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ICS continues 25 percent com-pounded growth

BY NORM POLTENSONJOURNAL STAFF

ENDICOTT — Five years ago, America laughed at the release of an animated film en-titled “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” a story about an inventor and a town where food falls from the sky like rain. For ICS Solutions Group (ICS) headquar-tered in Endicott, it’s getting very cloudy, but it’s not food falling from the sky. Rather, customer demand is raining down, and that is driving the double-digit corporate growth.

The business community is look-ing to the cloud. In this case, the cloud is not a visible body of water drop-lets that weather forecasters talk about, but a metaphor for Internet-based computing that allows large groups of

networked, remote servers to access centralized data stor-age and offers online access to shared computer services or resources. For a user, the network elements are invis-ible, as if hidden in a cloud.

“We see a defi-nite trend of our customers moving to the cloud,” says Travis Hayes, a co-owner of ICS and the company’s chief technology officer. “The traditional model of buying dedicated hard-ware and depreci-ating it over time is being replaced by a model where the customer uses a shared cloud infra-structure and pays as he uses it. That means no upfront investment; a com-

pany can focus on running the business and not worry about buying and supporting infrastructure.

“ICS’s customers need to have the tools to collaborate

See ICS, page 10

BY NORMAN POLTENSONJOURNAL STAFF

ENDICOTT — Finger Lakes Technologies Group, Inc. (FLTG) conducted a two-day sales blitz Oct. 7-8 to introduce the Greater Binghamton region to the company.

FLTG recently built 200 miles of fiber-optic cable connecting area communities such as Binghamton, Endicott, Vestal, and Endwell to its already existing 1,800 miles of cable connecting 25 communities in Central New York, Rochester, the Finger Lakes, and the Southern Tier (including Sayre, Pa.). The network is constructed in rings to ensure redun-

dancy. The company has also located a point-of-presence (PoP) connecting the network on the Huron Campus in Endicott.

FLTG, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Ontario and Trumansburg Telephone Companies (OTTC), was incorporated in 1995 to offer deregu-lated products and services, includ-ing dial-up Internet service. In 1999, FLTG became a Cisco “premier part-ner.” Today, the company’s product offerings include fiber-optic Internet service, IP and hosted phone sys-tems, and data-center services.

The company is getting ready to open an office and hire people in Endicott to set the stage for long-

term growth in the area.“We are now moving ahead to co-

locate a sales and technical-resources office here in the same location as the PoP,” says Philip H. Yawman, FLTG’s senior vice president for business development. “Our staff is interview-ing personnel now in anticipation of opening the office by Dec. 1. The plan is to start with five people and expand to 10 as we generate sales. I anticipate that this office will become a regional center, because of the size and the potential of the area.”

FLTG is following a Sam Walton approach to expansion, avoiding the

See FLTG, page 10

Finger Lakes Technologies Group expands into Binghamton market

Nonprofit Corner: Junior Achievement. Page 11.

Paul Nikitas, left, VP for sales; Kim Stewart, center, director of marketing and corporate communications; and Phil Yawman, right, senior VP for business development, stand in a tempo-rary office at the Huron Campus in Endicott.

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2 • The Greater Binghamton Business Journal October 31, 2014

BY ERIC REINHARDTJOURNAL STAFF

BIG FLATS — Five Star Urgent Care, a provider of walk-in, urgent-care services, has introduced a new website that enables patients to view current wait times for any of its six medical facilities directly on the home page.

Five Star, which has Southern Tier offic-es in Big Flats and Ithaca, updates the wait times in real time, which it says enables patients to make more informed decisions regarding their health.

Five Star says it has “optimized” the new website (www.fivestaruc.com) for desk-tops, laptops, smartphones and tablets so customers may access the wait times while they are at home or on the go, according to an Oct. 2 news release.

People don’t like to wait, Dr. John Radford, founder of Five Star Urgent Care,

says in an interview.“So we wanted to be transparent and let

people know how long wait times would be,” he adds.

Some emergency rooms nationwide have started a similar practice, hoping to redirect traffic from emergency rooms for people with minor ailments, according to Radford.

Five Star is aiming to give patients a “heads up” and choice if they’re traveling in an area within driving distance of two sites so the patient can decide which location would have the shortest wait for a visit.

“Our average in and out time is between 30 and 40 minutes, so there’s never really much of a wait time, but there are different peaks and spikes,” says Radford.

The wait-time feature is part of a re-vamped website for Five Star Urgent Care. Buffalo–based 19 Ideas, a marketing and communications agency, created and man-

ages the Five Star site. “So, this is like version two of our first

website and we just integrated this new feature into it,” says Radford.

Five Star had been discussing and plan-ning for the new site for about a year, he adds.

When asked if Five Star bases the wait times on the number of people in the wait-ing room or their ailments, Radford replied, “A little of both.”

“It’s primarily based on volume, but we also know that we could have three very simple things there [that] would take a short time to go through, and we may have one patient that would take longer than the time to [handle] the three,” he says.

Five Star adjusts the wait times at indi-vidual office locations based on algorithms

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Binghamton University dedicates Center of Excellence building

VESTAL — Binghamton University on Oct. 22 dedicated its $30 million, 114,000-square-foot Center of Excellence (COE) building.

The facility is located on Murray Hill Road in Vestal.

