branch out its businesses, according to its co-founder.
The company had actually come close to the milestone five years ago at $98 million in revenues, but found itself slipping back again due to low margins on its payroll business, a fall in government contracts and the recession, said founder Kevin Dee.
“We refocused our strategies,” said Mr. Dee of this year’s mark of $110.5 million. “Now we’ve broken ($100 million) for the first time in 15 years, and we’ve done it in style.”
Eagle has reached $1 billion in overall company revenues since it began in 1996 as a provider to system integrators like IBM. As the firm grew, it found itself competing with the integrators when it came to government contracts, Mr. Dee said. As such, the company shifted its strategy to go after the end users themselves rather than the integrators.
Five years ago, faced with declining revenues, Eagle decided to diversify even further. It bumped up its presence in Toronto and Calgary, two large centres that have many company head offices, to do work in the banking and oil and gas industries.
In tandem with that, it shifted away from federal government contracting so as not to be so dependent on one client, although it still gets a healthy share of business from municipal, provincial and federal government clients. It also eliminated its payroll business.
Revenues increased by 28 per cent in the last fiscal year, with staff bumping up by about 20 across the country. Eagle currently has 85 people employed in 10 offices spanning Canada, and 800 contractors.
“(The offices) are a throwback to when we served the system integrators; when you’re looking at IBM, they want you to service them wherever you are. That’s why we opened them,” Mr. Dee said.
“You can easily (consolidate the offices), but it still allows us to offer a better service to clients who may want that kind of reach. We’re able to service people in their local markets.”
For next year, the company expects great return from its permanent placement business, which grew 75 per cent in fiscal 2011. Mr. Dee would not reveal exact revenue targets, but said barring a shift in world markets, Eagle expects more growth.
“We’ve seen fairly robust demand.”
