CareWorks Technologies Acquires Plannet Group

Acquisition Bolsters Strength of Region’s High Tech Community and Makes Way for New Jobs and Innovations  

In May of this year, Dublin-based CareWorks Technologies, an IT solutions provider, announced its acquisition of Hilliard’s Plannet Group LLC.  This acquisition of a local high-tech company by another local company stands as an exciting testament to the strength of the region and the connectedness of its technology community. 

Not only does this acquisition help keep resources, revenues and jobs in the region, conditions of the sale also set the stage for the continued growth of another high-tech venture that is in the works for Plannet’s founder, Jim Mazotas. 

Plannet, a graduate of the TechColumbus incubator, was founded in 2002 by Mazotas as a provider of security and enterprise management and monitoring solutions.  Like many startups, Plannet was founded on resources ($70,000) which Mazotas bootstrapped together through personal savings and the mortgaging of his home. 

“I knew the time was right for me to start my own business, a goal I had held since I was a child,” says Mazotas.  “It was the perfect convergence of opportunity, experience and connections and I knew that if I didn’t take advantage of the timing, I’d regret it for the rest of my life.” 

What Plannet focused on initially was providing network management and software solutions that were customer focused and very competitively priced.  Plannet began offering consulting and technical services that were sometimes as much as half the cost of those provided by major players such as IBM.  It didn’t take long for customers to catch on to the value and caliber of Plannet services and within eight months Mazotas had recouped his original investment and Plannet was turning a profit by the end of its first year.

Next Mazotas and his team began developing enterprise-based network management services including what would become the company’s signature solution, Mission Control.  Mission Control provides an easier way for network managers and IT administrators to monitor their systems by using a highly customizable visual dashboard portal that is fed by a comprehensive back-end system.  This system consolidates data feeds from various infrastructure equipment, system and applications allowing the portal to display error, behavioral, performance and trending data.  The value is in its simplicity, precision, efficiency and affordability.

Mission Control gained notoriety for the fledgling company including the TechColumbus TopCAT award in 2005 for Outstanding Startup Business.  As a result, the company gained coverage in local media and business publications and caught the attention of members of the Central Ohio tech community … including the company that would eventually acquire it. 

“After hearing of their business and their innovative approach to enterprise management and monitoring, they were on my radar screen,” says Todd Cameron, president of CareWorks Technologies.

Mazotas moved the company into the TechColumbus business incubator in 2005 and began working with the commercialization specialists there to mature the company and help prepare it for the next level of growth.

“Jim as a client was eager to utilize all the resources and opportunities available to him through the incubator to help him move his company,” says Rick Focht, senior director of commercialization services for TechColumbus. 

TechColumbus worked with Plannet to determine the company’s best opportunities within its addressable markets and the best steps towards securing sales opportunities within these markets.  Focht says in particular they helped Mazotas and his team target their presentations beyond a prospect’s technical staff.

“Often with the sales cycle, the merits of a technical solution will have to be explained to non-technical decision makers such as a CFO or CEO,” says Focht.  “We helped Jim craft his message in terms of its value proposition to the organization and to these C-Level executives.” 

Mazotas says he also gained many benefits from the interaction that goes on daily within the incubator.  “I learned a lot from the other tenants and the graduates of the incubator not just about what to do, but also what doesn’t work so well,” says Mazotas.  “I was constantly listening and learning to everything that anyone had to offer from the TechColumbus staff to my fellow entrepreneurs.”

Mazotas took these lessons to heart and says that since 2005, when it first moved into the incubator, the company has nearly doubled its revenue every year following.

It was also in the incubator that Mazotas was first approached by a company that was interested in acquiring Plannet.  During a visit to the TechColumbus incubator, a publicly traded software company was first introduced to Plannet and its innovative Mission Control solution.  Several days later, Mazotas received an unsolicited “deal sheet” from the West Coast based company.  Although the deal didn’t go through, it did set in motion the events that would ultimately lead to the sale of the company to CareWorks Technologies.

Mazotas says that anyone who hasn’t been through the acquisition process has no concept of how intense and all-consuming the due diligence and negotiations can become.  He also says he’s actually very pleased that the company eventually was sold to another Central Ohio interest. 

“It took away a lot of the anxiety to be able to meet all the people we’d be working with face-to-face,” he says.  “All of my key people were able to interact with the CareWorks Technologies team – their sales staff, development staff and management.  We knew what they were all about and how we would integrate with them.” 

An additional benefit – the acquisition by CareWorks Technologies did not require relocation of any of the Plannet staff outside of Central Ohio.  not only did this business transaction among local companies retain high paying jobs in the region, it will also help create new jobs.  Cameron projects that through the acquisition of Plannet, CareWorks Technologies will add five to ten new positions with salaries of between $70,000 and $100,000 in the next few months.

 In addition, as part of the acquisition agreement, CareWorks Technologies has become an investor in Mazotas’ next venture, OnGuard Systems.  OnGuard is a behavioral analysis security tool for which Mazotas has a patent pending.  By the time the product is ready for general release in 2010, Mazotas predicts the new company will have created 25-30 new high-paying jobs in Central Ohio. 

“It’s really gratifying to know that my efforts are having a positive impact on the high tech economy of Central Ohio,” says Mazotas. “I’m looking forward to a time when I’ll have the resources – both the time and the money – to be able to give back to the startup community just a little of what TechColumbus and other generous resources in the region have afforded me.”