It joins the engineering and science building and biotechnology building at the Innovative Technologies Complex. A fourth building, the smart-energy research and development facility, is under construction and should open in 2017.

The small-scale systems integration and packaging center (S3IP) and its interdisci-plinary teams of engineers and scientists recently moved into the glass, metal, and stone COE building.

“We have provided infrastructure that will catalyze the advancements already being made by our researchers in the areas of microelectronics, data-center energy optimization, battery storage, autonomous solar power, as well as advanced materials and sensors,” Harvey Stenger, president of Binghamton University, said in the school’s news release. “Collaboration is what brought us to this point in our research efforts. Collaboration and the right environ-ment, this building, will lead to path-break-ing technologies in the future.”

The COE building’s construction gener-ated nearly $16 million in economic impact and supported more than 180 jobs, the school said.

William Hall, Binghamton University’s in-house architect, designed the Center of Excellence building, it added.

Crews constructed the facility to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards, featuring energy-effi-cient windows and skylights, along with a water-retention system and technology for heat recovery and humidity control.

New York in 2006 designated Binghamton’s S3IP as a center of excellence.

The center connects industry and aca-demia with a focus on systems integration and packaging of electronics in the making of equipment and devices that improve how people live and interact with their sur-rounding, the school said.

Ongoing research focuses on electron-ics packaging, energy-smart electronic systems, flexible electronics, and energy harvesting and storage.

News of note for and about Greater Binghamton businesses

email your company newsto [email protected]

Five Star Urgent Care adds wait-time feature to website

See FIVE STAR, page 7

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October 31, 2014 The Greater Binghamton Business Journal • 3


BINGHAMTON — The design phase is under way on the Southern Tier High Technology Incubator, which the state de-scribes as a “major” economic-development project in downtown Binghamton.

Binghamton University broke ground on the project on Oct. 2.

The incubator seeks to be an “entre-preneurial ecosystem for emerging high-technology companies” and should help create more than 900 jobs within the next nine years, the state contends.

The Southern Tier regional economic-development council (REDC) endorsed it as a priority project and awarded it $7 million to support the construction of the $19 million facility.

Empire State Development (ESD) ap-proved the grant during its meeting on Aug. 27 in New York City.

The project aligns with the Southern Tier REDC’s plan to create jobs through industry-university collaboration and high-tech infrastructure, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office said in a news release.

The facility is also included in Binghamton University’s plan for START-UP NY and will provide businesses that locate to and create new jobs at the incubator with the opportu-nity to operate tax-free for 10 years.

Companies involved in the START-UP NY program will be “major” participants

and need to have a “strong connec-tion” to Binghamton University’s aca-demic and research mission, Harvey Stenger, president of Binghamton University, says in an Oct. 14 interview with the Business Journal News Network.

“That means that they have to have a faculty sponsor and they have to have student involve-ment,” he adds.

The START-UP NY program is a state initiative that helps an entrepre-

neur start, expand, or relocate a qualified company in a tax-free zone.

The five companies currently involved in the program are “small” and located in the school’s engineering complex, says Stenger. The school hopes the young firms will move into the new incubator.

“The real goal, though, is to provide an excellent environment for small, brand new businesses to start to make achievements and [move] them toward viable commercial entities,” says Stenger.

About the incubatorThe nonprofit Southern Tier High

Technology Incubator, Inc. formed in April 2012 to build, own, and manage such a facil-

ity, according to ESD.It’s a nonprofit affiliated with the

Binghamton University Foundation. The school created the nonprofit with the

aim of furthering and supporting the educa-tional and scientific purposes of Binghamton University and expanding the university’s research and development capabilities.

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Work begins on Southern Tier High Technology Incubator

RENDERING COURTESY OF THE BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY WEBSITE

A render-ing of the Southern Tier High Technology Incubator as de-signed by Syracuse–based Ashley McGraw Architects, P.C.

“The real goal,

though, is to provide

an excellent environment

for small, brand new businesses

to start to make achieve-ments…,”

Stenger says.

See INCUBATOR, page 10

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OWEGO — Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT) on Oct. 9 inked an agreement with Concord Blue Energy, Inc. making it the “exclusive manufacturing provider” of the firm’s reformer technology.

The technology converts waste to en-ergy using advanced conversion technology, Lockheed said in a news release distributed Oct. 10.

Concord Blue says it specializes in trans-forming nearly any form of waste into a vari-

ety of clean, renewable fuels and energy.

Concord Blue USA, Inc. is headquartered in Los Angeles. The firm also operates interna-tional offices in India, Germany, and Dubai.

The gasification re-former includes a tower, Mauricio (Mo) Vargas, Lockheed Martin’s program manager for bioenergy, says in an Oct. 14 interview.

“We will be the people to build many

of the parts and pieces that are inside the tower,” says Vargas.

The Lockheed Martin site in Owego will be home to the first gasification reformer, a 250-kilowatt Concord Blue facility, construct-

ed under the agreement, says Vargas.When asked if the Owego site will manu-

facture additional reformers, Vargas indi-cated the firm hasn’t yet made a decision on that.

“It could be in Owego. It could be in Baltimore,” he added.

For the initial project, Lockheed Martin is hoping to partner with a firm in the Buffalo area for the manufacturing work, but Vargas declined to disclose the company’s name.

