An exclusive interview with Rene LaVigne, President and CEO, Iron Bow Technologies, by Marc Hausman, Strategic Communications Group.

In a career that has spanned nearly 30 years, Iron Bow Technologies’ President and CEO, Rene LaVigne can point to a number of defining accomplishments. He helped build a billion dollar a year business, played a lead role in two high-profile merger and acquisition deals, and worked closely with the world’s largest private equity fund.

Yet, LaVigne considers Iron Bow’s achievement in 2010 as perhaps his most professionally rewarding. He explains why in this interview, while offering executives at government contractors a portfolio of valuable lessons learned.

Marc Hausman: Tell us about your professional background? How did you get into government contracting?

Rene LaVigne: The first ten years of my career were spent in public accounting where I was fortunate to see a broad array of businesses. Many of my clients were technology companies with operations on the West Coast, as well as in Northern Virginia.

I then connected with Sylvest Management Systems when they were searching for a chief financial officer. I filled that role for a year and then took on executive responsibilities in sales and marketing. Ultimately, I was tapped as Sylvest’s general manager.

Sylvest was acquired by Federal Data Corporation in 1997 and I helped position the company for that transaction and led the post-merger integration. Working at Fed Data then gave me the opportunity to interact with the private equity firm Carlyle, as they were the key investor in the business.

Northrop Grumman acquired Fed Data in 2000, and I stayed on to run the technology solutions segment that we organically grew to $1B in revenue in 2003.

So, although the company and its ownership changed during my 10-year run, I played a lead role in taking a $30M business at Sylvest and growing it to $1B in annual revenue.

How about Iron Bow Technologies? What have you been focused on there during the past 12 months?

2010 was quite a year for the company. We rebranded from Apptis Technology Solutions to Iron Bow Technologies, spinning the business out from the parent organization.

We had to build out the corporate infrastructure to accomplish a complete spin, and I’ve invested much of my time defining our focus and growth strategy to a rapidly growing and changing employee base. We added nearly 100 new positions in 2010, representing a 40 percent increase in the team.

Perhaps what I am most proud of is the team that we’ve built generated 33 percent year-over-year revenue growth in 2010, a validation from our customers and partners that our vision was spot on.

It sounds like 2010 was a lot like changing tires on a car while driving 60 miles per hour down the Toll Road. What did you attribute the success to during such a time of change for the company?

We make things work for our customers and partners. It’s a singular focus. Iron Bow is a people-led business and we never lose sight of that. We work hard at providing a culture and environment that fosters a strong sense of entrepreneurship and is rewarding personally and professionally for our people.

We understand the reputation you establish project to project is all you have to live with. While it is a big space, the community is relatively small and we are only as good as the job we did yesterday.

There is also a strong financial discipline in how we manage the business. This has been influenced by my nearly three decades of experience in finance and government contracting.

What is Iron Bow’s approach when it comes to partnering with systems integrators and technology vendors?

Our senior leaders' collective legacies emanate from small business, instilling a strong belief in entrepreneurship, openness and collaboration. In today’s market, you have to be flexible in how you develop solutions and solve business problems for customers and that means making teaming a priority.

What can we expect from Iron Bow in 2011?

We’re continuing to grow our core practice disciplines with a particular emphasis on collaboration, data center and information security. We believe the timing is right to further invest in these areas as we’re seeing a high level of interest from customers.

Iron Bow is also building out its capabilities in the area of private cloud adoption in government, an extension of our virtualization and data center consolidation activities.

Marc Hausman is the president and CEO of Strategic Communications Group, a social media marketing consultancy based in Silver Spring, Maryland. Read more at his blog: http://www.thestrategicguy.com/.