Aurora expects rapid growth-Spokane company says strong ties with Microsoft to boost revenue, more than double its work force

Spokane software developer
Aurora Consulting Group says
it expects to generate tens of
millions of dollars in additional
revenue in the next 18 months
through strong ties it has
forged with software giant
Microsoft Corp., a relationship
that’s also expected to fuel
explosive job growth at Aurora.

By Addy Hatch
OF THE JOURNAL OF BUSINESS

To gear up for the expected
growth, Aurora is seeking at
least $5 million in investment
capital, which would allow it to
expand its marketing efforts
nationally and add 18 to 38
people to its 12-person staff,
says Beth Britt, Aurora’s
president and CEO.

Aurora, which also offers systems consulting, is basing those rosy
projections on a group of products it has developed that add ease of function
to certain Microsoft software.
Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft is paying Aurora $250,000 to develop a
demonstration disk for one of Aurora’s products, called myGroupWorks, that
Microsoft plans to send in September to more than 500,000 potential
customers worldwide, Britt says. Microsoft is doing that because
myGroupWorks helps adapt several Microsoft programs, including Project
2002, to the needs of medium-sized organizations, which are an important
target market, she says.

Microsoft will forward any sales leads for myGroupWorks that result from the
mailing to Aurora, and because each sale of myGroupWorks likely will require
some consulting work as well, the deal potentially “is huge,” says Steve
Trabun, Aurora’s vice president of business development. “It’s a pure
direct-marketing play by Microsoft on our behalf,” he says.

MyGroupWorks, which Aurora developed with the help of a $100,000 grant
from the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute, is the
program that’s expected to drive “exponential” growth in Aurora’s revenues
over the next 18 months, says Dennis Hake, whom Aurora recently hired as
its vice president of program development.
MyGroupWorks is part of a line of products and services that Aurora has
developed called Initiative ME, which it will roll out nationwide in July as a
group of solutions, based on Microsoft programs, for medium-sized
organizations. Aurora brought Hake, who has worked as a national brand and
account manager for consumer-products powerhouse Procter & Gamble Co.,
aboard to help with that national campaign.

Aurora is seeking $5 million or more to fund the rollout, which will require
that the company beef up its sales-and-marketing team, its
software-development group, and its business-consulting team, Britt says.
The company is located at 1522 N. Washington.

Based on discussions with potential investors that already are under way,
“We believe we will get the dollars,” Britt says.

In the future, Aurora might license myGroupWorks to another company,
although Britt declines to say whether Microsoft would be a potential licensee.

Aurora’s close relationship with Microsoft came about very deliberately, Britt
says.

Although Aurora, which was founded in 1997, has been profitable since its
second year in business, two years ago it moved away from custom software
development to focus its efforts on developing products and consulting
services around Microsoft programs, Britt says.

Trabun says the switch came because “we were trying to be kind of
everything to everybody,” and the custom software and consulting services
Aurora provided were expensive for its customers.
By basing its work on Microsoft products, Aurora can serve its customers
“very quickly and very economically,” he says.

Now, “100 percent of (Aurora’s work) is Microsoft,” Britt says. “We still have
a substantial development team, but we do custom development between
Microsoft solutions.”
Aurora is a certified Microsoft partner for four of the company’s product
groups and for five of its sales teams. It gives joint presentations with
Microsoft representatives, and Microsoft personnel are working to introduce
Aurora to other companies it does business with, Britt says.

Romi Mahajan, business development manager for Microsoft’s Project
marketing team, confirms that eight months ago his team plucked Aurora
from the relative obscurity of being one of Microsoft’s certified partners to
become “a crucial partner for our plans for the medium enterprise,” or
medium-sized organizations.
Microsoft chose Aurora because of “their professionalism and ability to take
ideas and put them into action in really short time frames,” Mahajan says.

Aurora is targeting the medium enterprise—the “ME” in Initiative ME—for
several reasons, Britt says. Such organizations, which have 50 to 1,000
networked computer users, have many of the same needs as large
businesses, but typically don’t have the same level of technological savvy.
Aurora’s products and consulting services help adapt Microsoft
programs—which typically were designed for much larger organizations—to
the needs of smaller companies, she says.
For the same reason, Microsoft also is targeting the medium enterprise as a
rich potential market, she says.

In addition, much of Aurora’s past business in Spokane has been with
companies that fit the definition of a medium enterprise, she says, such as
WestCoast Hospitality Corp., Gonzaga University, Olympic Foods Inc., and
Itronix Corp.

Aurora’s software-development work on behalf of those companies spawned
Initiative ME and myGroup Works, Hake says. Aurora saw “the same issues
come up in every single company,” and developed ways to “meet a set of
needs that really weren’t being met,” he says.

Britt says she’s not nervous about concentrating all of Aurora’s efforts on
Microsoft. For one thing, Microsoft is a multi-faceted company, and Aurora
has forged relationships with numerous groups there.

For another, says Hake, “You’ve got to look at the last 25 years and realize
that here’s a company that has done a lot of right things. Is it risky for us?
Probably not. Probably for us it’s a smart move.”

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