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JACKSONVILLE, FL. - December 11, 2000 (BUSINESS JOURNAL) -
Eric Cravey
In this era of employee turnover and tight labor markets, at least
one Jacksonville tech company has mastered the game of employee
retention.
Web site design and computer telephony firm Capernaum will celebrate
its first year of $1.5 million in revenue. At the same time, it
will celebrate that only two of its 15 employees have left in the
past year -- one left to enter the ministry, and the other for military
service.
"As far as employee turnover, we have not experienced what
most technology companies have experienced," President and
Founder Tom Rossi said. "We do not consume employees; we give
them opportunities to grow personally, professionally and spiritually."
Last month, Capernaum doubled its office space from 2,500 square
feet to just over 5,000 square feet at its 6320 St. Augustine Rd.
location. Founded in 1996 with Rossi and two other employees, the
company plans to hire at least three Web developers within the next
18 months, Rossi said.
Revenue for Capernaum will grow even larger in 2001 due to a new
contract "in the range of $1 million over the next five months,"
Rossi said, with the faith-based youth missions organization Young
Life, which is based in Colorado Springs, Colo.
A number of Jacksonville Web development shops are called on to
rebuild Web sites that may not function properly or have outgrown
their use, but that's not the case with Capernaum.
"Capernaum exists to help business and not-for-profits understand
the application of these technologies," Rossi said. "We
help them use technology to improve their operations, customer interactions
and even create new profit centers."
The Young Life project will involve becoming familiar with most
of, if not all, of Young Life's programs and business procedures.
"What they needed more than a Web site, was a Web strategy,"
Rossi said.
The first order of business Capernaum handled for Young Life was
to develop a reservation system for the summer camps it operates
throughout the United States and Canada. A team also is working
on redefining Young Life's entire Web presence at http://www.younglife.org.
Because of the company's faith-based approach to business, it does
a lot of work for like-minded organizations also based in Colorado
Springs, such as the International Bible Society, Compassion International
and The Orchard Foundation. In the next eight months, Capernaum
hopes to open an office in Colorado Springs to handle its clients
there.
"Our mission has always been to be a company that takes the
technology and apply it to business," Rossi said. "Ministries
are in the same boat as other businesses. We want every business
out there pushed and growing because of technology."
Another factor driving Capernaum's revenue is the telephony software
it installs on behalf of Interactive Intelligence (Nasdaq: ININ),
based in Indianapolis, Ind.
Last Summer, Capernaum installed Interactive's Enterprise Interaction
Center software for I-Property.com, which is also based in Indianapolis.
I-Property, which operates a multi-listing real estate service,
uses the software to operate what's called a fault-tolerant phone
system -- a system with a backup in the event of a crash.
Capernaum got the job because of its prior success installing similar
software for Redwood City, Calif.-based ImproveNet.com (Nasdaq:
IMPV) where I-Property.com's Keith Milby worked at the time.
"They did a great job," said Milby, I-Property.com's
director of customer services. "I was confident, from past
experience, that [Capernaum] knew what they were doing and felt
better about going with a company I knew."
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