“The reason … [the agreement] was signed in Owego was because the first proj-ect we’re going to build is [for] the Owego facility,” says Vargas.

Dan Heller, vice president of new ven-tures for Lockheed Martin’s mission sys-tems and training business, and Christopher (Charlie) Thannhaeuser, chairman and CEO of Concord Blue, signed the manufacturing agreement.

Working relationshipLockheed Martin learned about Concord

Blue while interviewing companies in its search for a partner in handling biomass, municipal solid waste, and other byprod-ucts.

Lockheed wanted a partner to avoid dis-posing the waste in landfills, says Vargas.

“After about a year-and-a-half to two-year process, Concord Blue ended up being the company that we selected to partner with,” he added.

The Owego site of Lockheed Martin in-cludes a bioenergy plant that the firm uses for heating and cooling purposes.

Lockheed Martin and Concord Blue Energy in 2013 forged an agreement to offer an advanced waste-conversion system to address waste disposal, energy security, and climate-control issues.

Vargas described the 2013 document as the “teaming agreement,” which set the pa-rameters and the focus of the firms’ working relationship.

“What we signed last week [on Oct. 9] was the actual licensing for the manufactur-ing,” explains Vargas.

When asked about potential customers, Vargas indicated “a lot” of Fortune 50 indus-trial customers are interested in a product to help them manage their sustainability efforts, along with several nations, includ-ing the U.S., the U.K., Canada, China, India, Brazil, Spain, and Germany.

Advanced waste conversion is an “emerg-ing” technology that uses gasification processes to convert waste products to elec-tricity, heat, and synthetic fuels.

It addresses the current burden on land-fills, conventional incineration, and fossil fuels, along with the desire for green energy, Lockheed said.

Concord Blue’s waste-to-energy process employs a patented technology called steam thermolysis to convert waste material using heat transfer instead of incineration, “effi-

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BY NORMAN POLTENSONJOURNAL STAFF

T he year was 1979. President Jimmy Carter appointed Paul Volcker as chairman of the board of governors

for the Federal Reserve System. Volcker’s challenge was to tame the “stagflation” crisis, which he did by raising the federal funds rate from 11 percent in 1979 to 20 percent in 1981. In the same year, the prime rate peaked at 21.5 percent. The tight-money policy ended in 1982, but not before triggering a recession where unemployment topped 10 percent.

The same year that Volcker became the Fed chair, Susan M. Valenti, a 1976 graduate of Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and econom-ics, launched her career in bank marketing. Her first bank employer was the Monroe Savings Bank in Rochester, where she became the assistant vice president of marketing and corporate planning. “This was still the age of mass marketing,” notes Valenti. “We used print, radio, and television primarily for our promotional campaigns to attract customers and prospects to buy CDs (certificates of deposit) and to open checking accounts. The rates were very attractive. The bank also of-fered drills, china, and toasters to encourage customers to open new accounts.

“There was a lot of competition to convince the public to deposit their money with us,” con-tinues Valenti. “Targeting and niche marketing were not … [household words], because we didn’t have a lot of data with which to segment the market. This was also a period of deregula-tion when the money-center banks downstate were allowed to come upstate and compete with the community banks. It was a time when ATMs were new, and banks were opening new branch-es and experimenting with placing ‘branches’ in drug stores and supermarkets. There was no

online banking; the bank footprint allocated most of its space to transactions.”

Valenti left Monroe Savings in 1988, two years before the bank collapsed in the mid-dle of the savings-and-loan crisis and was subsequently bought by M&T Bank. At the time of the acquisition, Monroe Savings had $486 million in deposits and 11 offices.

After nine years at Monroe Savings, Valenti joined JP Morgan Chase as a marketing-com-munications manager. Living in the Rochester area and commuting weekly to world head-quarters in New York City over a 23-year period, she also held positions as affluent-marketing and communications executive, retail-market-ing executive, retail re-branding project lead, and Chase private-client marketing executive. Valenti joined Tompkins Financial Corp. in 2012 as a senior vice president for corporate market-ing and was promoted to executive vice presi-dent in May of this year.

Technology’s effect on banking“Technology has changed the banking

world,” asserts Valenti. “Today’s banks reflect the move to online banking with real-time payments, image banking (remote-deposit capture), instant security alerts, and access to client information [24/7]. Consumers want many of their banking interactions on a mobile platform, while their personal banking interactions reflect a need for assistance with more complex situations. The branch footprints have changed as a result, with a reduced allocation of square footage and more interior space reserved for consultation. That’s because branches have become financial cen-ters that offer not only access to cash, deposits, and loans but also wealth-management and risk-management advice.”

Competitive changesThe world of competition has also changed.

“When I started in banking, the community

banks competed against each other,” Valenti posits. “Today, community banks compete against money-center banks, large credit unions, and more recently, alternative banking options. (The alternative banks or neobanks include credit-card issuers such as Walmart, online payment processors such as PayPal, and crowd-banking firms such as LendingClub and Kickstarter.) The challenge for a commu-nity bank with $5 billion in assets is how to compete technologically with a [national or in-ternational] bank that has far more resources to invest in innovation.”

For a marketer, perhaps the biggest change is the amount of data available on customers and prospects and the ability to segment the marketplace and target promotions and com-munications. “The digital world has given bank marketers the tools to create analytics by which to measure the results of our efforts,” observes the Tompkins Financial executive vice president. “The old adage that ‘half of our advertising worked, we just didn’t know which half’ has been replaced by the capacity to know exactly what works and what doesn’t. We need to know our audience better in order to tailor our offers and to communicate [via the proper channel].

