CRI Advantage execs get farewell before trip to receive national award 

Executives at Boise-based CRI Advantage were greeted with congratulations by Idaho Rep. Walt Minnick and a representative from the Idaho National Laboratory before departing for California Aug. 11 to receive the U.S. Department of Energy’s Small Business of the Year award.

CRI Advantage officials were set to leave in a company plane from Jackson Jet Center, adjacent to the Boise Airport, to attend the 10^th Annual Department of Energy Small Business Conference. The agency is recognizing the company for its “creative, unique, and extraordinary performance.”

The company supports the lab’s 8,000 employees with IT help desk, high-end cyber security and other services. CRI staff helped the lab prepare for and pass the DOE’s Office of Health, Safety, and Security (HSS) audit in 2008, contributing particularly to the development of the DOE Program Cyber Security Plan.

Gary Brookshier, president and CEO, said he and other executives were thrilled with the honor, which could give them opportunities to attract more business, particularly at the small business conference.

“We didn’t understand the significance of the award at first,” he said. “We now understand that it’s a very big deal because it gives us the opportunity to talk to other labs around the country and advance the company. We’re really hoping to use it as an opportunity to develop more relationships.”

Minnick said companies like CRI Advantage represent “the key to Boise’s future economic growth.”

“To have an Idaho company that has survived this recession, changed its business strategy and won a national award” is great news, he said.

Brian Whitlock, a government affairs representative at INL, said the company’s work has been critical to lab.

“When someone like myself picks up the phone and says, ‘Help,’ we really do need help,” Whitlock said. “They have 110 people that are there when the phone rings. That sets them apart just a little bit from everybody else.”

The company provided $4 million worth of information technology services to the lab in 2008, just a fraction of the $122 million in goods and services the lab spent on Idaho-based companies last year.

The company, founded by two former Hewlett-Packard employees in 1988, employs 110 in Boise and Idaho Falls.

Brookshier, who bought CRI Advantage in 1995, said the company was forced to transform itself when its large commercial customers began to off-shore their IT operations. The trend started to hit particularly hard in 2005.

Revenue dropped from $18 million annually in 2005 to $6 million in 2006, and the company, which then employed more than 200 people, laid off dozens, he said.

The company’s leaders decided to reshape the company to focus almost exclusively on state and federal agencies and businesses that planned to keep operations in Idaho, Brookshier said. CRI began 2006 with 90 percent of its business from large commercial clients, and it ended the year with 80 percent from state and federal agencies.

Since then, the company has been growing. Revenue has rebounded to $14 million annually. The company is hiring.

“We’re on our way,” he said. “We’re not quitting.”

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