Hispanic-owned business enterprises (HBEs) grew at three times the national average for all businesses between 1997 and 2002, according to a March 2006 U.S. Census Bureau report. Overall, more than 29,000 Hispanic firms reported revenues of $1 million or more. Some 11 percent of the Hispanic business enterprises (HBEs) surveyed by the bureau were in technical, scientific and professional services.
“Corporate America says it wants to do business with Hispanic MBEs. That’s good for the MBEs, and the corporation gets not only a business partner but often a new consumer, too. Our mission is to help make that happen,” declares Michael Barrera, president and CEO of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (USHCC).
JL Patterson & Associates: engineers to the rail industry
Jacqueline Patterson formed JL Patterson & Associates, Inc (Orange, CA) in 1990 to provide engineering services to the rail industry. Her company supplies project management, engineering design and construction management for light rail, heavy rail, commuter rail and freight rail projects. “There are a lot of civil engineering companies, but very few have the expertise we have,” she declares.
Patterson fled Nicaragua for the U.S. in 1978 when civil war broke out. She applied to universities and took the first offer she got. “When you’re thrown out there and want to make a better life for yourself, there’s no holding back,” she says. “Get an education and experience and make it happen.”
After completing her MSCE she joined DMJM Harris (Los Angeles, CA) as a CE. She was there for five years, and during that time the rail transportation renaissance began in California. As she worked on the design of the Metro Blue Line that runs between Los Angeles and Long Beach, CA, she saw an opportunity for a minority-owned company to provide construction management for the new line.
Patterson told her DMJM managers that she proposed to start her own business, and they encouraged her to go for it. JL Patterson’s first project was subcontracted through DMJM, and Patterson is still teaming with the CE giant. “They know what we can do and they trust us,” she says. “We also help fulfill DMJM’s supplier diversity objectives.”
A credit line with a major bank resolved Patterson’s funding issue, and college career fairs have provided a venue for locating interns to become junior engineers. “We’ve even paid their tuition on occasion,” she says.
About 75 percent of JL Patterson’s business is with existing customers. “Keep your customers happy by providing excellent service,” she advises. “Repeat business is easier and less costly than trying to find new customers all the time.”
She recalls making seven proposals to Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway before winning her first contract. “Today BNSF comprises 25 percent of my gross revenue,” she states proudly. “We’re also prime contractor on projects for Metrolink and Union Pacific Railroad.”
JL Patterson has grown steadily over the past seventeen years, strategically diversifying its market to include a combination of private and public sector clients. Today the company employs sixty “fantastic” people, Patterson says; its 2006 gross receipts reached $10.6 million.
In fact, JL Patterson has been cited as one of the fastest-growing Hispanic-owned companies in the nation. It was ranked eighth in the 2006 CE News list of best small CE firms to work for, and twenty-third among all CE firms.
“Once you find a niche market, develop it, take pride in it and take it to the max, and always go the extra mile for the client,” Patterson advises. She tells her customers that being a minority-owned business is just the icing on the cake.
PFITech supplies IT personnel
“We do IT better” is the slogan of Precise Fit Information Technology (PFITech, Los Angeles, CA), founded by venture capitalist Richard Hernandez in 2001. The company is a “one-stop shop” for contract and direct hires in every facet of IT.
“Fortune 500 companies don’t have time to invest in building IT support teams to adapt to ever-changing needs, and they don’t want the hassle,” says executive VP Cesar Sosa II. The company recently helped Dell transition 150,000 seats at Boeing to a new IT organization, staff and structure in just three months. “That was the easy part,” says Sosa. “The major accomplishment was doing it without a single complaint!”
Hernandez was born in the U.S. and has Mexican roots. Sosa, who is Mexican-Peruvian, began as a freelance IT consultant in the LA area around 1990. Since then he has worked at many levels of IT and held several management positions in the aerospace industry.
Sosa joined PFITech last year to manage day-to-day operations and the company’s 300 employees. With Hernandez’ BS in business and Sosa’s in IT, they make a good team. “I always knew of Cesar’s great ability to lead and his extensive knowledge in the IT field,” Hernandez says.
The company has grown 80 to 100 percent every year since inception, and tripled in the last year. It evolved with its customers’ needs, and today offers staffing and solutions from helpdesk support techs to system architects and avionics engineers.