Since banks have become financial centers offering not just deposits and loans, but also insurance and investment products and advice, marketers also have a challenge to understand the complexity and variety of our options. Bank marketers today are dealing with a better ed-ucated consumer and also a marketplace in which women are taking a larger role in financial decision-making. To respond, we really need to understand the consumer’s needs,” she says.

Having cited significant marketing changes over the past 35 years, Valenti notes what hasn’t changed. “We are still in the long-term relationship business, she stresses. “The idea of knowing your customer, going the extra

mile, and offering outstanding service doesn’t change even if the means of delivering it does. Tompkins Financial is a holding company for four community banks. That means we are part of each community we serve, whether it’s vol-unteering or supporting nonprofit organizations financially. Each bank has a local president who lives in the community. That’s how to build re-lationships and stay current. All of our employ-ees have to reflect the values of the bank and understand the importance of the customer. Our commitment to valuing long-term success above short-term opportunities is more than how well we market and how many branches we have; it’s our reputation, our brand. What ul-timately matters is the trust we have established with the public.”

Valenti joined Tompkins Financial in March 2012. Her 35-year career in banking marketing/communications has included the following disciplines: advertising, events, collateral, pro-motion, database marketing, online, public rela-tions, and internal communications. Between 2004 and 2007, she led the rebranding effort at JP Morgan Chase to integrate Bank One, and she also was responsible for rebranding the Bank of New York branches. Valenti earned her M.B.A. from the Simon School at the University of Rochester in 1984.

Tompkins Financial (NYSE MKT: TMP), with headquarters in Ithaca, is the holding company for four banks: Tompkins Trust Co., The Bank of Castile, Mahopac Bank, and VIST Bank. The holding company also in-cludes Tompkins Insurance Agencies, Inc. and Tompkins Financial Advisors, a wealth-manage-ment firm.

Tompkins Financial serves an area from Central New York to Western New York, the Hudson Valley, and Southeastern Pennsylvania. The 2013 corporate year-end statement re-ported $5 billion in assets and $50.9 million in net income. At the end of 2013, Tompkins Financial employed 989 people and had 66 banking offices and 84 ATMs. q

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C ontent marketing is what we are hearing about everywhere we turn.

Content marketing and how brands use it to interact with po-tential customers, is reshaping business-marketing strategies. It allows you to follow potential cus-tomers all the way through the

sales process, customizing content in each phase.

Providing potential and current cli-ents great content al-lows you to show your-self as an ex-pert within your indus-try. You can

show that you’re the resource clients can turn to when they have questions. But, what is the best way to provide this content? Webinars are becoming one of the top choices of marketers for delivering content to prospects and customers.

Webinars are a vehicle to deliver B2B content to a larger audience with no geographic boundaries. It is a great way to engage an audi-

ence in real time. This is not a new concept. In

fact, webinars have been around since nearly the beginning of the Web. But they have never been so relevant.

Here are some of the benefits of webinars:

1. There are no boundar-ies. Because it is online, anyone from anywhere can attend a webi-nar, whether it is from their desk, home, or their mobile device. It makes attending a webinar much easier than trying to carve out time to physically attend at a spe-cific location. It also saves money on travel and the expense of being out of the office.

2. A level playing field. Webinars allow even the smallest company to look big. If your pre-sentation is done professionally and does not sound like a sales pitch, no one can tell the size of your company. It takes the idea of someone being bigger and better out of the equation.

3. Content comes alive. An interactive platform like this can allow content to be more excit-ing and real. It is not just words on paper; it is a live interactive discussion with real-time content delivery. You can attach files, show your screen or share any other rel-

evant information to the attendees. Not only does a webinar allow you to interact with the presenter, but it also allows you to hear what oth-ers are asking and doing.

4. Be a resource. Controlling content allows you to ensure your audience is hearing what you want them to hear. The educa-tional aspect of the content will position you to be a resource for clients and prospects, now or when they need the type of ser-vice you offer.

5. A whole big world. In the past, your initiatives may have been more localized. Create an event in a city and invite people within that geographic reach. Today, webinars allow you access anywhere you want, at one time, providing a much more efficient and effective way to reach poten-tial customers.

6. A focus group. Attendees of a webinar have now given you access to focus groups of your tar-get market. Webinar tools allow you to ask in-depth questions and conduct behavior scoring, provid-ing you with a wealth of informa-tion about this group.

7. A long life. Webinars are ar-chived so that attendees can refer back to them. This is especially helpful to registrants that could

not attend and allows others to discover it later on. This should continue to be a lead-generation tool, even after the webinar is com-plete.

As with any marketing efforts, it is crucial to measure the suc-cess and return on investment of each investment. Something like a webinar is easy to track because of its digital nature. Webinars, when done correctly, should have a good return for your company because the up-front costs are minimal, compared to many other content-delivery techniques. Before you decide to host a webinar, have a well thought-out plan. The plan

should entail: content develop-ment, a marketing plan to promote the webinar (the who and what we are sending out), a sales strategy (how and with whom to follow up), a tracking system to measure the success, an execution plan and finally, a follow-up plan. Don’t wait for the phone to ring. These reg-istrants have now gone from cold to warm leads; take advantage of that. q

Jenn Cline is a sales and marketing strategist at ABC Creative Group. She also consults with the Business Journal News Network. Contact her at [email protected]

that it assembled, assigning different time values, depending on the per-son’s ailment.

