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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

IT Pioneer

Al Strong, president and founder of information technology placement firm Commercial Programming Services, Inc., started in IT staffing in the early 1960s with the intention of using the company he worked for then as a launch pad into the brave new world of information systems. Although his journey was to be inextricably connected to information technology, while its role in American business evolved across four decades, his career would ultimately be that of an IT staffing entrepreneur, not an IT manager. “The placement company that hired me in 1964 was growing fast, and I was its third or fourth employee,” Strong told the Business Journal during a recent lunchtime interview near CPS, Inc.’s headquarters in Studio City. “I took the job thinking I would see what was out there in IT and if a better job came along, I would take it.” But that’s not what happened. Strong stayed and learned the contract staffing business, as the company he worked for grew to several offices around the country. He became its executive vice president and trained other executives at the firm. But IT was still new, and training was the foundational activity of all things information technology including placement services. Room-sized IBM 1400 series computers were the standard in data technology at the time. Back then, the name of the game was either EAM (electronic accounting machines), or EDP: electronic data processing. “The IBM 360 hadn’t come out yet,” Strong recalled. “And the 1410 had a brain with about 12k of memory.” That’s about the size of a brief word-processing document. “I opened offices, went back to the main office, went back to train back and forth all across the country,” Strong said. “When my son started calling me Daddy Al, I knew it was time to get off the road.” The way to get off the road was to launch his first company in 1968, Career Data Personnel. But CDP turned out to be the beta version of the company he has now owned for more than 30 years. Groundbreaking firm Fast forward to 1978. CPS Inc. was a new company and the first in Southern California to offer the lease-to-hire model, which is now the placement industry’s standard. “A client got to find out if a potential hire was the right fit before they committed to the person,” Strong said. The airline industry was a major focus for CPS in the early days. There was much business to be had as the Sabre Reservations System had for a moment become worth more than all of the airlines combined. Sabre represented most consumers’ first live interaction with a computer system, albeit via a human reservation agent by phone. CPS was a major supplier of technicians who integrated Sabre into corporate operations. “The airlines needed IT people, and we could always find someone to fit their needs,” Strong said. That business and business created by the swell in computerization of information systems at banks and other organizations put CPS onto a fast track to substantial growth. Today, the firm employs 100 people and has revenues of more than $14 million. But things have changed in IT. No longer in its infancy information systems management is just as subject to the flailing of the economy as any other profession nowadays. And, as outsourcing and project-based contracting has overtaken the lease-to-hire paradigm, the IT placement industry has come full circle to where Strong started in 1964. “Most of our business is now contract staffing,” Strong said. “But we still do some lease-to-hire.” Variety of positions IT positions that CPS fills range from help desk technicians to project managers and occasionally even chief information officers. “We’re really in the business of listening to the needs of managers and providing people for application-based projects as opposed to infrastructure,” said CPS’ Chief Operating Officer Jay Blecker. According to Blecker, the fact that CPS is an IT placement firm, and not an executive search agency, yet still does get occasional orders to fill CIO slots is a testament to the company’s decades-long relationships in the information systems community. “Our CIO forums are a good example of the way we work with I.S. executives to make their lives a little easier,” he said. “It’s a noble industry, but one that is always embattled and facing big challenges. Each month CPS hosts breakfast discussion forums inviting expert guests to share new information on topics of interest to CIOs. Regular attendees include CIOs from companies across the region. “We work with UCLA and bring a lot to the table in terms of solutions and dialogue for the CIOs,” Blecker said. “That’s probably why they trust us so much.” But the future for CPS and Al Strong is still being written. Having been in the business for more than 40 years, and having no indication that a familial succession is in the cards, he is still hard at work. “One thing for sure is that there will be greater changes in the IT world and in our business,” he said. “As we have always done, CPS will adapt and blaze our own trail into that future.”

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