What Evolution Looks Like: CI Profile of IMS Technology Services

They’ll achieve these goals through an internal production team and third-party partners, he says. IMS is hoping to see “a significant increase in the next few years” on the 5 to 10 percent of its overall revenue it sees from digital signage.

IMS will roll out its AV design managed service offering in the second quarter of this year, followed by owning content in the third quarter and meeting support services in the fourth quarter. They’ll offer other services in 2015, says Shinn.

Top-Down Management of Change

IMS Technology Services’ adaptive culture must trickle down from its co-founders, but both John and Jill are quick to deflect the credit to their management team, which John notes is “critical in a business where you have to change on occasion.”

Still, the husband and wife team demonstrate a nice yin-yang leadership approach. Since the day they launched the company, Jill has handled the finance, administration and human resources functions for IMS, while John has focused on the sales and operations side. They pride themselves on taking a slightly different approach to business than many others in the integration space.

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John says they “look at every position as a technical service,” while Jill notes they “look for people who want to make it a career, not just a job.” Those perspectives encompass a lengthy hiring process that includes a hiring manager whittling an initial list of candidates to three to six finalists, each of whom then interview with John, Jill and others with whom they might work if they’re hired.

“If you can get through that, you can get through almost anything else you’re going to face here,” says John.

And they’ve been successful at finding people who want to stick around for a while, with a turnover rate of less than 5 percent in almost 20 years, although Jill is quick to point out “we’ve made a few mistakes,” particularly on the sales side. IMS hired 13 people in 2013 and is ahead of that pace through the first half of 2014.

“When it comes to sales, we’re looking for someone who can focus on new business development as well as being a sales manager,” says John. “There are very few people who can do it to the degree we need it done in the first three years.”

Jill acknowledges the company has a built-in learning curve of about five years before employees reach the pinnacle of their professional careers.

“There’s a lot of training in place,” she says.

Co-founding a Company, a Marriage

There are plenty of tales about friends who went into business together, thinking their familiarity with each other would be a boon to the company, only to find a few years later, they not only didn’t have their business anymore, but they didn’t have that close friend either.

So, you’d think John and Jill Renninger would have walked quite a tightrope over the past two decades since the husband and wife decided to launch Integrated Marketing Services in 1995, renamed IMS Technology Services in 2012 after a few years as IMS Audio Visual. In fact, they say, the decision might have been the best one they ever made — well, maybe the second-best behind getting married, that is.