For example, Five Star will assign a different time value to a patient seek-ing treatment for a sore throat than to an individual who fell and needs an X-ray and a suture.

“The [employees] … right at the front desk … are on the front lines putting the times in and updating it … roughly between every 15 and 20 minutes,” says Radford.

Radford declined to disclose how

much the new feature cost the com-pany, saying it was part of the overall cost the website upgrade.

Five Star on Sept. 4 opened a lo-cation in Fayetteville, represent-ing its third office in the Syracuse area and sixth overall. Earlier in the year, it opened an office at 3504 W. Genesee St. in the Fairmount area of Camillus.

Five Star first entered the Syracuse market in May 2013 when it opened a new facility on Route 11 in Cicero.

The urgent-care provider also op-erates an office in Jamestown. And new locations are coming soon in

Clay and Corning, according to its website. q

Contact Reinhardt at [email protected]

ciently” producing syngas without combustion.Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin is a

security and aerospace company that employs about 113,000 people globally. The firm focuses on the research, design, development, manufacture, integration, and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products, and services.

In Central New York, Lockheed Martin operates sites in Owego and Salina.

The corporation generated net sales of $45.4 billion in 2013, Lockheed Martin said. q


jennifer Cline

viewpoint

refreshing Content Marketing with Webinars

Continued from page 2


fiVe STAr: The employees at the front desk update the times roughly between every 15 and 20 minutes

Five Star first entered the Syracuse market in May 2013 when it

opened a new facility on Route 11 in Cicero.

PACT: In Central New York, Lockheed Martin operates sites in Owego and Salina


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THE LISTResearch by Nicole Collins

[email protected] (315) 579-3911

Twitter: @cnybjresearch

NOTES1. Data for this list came from the June 30, 2014 FDIC Deposit Market Share report and the institutions individual websites.

ABOUT THE LISTInformation was provided by representatives of listed organizations and their websites. Other groups may have been eligible but did not respond to our requests for information. While The Business Journal strives to print accurate information, it is not possible to independently verify all data submitted. We reserve the right to edit entries or delete categories for space considerations.

WHAT cONSTITUTES THE GB REGION?For this list, Greater Binghamton includes Broome, Chemung, Chenango, and Tioga counties.

NEEd A cOpy Of A LIST?Electronic versions of all our lists, with additional fields of information and survey contacts, are available for purchase at our website, cnybj.com/ListsResearch.aspx

WANT TO BE ON THE LIST?If your company would like to be considered for next year’s list, or another list, please email [email protected]

GREATER BINGHAMTON BANKSRanked by GB Market Share, 06/30/14

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THE LISTResearch by Nicole Collins

[email protected](315) 579-3911

Twitter: @cnybjresearch

NOTES1. Information is from the NCUA 5300 report and credit unions’ websites. Financial data as of June 30, 2014.

ABOUT THE LISTInformation was provided by representatives of listed organizations and their websites. Other groups may have been eligible but did not respond to our requests for information. While The Business Journal strives to print accurate information, it is not possible to independently verify all data submitted. We reserve the right to edit entries or delete categories for space considerations.

WHAT CONSTITUTES THE GB REGION?For this list, Greater Binghamton includes Broome, Chemung, Chenango, and Tioga counties.

NEED A COPY OF A LIST?Electronic versions of all our lists, with additional fi elds of information and survey contacts, are available for purchase at our website, cnybj.com/ListsResearch.aspx

WANT TO BE ON THE LIST?If your company would like to be considered for next year’s list, or another list, please email [email protected]

GREATER BINGHAMTON CREDIT UNIONSRanked by Total Assets1

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http://www.visionfcu.org

http://www.tiogabank.com


The incubator will provide infrastruc-ture for up to 12 businesses focusing on research and development in energy, mi-croelectronics, and health care.

The nonprofit will use the grant funding to help in the first phase of the incubator’s design and construction. The organization wants the incubator to encourage industry-university partnerships.

A contractor, which the incubator has yet to choose, will build the 35,000-square-foot facility at the corner of Hawley and Carroll Streets and include specialized wet and dry laboratories, as well as a high-bay lab office

and collaboration space.Syracuse–based Ashley McGraw

Architects, P.C. is handling the design work on the project, says Stenger.

The laboratories will include infrastruc-ture to support companies conducting research; a hospital smart-room demon-stration facility; and development and light manufacturing in areas such as energy, electronics, packaging, and health.

The facility will also house SUNY Broome Community College’s new Bridge to Entrepreneurial Excellence program.

The 900 jobs the state expects from the project could include construction staff, incubator staff, employees at high-tech ten-

ants and anchor tenants, and new hires as firms are graduated from the incubator into the community.

Additionally, Binghamton University projects the incubator will have a direct economic impact of $25.1 million on the Broome and Tioga County economies dur-ing construction.

Following completion of construction in the fall of 2016, school officials expect the facility to generate more than $6 mil-lion in economic impact annually to the local economy.