The company has a strong mentoring program that strengthens teamwork among employees as well as with the customer. “Every task is important. We treat all our work as do or die,” Sosa declares.
PS Energy Group: a full range of energy solutions
PS Energy Group, Inc (Atlanta, GA) started as a wholesale fuel distributor. Today it also provides natural gas, transportation fuels, emergency fueling and fleet management services, including “etrac,” a GPS product used for asset monitoring and vehicle tracking. “It’s a lot easier to provide value-added services to an existing customer than to continually have to find new ones,” notes founder Livia Whisenhunt.
Within seventy-two hours of learning that one of her diesel-fuel customers no longer wanted diesel fuel because natural gas had been deregulated, she had contracted with a natural gas supplier. “I didn’t even know what natural gas was at that time,” she says with a laugh.
When she founded PS Energy in 1985, Whisenhunt had just been laid off from a good job wholesaling gasoline and diesel fuel. “When my former customers learned I had started my own business, many of them followed me to PS Energy Group.”
Whisenhunt, whose mother is from Cali, Colombia, grew up with a strong connection to both the Colombian and U.S. sides of her family. “My family taught me the importance of working hard and reaching for your dreams,” she says. She’s always been an entrepreneur: fresh out of high school she bought and operated a convenience store, which she sold at a profit six months later.
PS Energy’s revenues have grown from $16 million in 1990 to $165 million in 2006. Whisenhunt attributes the company’s growth to personal service, dependable delivery and competitive pricing. “Our hallmark has always been choice,” she says. “No two customers have the same automated services.” About a dozen IT techies, including staff in India, handle the technical development of the company’s individually customized solutions.
Whisenhunt gives a lot of credit to the Atlanta affiliate of NMSDC for its help. She particularly appreciates the first-hand introductions she got to Fortune 100 and 500 companies. “We do a lot of business with companies that have a supplier diversity program because we are one of the few diversity-owned businesses in the energy industry,” she notes.
In 1991 PS Energy was recognized by the Atlanta affiliate as its small business of the year. The company ranks forty-fourth in Hispanic Magazine’s top 500 Hispanic-owned businesses list, and third in the state of Georgia for minority-owned companies. Last year DiversityBusiness.com, a multicultural business-to-business online portal, ranked the company fifteenth in the top fifty diversity-owned companies in the state of Georgia, and thirty-third in the nation’s top 500 diversity-owned companies.
Whisenhunt has clearly achieved her dream, and likes to help other Latinos with theirs. In 2006 PS Energy announced a five-year pledge to support local Latin American Association programs for after-school and summer enrichment programs and outreach efforts.
M-R Data Systems: a service-driven firm in Puerto Rico
Customer feedback led Jorge Donato to found M-R Data Systems (Humacao, PR) in 1994. Donato had been with a mainland-based company that provided printer and computer service repairs to businesses in Puerto Rico. But, “Customers wanted a local dedicated resource that could provide a quicker response time to service calls,” he says.
Donato works closely with his customers to ensure satisfaction and identify needs. Today the company not only repairs printers and computers but sells them, and offers maintenance contracts for printers and computers. It also provides onsite and outsourcing services for network design, installation, maintenance and training, plus 24/7 data center staffing and support for computer manufacturing.
Some 75 percent of M-R’s customers are in the pharmaceutical industry, including the island-based facilities of major companies like J&J, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Schering-Plough (Kenilworth, NJ). Paul Graves, Schering-Plough’s VP for diversity strategies, says the company “recognizes the tangible and intangible benefits of maintaining a diverse set of suppliers.”
Donato anticipates $1.5 million in revenue for his company this year. He believes that when you listen to your customers and respond to their needs, they realize the kind of commitment you have with them. “We have been moving with the voice of the customer,” he says.
Campos Creative Works puts on multimedia interactive events
Campos Creative Works (CCW, Santa Monica, CA) conceives, plans, directs and produces multimedia interactive events and gatherings designed to promote products and services for Fortune 1000 companies, many of them in the high-tech and automotive industries. “It’s our job to motivate audiences,” says Julio Campos, president and executive creative director.
Campos is a native of El Salvador. When he launched CCW in 1992, he employed a detailed five-year business plan to get into high-tech industry. The plan, he discloses with a smile, was actually prepared for and turned down by a client he had as a freelancer.
