Growing with Field Nation

Datatel is an IT service provider based out of Portland, Oregon that delivers networking, cloud storage, and security solutions to clients across a diverse set of industries. When they co-founded the company four years ago, CTO Ernest Murry and CEO Nate Brooks did so with the intention of supporting their local community. This emphasis on tapping local IT resources and serving local clients limited opportunities for growth.

“We restricted ourselves to serving people or serving clients within a 15-mile radius,” Murry explained. “Pretty much anybody who called in outside of that we would decline to serve them or provide them service.”

But in early 2020, Datatel had the opportunity to bring on a large client with 19 locations across four states. While the prospect of growing into new territory was exciting, the company was nervous about capacity. “We thought they were a great fit for us,” Murry noted, “but we were concerned about how we were going to be able to support all of those locations across the different states.”

“And that’s where Field Nation came in.”

Since partnering with Field Nation, Datatel has experienced impressive growth in terms of sheer numbers, geographical reach, and the types of companies they service. In 2020, a year that ground many businesses to a halt, Datatel was able to grow their revenue 400%. Additionally, Datatel was able to expand its client list into new verticals. Since partnering with Field Nation, Datatel has added clients in food production, biodiesel, finance, and wholesale.

The confidence to scale

Perhaps most significantly, working with Field Nation has empowered Datatel to provide service to companies far outside their initial 15-mile service zone. This geographical expansion is supported by Datatel’s strategic leveraging of on-demand labor through the Field Nation platform.

“Field Nation provides us with the tools to properly vet an engineer before we dispatch them, before we assign them to the ticket,” Murry explained.

He continued, “It also gives us the ability to control costs. We don’t have to have a full-time engineer in a location where we’ve only got a client with five users. We’re able to get quality on-demand work, and we’re able to bring in resources depending on what’s required. Whoever we need, whatever we need, we’re confident that we can get them there.”

Murry sums up Field Nation’s impact this way: “Field Nation has given us the confidence of becoming a nationwide IT service provider, which we did not have before.”

This confidence relates back to “the peace of mind knowing that we have this large workforce we can tap into when we need it, knowing that the technicians are going to be responsive and excellent at what they do.”

Datatel has successfully passed this confidence along to its clients, who know that they can rely on Datatel (and their flexible, hybrid workforce) to support them through periods of growth and transformation. Murry has a great example: “One of our clients just bought three more locations, and they told me they wouldn’t have had that confidence to scale without us and our labor force.”

Datatel’s immediate focus remains on growth, and Field Nation is at the core of this plan. In Murry’s words: “It’s time for us to go through another growth spurt and grow another three, four hundred percent.”