The Southern Tier High Technology Incubator, Inc. secured funding through several sources to establish the incuba-

tor in a “distressed” part of downtown Binghamton, Cuomo’s office said.

The sources include $7 million through Round II of the governor’s regional-council initiative; $6 million from SUNY Broome’s NYSUNY 2020 Challenge Grant program award; $2 million from the Economic Development Administration; $2 million from the SUNY Research Foundation; and $2 million from the Broome County Industrial Development Agency, according to the governor’s of-fice. q


larger cities where most of the competi-tion is concentrating its marketing efforts. “Our strategy is to move geographically to the south and east,” says Yawman. “Company research identified 6,000 busi-nesses in the [Greater] Binghamton area as potential customers. FLTG has already invested millions of dollars here in fiber infrastructure before we can make a sale. (Each new mile of fiber costs $35,000 to build.) … We are fully committed to this area. The longer-term plan is to continue building out the fiber-optic network, which is already the largest privately owned fiber network in New York state, into Eastern Pennsylvania.”

The consolidated companies’ rate of growth has accelerated in the last decade. In 2005, OTTC and FLTG had 40 employ-ees. Today they employ 125, before any Endicott hires. The fiber-optic network has doubled in just one year from 1,000 to 2,000 miles. According to Inc. magazine in 2013, FLTG had expanded its three-year sales growth 70 percent (to $23.1 million in 2013) — this in a stagnant economy. In 2013, FLTG also opened a new 22,500-square-foot headquarters in Victor, near Rochester.

“Our secret”“Even though the national companies are

increasingly focusing on larger markets, we still have plenty of competition from compa-nies such as Time Warner and Verizon,” says Paul Nikitas, FLTG’s vice president for sales. “Our secret is to be a lean company that listens to its customers and responds. We become part of the community by build-ing personal relationships with groups like the Chamber [of Commerce] and Rotary. It’s real, grass-roots marketing.

“We compete on service through knowl-edgeable reps who act as account manag-ers,” emphasizes Nikitas. “They know the customers’ needs because they understand the big picture. The company also has dedi-cated design teams located in Buffalo and Victor who customize solutions, data-center capabilities, state-of-the-art technology, and integrated hardware solutions. Add to this a very competitive pricing structure and the fact that we don’t outsource any of our services. That’s how we compete.”

FLTG currently has about 10,000 busi-ness customers and 5,000 residential cus-tomers.

“Finding the right employees is critical to our growth,” avers Nikitas. “We recruit new

hires, who are thirsty to learn; individuals who want to grow. It’s a challenge to find the right people. The company spends a lot of time and money recruiting and then training. The pay-off is that our employees stay with FLTG.”

Yawman adds that “… we want to become the employer of choice. FLTG has a culture that promotes teamwork, empowerment, and passion. Recruiting is an ongoing daily task throughout the company.” FLTG has long had a telecommunications-internship program with upstate universities such as the Rochester Institute of Technology and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to create internships for college students. The company is now talking to Binghamton University and SUNY Broome Community College to expand the program.

The Ontario Telephone Co., Inc. and the Trumansburg Telephone Co., Inc. (OTTC) were each founded more than 100 years ago. Hovey Griswold bought the compa-nies in the 1920s, and OTTC/FLTG is run today by the fifth generation of eponymous presidents, Paul H. Griswold.

FLTG has six offices: Victor, Buffalo, Phelps, Trumansburg, Romulus, and Binghamton. The stock is held in an employ-ee-stock-option plan. FLTG’s customers in-clude, among others, Canandaigua National Bank and Trust Co., Cornell University,

the chambers of commerce of Canandaigua and Geneva, and a number of area school districts. The Greater Binghamton Business Journal estimates OTTC’s consolidated an-nual revenue at more than $50 million.

Yawman joined OTTC in September 2014. He is responsible for FLTG’s mar-ket expansion, business development, and mergers and acquisitions. Most recent-ly, Yawman served as vice president and general manager of Frontier – Greater Rochester. His previous employment in-cluded being the CEO of Rocket Broadband Networks, Inc., and he co-founded Choice One Communications. Yawman earned his M.B.A. from the Simon Business School at the University of Rochester and his bachelor’s degree in economics from Hobart College. He resides with his wife in Penfield. The couple has two children.

Nikitas joined the FLTG/OTTC family in 2005 as a senior account manager. In 2010, he was appointed the director of the sales team for the VAR (value-added reseller) and CLEC (competitive local-exchange company) lines. Nikitas assumed his cur-rent role in 2012. He graduated from SUNY Brockport with a bachelor’s degree in mar-keting and holds various certifications from Cisco. He and his wife reside with their two children in North Tonawanda. q



INCUBATOR: The laboratories will include infrastructure to support companies conducting research

FLTG: “Finding the right employees is critical to our growth,” says NikitasContinued from page 1

among their employees who may be in multi-ple offices, telecommuting, or require remote access,” continues Hayes. “One of these tools is Microsoft’s SharePoint, which is a Web application that organizes and shares files. Basically, SharePoint integrates the Internet, contact management, and document man-agement. For a small monthly fee per user, companies of all sizes can now afford to utilize this tool. SharePoint has a Microsoft Office-like interface, and it’s integrated with the Office suite. The Web tools are designed for non-technical users. Microsoft offers a cloud-service edition as part of its Office-365 platform.

