Fortus ready to double sales

UTICA — The staffing and recruiting business, a $400 billion industry, is thriving from increased placements and revenue, according to a survey from Bullhorn, an online recruiting-software firm. 

Fortus Healthcare Resources, headquartered in Utica, leads this industry trend with a 32 percent, annual-compounded growth rate that has put it on the Inc.–5000 list for the past three years. (The 2014 Inc. listing is based on the percentage of revenue growth when comparing 2010 to 2013.) Michael Maurizio, the president, CEO, and founder of Fortus, says the company is poised to double sales in the next few years.

Maurizio is basing his projections on a business plan he began implementing in November 2013. The first step was to rebrand the firm, which had been known by its two operating corporations: The Fortus Group, Inc., a C-Corp. for the direct-placement business, was set up in 1993 to handle staffing for dialysis units; the second corporation, Fortus Group Travel, Inc., an S-corp. for the travel business, was created in 2006 to place traveling nurses and patient-care technicians. Fortus Healthcare Resources is a d/b/a. 

“We recognized the importance of diversifying the business and expanded our business model to become a full-service consultant,” says Maurizio. “The new brand — Fortus Healthcare Resources — is an integral part of our growth strategy.”

The second step was to hire a company CFO to help guide the growth. “I hired Dave (David L.) Keenan,” notes Maurizio, “a certified public accountant, whose previous experience included working at PriceWaterhouseCoopers for eight years as a tax manager and most recently more than a dozen years at Oneida Ltd. as the vice president of treasury and tax. He also has experience in the mergers and acquisitions area, which we are looking at to supplement our organic growth. 

Dave has already pointed out a number of opportunities to increase our growth and profitability.”

Keenan is certainly bullish on the direction of the company he joined at the end of October 2014. “The direct-placement business continues to be strong and 

consistent,” affirms the new CFO. “But Fortus has seen explosive growth in the travel business, which has grown from $2 million to $6 million just in the last few years. Further growth in both divisions has come from the new initiatives in diversifying our reach to clinicians in other areas of the hospital outside of dialysis. While the potential for organic growth is our primary focus, if the right opportunity appeared, we are open to acquiring a health-care-staffing company. To me, however, our most immediate path is to increase revenue and profitability within our defined organic-growth initiatives.”

The third step was to add the required space to accommodate the projected growth. “In September 2014, we moved our office from the old Harza Building in downtown to our new building on the south side of Utica at 2717 Genesee St. We replaced 5,000 square feet with 8,000 square feet and organized each of the operating corporations on its own floor. This not only gives us room to add staff, but also makes for a smoother operation flow,” Mauruzio says.  He owns the new office building through a real-estate company he calls Performance Plus, LLC. Oneida County real-property records indicate that the building and land was sold for $475,000 on July 17, 2014. The structure was built in 1980.

Diversification

Fortus has come a long way since its early days of only placing dialysis professionals. “We really are diversified now,” Maurizio stresses. “In addition to dialysis health-care professionals, we provide health-care organizations with RNs and LPNs, social workers, dieticians, surgeons, in-service and educational clinicians, executive-level management, bio-med technicians, nephrologists, and administrators. Our specialty areas include nephrology, travel positions, ambulatory, and perioperative/surgery. Fortus also offers clinical-practice consulting. With more than 20 years of industry experience, we help our clients prevent critical staff gaps, reduce the time-to-hire as well as the cost-to-hire, provide the best clinical talent available, and eliminate staffing hassles. The bottom line is that health-care institutions need to focus on their patients: We help them do that.”

Fortus’s revenue of $120,000 in year one has blossomed into a business that generated $2.6 million in revenue in 2009, $6.2 million in 2012, and more than $10 million last year. The Fortus headquarters currently houses a staff of 40, of whom 30 are recruiters. The company employs another 60 nurses and patient-care technicians who are in the field. In addition to the Utica office, Maurizio set up an office in Hof, Germany in 2008 to make permanent placements, primarily in Europe. “We live in a global economy, and we want to take advantage of opportunities outside our borders,” asserts Maurizio, who is the sole stockholder of the enterprise. Keenan notes that the Hof office currently represents approximately 6 percent of the non-travel-related revenues. 

Maurizio and his leadership team, which includes Keenan, Jeremy Enck as vice president of sales, and Kathy Paquette as director of human resources, are focused on outpatient-based services as the primary growth area. “We see areas like oncology, emergency medicine, labor and delivery, and burn centers growing in their demand for our services. But the number-one growth area for us is ambulatory-surgery centers,” Maurizio says. (December 2014 figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that of the 34,000 new jobs created in health care that month, 16,000 were in ambulatory settings.) 

“The country has an aging population. Our care facilities need nurses to fill in as needed. They also need executives. This is a very competitive industry, but what’s really interesting is that most of our competition comes from national and international recruiting companies,” he adds.

Maurizio muses on how high-tech the business has become. “I started this business with a rotary telephone and a Rolodex,” he quips. “Today, we supplement the phone with emails and a variety of social media, and the Rolodex has been replaced by sophisticated databases that monitor our various expenses for the traveling nurses such as housing, car rentals, and per-diems, while also helping us to offer 24-hour concierge service.” Dan Hartman, the communications executive with the company, adds that Fortus utilizes Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as channels for communicating with its clients, candidates, and media contacts. “I estimate that I spend a couple of hours each day communicating via social media,” he observes. “We use Facebook and Twitter a lot to reach out to our nurses and to candidates, and the recruiters also leverage LinkedIn … Our blog posts are another way to educate our audience about the industry and the company.”

Maurizio

Maurizio, 57, is a self-described “Southside boy” who attended high school in Utica before matriculating at Paul Smith’s College to major in hospitality. In 1984, he went to work as a salesman for Whitehall Laboratories, a Fortune 100 company. The Southside boy was promoted to division manager before he left to join Baxter International, a global, diversified health-care company that developed, manufactured, and marketed products for chronic and acute conditions, such as kidney disease. In 1988, Maurizio went to work for the Boston office of Carter/MacKay, a company formed in 1970 to place sales, sales-management, and marketing personnel, plus scientific professionals, in the health-care industry. Family reasons brought him back to the Mohawk Valley to start his own firm.

“Placement is a tough business,” declares Maurizio, “because it’s a double sale. First you have to convince doctors, nurses, technicians, and administrators that the companies we represent are the right choice. Then you have to convince your clients that you have the best candidates to fill the open positions. We spent years building our reputation as the number-one nephrology recruiter in the world. Now, we are getting traction with health-care professionals in the ambulatory-surgery specialty. There’s no doubt that we’re on track to see our revenues … [balloon] to the $20 million mark.”

Fortus’s growth has been reflected historically in the numbers posted on the Inc.5000. The company was also recognized last year by BizEventz and The Business Journal as one of the “Best Places to Work” in the 16-county Central New York area. Maurizio was honored recently by The Staffing Industry Review magazine, a publication featuring the 100 most influential people in the staffing industry.

When Maurizio says the company is poised to double its revenues, the only question is: how quickly?