04-18-24: Moran Technology Consulting (MTC) is proud to announce our new status as an employee-owned firm. Our transition to an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) structure reflects our founding values of partnership, expertise, impact, and care, which have been reinforced during almost 20 years as a trusted provider of IT management consulting services to higher education.
Consistent with the collaborative and consultative nature of higher education institutions, MTC has always treated our clients as partners – our motto of “we consult with you, not at you” derives from this practice. As our clients would expect, our commitment to partnership and collaboration started from within. Many of our team members have been with us since our start in 2004 and have been key leaders in charting the direction and growth of our firm.
As ownership worked to plan a long-term path for the firm, we were approached by many Private Equity (PE) firms with offers to buy us. After closely investigating that path, we firmly rejected it because of the traditional PE lack of concerns about our industry focus, our client support and most importantly, the welfare and stability of our consultants – the people who helped us get where we are today. An ESOP allows us to sell the firm to our employees in a process that requires no money to be contributed from them and no changes to salaries, bonuses and 401K contributions.
Over the years we have found that our corporate strategy – treating our team members as partners who are highly invested in the success of our firm and our clients – has yielded incredible outcomes for MTC. For example, while many of our peer organizations were rocked by or forced to shut down during the turbulence of the 2008 market crash and the recent pandemic, MTC has been able to consistently carry on without ever having to turn to layoffs or pay cuts for our team. We have grown strategically to meet our clients’ needs over time, evolving from a three-person team to our current status as a 25+ headcount organization. We attribute much of this success to the commitment MTC has always made to its employees and to the reciprocal investment that commitment has cultivated in our team.
As a result, MTC also boasts a strong track record of employee retention – almost all of our hiring has been due to the need to grow to meet client demand. Our partnership and quality-oriented culture means that our team members simply don’t leave. We are proud that continuity on our team has consistently carried forward into our client relationships – MTC has a better than 2:1 average on return clients because of our outstanding team of experts who are dedicated to high-quality client service.
MTC’s transition to an ESOP – where employees have direct ownership of the firm – is a practical and concrete way to acknowledge and actualize the partnership that already exists with our team members.
Charlie Moran, Sr. Partner & CEO of MTC explained, “As we hit 20 years of continuous operation it was important to the partners that we consider how to ensure the firm continues to thrive for another 20+ years. Giving our team members ownership of the firm felt like the best possible way to accomplish that goal – there could be no better stewards of MTC than our outstanding team.”
Paul Giebel, Partner and Chief Operating Officer elaborated, “One of the things we love about the ESOP structure is how it reflects what we value and what our clients value. It translates our emphasis on partnership into the actual structure of the firm. We’ve had other opportunities to transition ownership, but none of them felt right for us or our employees – this feels right and we are excited to move forward as an employee-owned organization.”
MTC looks forward to continuing to serve our clients and the broader higher education IT community via our new status as an ESOP. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected].
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Moran Technology Consulting is an experienced and proven consulting services provider to higher education. MTC offers a full range of IT and management consulting services. Our consultants have worked with over 320 institutions and conducted over 850 projects across 40+ states and 12 countries.