“To accommodate the growth in this area, we just hired Michael Piester to manage our SharePoint team. He has experience designing and implementing SharePoint sites including ISO and legislative-compliant requirements, escalation workflows, dash-board reports to analyze ROI and sales, document libraries, and better communica-tions through blogs and message boards,” Hayes adds.

SharePoint is not the only area experienc-ing growth at ICS. “We are growing in all areas of the business,” says Kevin Blake, the

company president and the other co-owner. “IT-managed services, telephony, cybersecu-rity, business continuity and disaster recovery, helpdesk services, virtualization services, IP security cameras, and access control are all growing from increased customer demand. Just in the last year and a half, we expanded our office space here in Endicott by 1,500 square feet and in another few weeks we will add another 1,000 [square feet].”

Blake and two partners own the 40,000-square-foot building at 111 Grant Ave. in Endicott that houses ICS.

Growth and acquisitionsICS has generated annual, compounded

growth of 25 percent since Blake and Hayes bought the company in 2005. (ICS was founded in 1986 as Integrated Computer Solutions.) “We saw opportuni-ties to grow this company by being proac-tive, not reactive. Instead of waiting for a crisis, we introduced a menu of support plans. ICS had four employees in 2005; by 2010 we employed 27, and today the num-ber is 66, of whom 55 are IT consultants. Our growth has been both organic and through acquisitions. In 2010, we bought Microtech in Syracuse, which gave us a second location. ICS is currently in nego-

tiations for two more acquisitions which would give us additional office locations to serve 750 clients. Our territory has expanded from the Greater Binghamton area to Elmira, Rochester, Syracuse, the Mohawk Valley, and [the Northern Tier of] Pennsylvania.” Hayes adds: “We also have followed our customers to Buffalo, the mid-Hudson Valley, and even Ireland.” The Greater Binghamton Business Journal estimates that the company generates $10 million to $12 million in annual revenue.

“The only thing that hinders our growth is finding qualified employees,” notes Hayes. “I’m not as concerned about finding tech-savvy people as finding those who have warm-fuzzy qualities. I need employees with the intangibles, who can interact with our customers. We can help to groom them, but they have to come with the right attitude and communication skills.”

Blake and Hayes see a bright future for ICS. “The industry is moving toward busi-ness intelligence, observes Hayes. “The back end of SharePoint is a database, and now customers want to tie the databases together. They understand that they have a tremendous amount of information at their fingertips to guide their businesses and to help them grow. We’re dealing with the

early adopters of the cloud, and there is still a lot of educating required, but the trend is clear: business is moving to the cloud and that’s good for our growth. In a way, ICS is recession proof. In bad times, like the recent recession, customers outsource their IT; in good times, they buy our services. The cloud gives them peace of mind and the ability to collaborate.”

Blake is a 1992 Maine–Endwell High School graduate who started working at ComputerLand in 1990. He graduated from SUNY Oswego in 1996 with a degree in business. He started working full time at ICS two days after graduating college. Hayes graduated from Alexandria Central High School in Jefferson County and met Blake at SUNY Oswego. He also gradu-ated in 1996, with a degree in political sci-ence and history, and started his career at Eastman Kodak in Rochester. Hayes joined ICS in 1999. In its Aug. 8, 2014, edition, The Central New York Business Journal ranked ICS Solutions Group first among Central New York computer/IT consultant compa-nies. The ranking was based on the number of IT consultants on staff. q


ICS: SharePoint is not the only area experiencing growth at ICS; all business segments are growingContinued from page 1


Profiling local

nonprofit organizations

NonprofitFINANCIAL DATA

Fiscal year ending 6/30/2013, from the IRS 990 form for Junior Achievement of Rochester (prior to merger with the CNY region)

Junior Achievement of Central Upstate New York

Syracuse Region290 Elwood Davis Road, Suite 290, #6

Liverpool, NY 13088

Phone: (315) 744-7934

Twin Tiers Region1600 College Avenue

Elmira, NY 14901

Phone: (607) 734-0562

www.juniorachievement.orgKEY STAFF

President & CEO Patricia Leva, Junior Achievement of Rochester

President & CEO compensation from 06/30/2013 IRS Form 990 $87,070

Executive Director, Syracuse Region Steve Vonderweidt

Executive Director, Twin Tiers Region Tammy Schoonover

GREATER SYRACUSE ADVISORY BOARD OF DIRECTORSChris Cartmill

Karen Dejarnette

Michael Dermody

Robert Ellis

Lisa Kerns

Michael Kroll

Mark Lesselroth

Evelyn Liddle

Jim O’Brien

Steve Vonderweidt

Zachary Zuckerman

GREATER TWIN TIERS ADVISORY BOARD OF DIRECTORSCharles Bright

Steve Burns

Kristine Dale

Mark Fife

Russ Heft

Karen Miner

Tammy Schoonover

David Stewart

Theresa Stewart

Kirk Vieselmeyer

Kristi Wead

Anne Welliver-Hartsing

MISSION

To inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy.

PROGRAMS & SERVICESMore than 20 different programs that help prepare young people for the real world by showing them how to generate wealth and effectively manage it, how to create jobs which make their communities more ro-bust, and how to apply entrepreneurial thinking to the workplace.