Though the client declined to use the plan, Campos thought it was too good to waste. So he pitched it to two business associates with sales/marketing and production expertise. Jennifer Gerich is now VP of marketing, and Sandra Sande, the production expert, is the company’s CFO, and Campos’ wife.
Before founding CCW, Campos had worked as a contractor with high-tech companies like Apple, HP and Cisco. In the early 1980s he taught himself to program a slide show synchronized with music. “The PC was running the CPM operating system,” he remembers. “That interested me and that’s how I got into the event business.” His IT savvy helped him address audiences ranging from programmers to management and marketing pros, especially during product launches.
Microsoft, CCW’s first client, is a continuing customer. “Being the incumbent with a reputation for delivering results helps, but you have to continually show value and creativity,” Campos notes.
Over the past year CCW has coordinated events for Intel in thirty countries, including emerging countries that present infrastructure challenges. Since the clients’ first request is connectivity to networks, a CCW network engineer scouts out the event location to investigate available equipment and determine what will have to be brought in.
Campos notes that his customers expect the same quality of production for every event, whether it’s held in the states or in a rural village in China. “Imagine the fun we have setting up a WiMAX network in a part of the country that relies on generators for electricity!” Campos says.
In addition to networking engineers and Web developers, CCW brings in writers, producers, technical directors and audiovisual pros, usually on a project basis. “There are twenty or so that work with us almost one hundred percent of the time,” Campos reports.
USHCC promotes HBE certification
A major focus of the USHCC is promoting certification of Hispanic-owned businesses. Susan Martinez, manager of corporate supplier development and diversity initiatives at Intel (Santa Clara, CA), notes that “Getting certified and registering in databases of companies that align with your business development strategies is a critical first step to being pre-qualified for procurement opportunities.”
She adds that Intel welcomes diverse suppliers as contributors to its innovation and competitive advantage. Martinez serves alongside execs from other Fortune 500 companies on USHCC’s procurement council and corporate advisory board.
The National Minority Supplier Diversity Council (NMSDC) and the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) are two major certifying organizations for M/WBEs. “Hispanic entrepreneurs have had a major role in NMSDC’s thirty-five year history, and they continue to do so today,” says NMSDC president Harriet Michel. Once NMSDC certifies an MBE, the company is entered in the council’s online database. Corporate members use the database as a resource when they seek diverse suppliers of goods and services they wish to purchase.
Pushing for procurement
USHCC’s procurement council was formed in 2000 to help local affiliates and corporate partners increase utilization of HBEs in their procurement programs. In addition, a federal procurement council was recently established to look for strategies to boost the number and dollar amounts of federal contracts awarded to Hispanic businesses.
“Hispanic businesses pay their fair share of taxes and should have access to their fair share of the federal government procurement picture. The defense industry is the biggest procuring entity in the whole country and should do more with Hispanic businesses and vendors,” Barrera declares.
USHCC local chambers work directly to educate HBEs. “We also help them prepare to secure venture capital and financial support,” says Barrera.
NMSDC president Michel notes that capital loans and longer-term financing are available to certified members of NMSDC through its Business Consortium fund.
Dell promotes HBEs
Dell Inc (Round Rock, TX) works with the Texas Association of Mexican-American Chambers of Commerce as well as USHCC to engage HBEs directly. “As we continue to grow, it’s important that our supply-chain partnerships reflect an increasingly diverse set of employees and customers,” says Ying McGuire, senior manager of supplier diversity at Dell.
McGuire’s team worked with the Central and South Texas Minority Business Council to develop a training camp/mentoring program to help MBEs compete for corporate contracts. And, “We recently launched a forum on our campus to let high-potential suppliers talk directly with Dell commodity managers and learn about upcoming procurement opportunities,” she says.
“Bridging commerce”
The USHCC, the NMSDC and WBENC all sponsor annual events that bring together minority and women business owners and representatives from corporate America.
The USHCC held its annual convention, “Bridging commerce among the Americas,” in San Juan, PR this past September. Thousands of HBEs and other MBEs gathered to network, build relationships and improve procurement opportunities. “We chose San Juan as our site to show how important and profitable it is to do business with our neighbors in this region of the world,” says Barrera.
Barrera notes that Puerto Rico ranks ninth in the U.S. for awarding engineering degrees, and all university students are bilingual. “This is a prime area for corporations to visit, market their products and services, and meet potential employees,” he says. “You don’t have to be Hispanic to enjoy the fruits of Hispanic business!”
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