Revenue SourcesContributions & Grants $686,440Program Services 0Investment Income $6,480Other -$65,320

Total Revenue $627,600

ExpendituresSalaries & Employee Benefits $357,124Other $174,891

Total Expenses $532,015Surplus for the Year $95,585

BY NICOLE COLLINSJOURNAL STAFF

J unior Achievement (JA) of Central Upstate New York is reconnecting with Central New

York businesses and professionals to bring its programs back to area schools.

After the CNY chapter of JA formally dissolved at the beginning of 2014, the Rochester chapter announced in February it had assumed responsibil-ity of the CNY region. Now covering 25 counties, the organization serves the largest geographic area of any JA chapter in New York state.

JA’s mission is to work with volun-teers in the community who go into classrooms to teach essential life skills focusing on financial literacy, entrepre-neurship, and work readiness.

JA hired Steve Vonderweidt as ex-ecutive director of the Syracuse region. He started on April 1 and currently operates from a small office in the Thruway Office Building in Salina. JA of Central Upstate New York is head-quartered in Rochester and has an-other satellite office in Elmira to cover the Twin Tiers region.

The Rochester chapter started with six counties to cover, and then increased its territory in 2008 by merging with the Twin Tiers chapter, gaining Steuben, Schuyler, and Chemung counties.

Each region — Rochester, Twin Tiers, and Syracuse — has its own advisory board and focuses on raising funding and delivering programs in its respective counties.

The organization has eight full-time employees, including Vonderweidt and Tammy Schoonover, executive direc-tor for the Twin Tiers region. JA relies heavily on volunteers to deliver its pro-grams to students.

“We couldn’t deliver our mission without volunteers who bring the world of business into the classroom,” says

Patricia Leva, president and CEO of Junior Achievement of Central Upstate New York, who is based in Rochester.

Volunteers are needed to teach class-es for one hour a week for five to seven weeks, depending on the grade level. Prior to going into the classrooms, volunteers take a 90-minute training course to cover lesson plans, conduct in the classrooms, and key terms and concepts.

“Volunteers really do get to change lives. [They] open the children’s eyes to experiences they haven’t thought about,” says Vonderweidt. “Without volunteers, we can’t serve any more kids.”

JA programs, Vonderweidt says, can show students how to use the resourc-es around them to start businesses, which the region needs.

Regional coverageSo far, Vonderweidt has been

reaching out to schools in Onondaga, Madison and Oneida counties to rees-tablish JA programs. A few Utica–area businesses and volunteers reached out to Vonderweidt, eager to bring JA pro-grams back to their students.

With nearly 77,000 students enrolled in Onondaga County public schools alone, Vonderweidt estimates that, hy-pothetically, JA would need at least 3,000 volunteers to reach all those stu-dents.

“There’s no way I can serve all of them by myself,” he quips.

But growing the local office will hap-pen slowly and strategically. The goal is to make sure every kid has an excellent

experience and you can only do that by being strategic, Vonderweidt says.

He compares his strategic approach to that of a three-legged stool, with the legs representing fundraising, vol-unteers, and schools. Fundraising is needed to provide the material for the programs, volunteers are needed to teach, and schools are necessary for hosting JA programs.

“If you grow one of the legs too much or too little, the stool is going to fall over,” Vonderweidt says. “Every part of the stool is important.”

While the goal is to deliver services to as many students as possible in the JA regions, Leva says, “staffing [in-creases] will occur as it makes sense for our business model.”

In the Twin Tiers region, JA provid-ed programs to almost 1,800 students in 58 classrooms in 18 different schools during the last school year.

JA partners with the Greater Binghamton Education Outreach Program (GBEOP), a nonprofit af-filiate organization of the Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce, to deliver its programs. JA is one of GBEOP’s four main programs. This past spring, more than 600 students in 32 elementary, middle school, and high school classrooms in Broome County participated in the JA program, according to the Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce’s July Chamber Report.

On Oct. 2, the Syracuse region JA was one of four area nonprofits to re-ceive part of a $125,000 grant from First Niagara. Vonderweidt says that the grant money will go toward program-ming in Syracuse, Binghamton, Utica and the area in between.

“We’ll be able to serve hun-dreds of kids with this grant,” says Vonderweidt.

JA generates total gross revenue of about $800,000 annually. In the Syracuse region, the goal is to raise $150,000 to $200,000 for the year. The Twin Tiers has an annual goal to raise around $100,000 each year.

“We’re a fiscally stable entity,” says Leva.

For three years in a row (2011, 2012, and 2013), JA of Rochester received the Junior Achievement USA’s Peak Performance Award for demonstrating “a strong financial position and positive student growth.” Only 12 offices among all 115 JA offices nationwide receive the award, according to JA. q

Contact Collins at [email protected]

CornerJunior Achievement ramps up to serve Central New York

Junior Achievement factsn Founded: 2014n Employees: 8 full time, 1 part timen Volunteers: More than 750 throughout 25 countiesn Service Area: Broome, Cayuga, Chemung, Chenango, Cortland, Delaware, Franklin, Jefferson, Lewis, Livingston, Madison, Monroe, Oneida, Onondaga, Ontario, Oswego, Otsego, Schuyler, Seneca, St. Lawrence, Steuben, Tioga, Tompkins, Wayne, and Yates

NICOLE COLLINS/BJNN

Steve Vonderweidt, executive di-rector of the Syracuse region of Junior Achievement of Central Upstate New York.


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