Minneapolis digital consulting firm has aggressive growth plans, diversity efforts

Chief Executive Jim Kelly and chief integrator Laura Gorman have billion-dollar aspirations for ThreeBridge, a digital firm formed earlier this month after the merger of ThreeBridge Solutions and Keyot.

Whether the Minneapolis firm will get there is still to be determined. Kelly estimates the firm will have $160 million in revenue this year. However, the company has strategic plans in place, including looking at more acquisitions — and also plans to expanding charitable giving and talent development programs.

"ThreeBridge would tend to do more technology-focused work, and Keyot would tend to do more business consulting," Kelly said. "Business and IT have continued to merge and our clients more and more need us to provide end-to-end services from business all the way to technology."

ThreeBridge Solutions was a national information technology consultancy with 12 locations, while Keyot was a boutique business focused on project delivery, workforce transformation and management consulting.

The ThreeBridge merger unites the predecessors' talent development programs, now known as Crew. It trains new college students, particularly women and people of color.

The company's charitable giving program is called Grateful to Give and supports anti-hunger programs for children; science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs for female high-schoolers; and partners with Genesys Works to mentor and train college students from underserved communities.

The company needs to grow in size if it wants to serve larger customers. Serving Fortune 500 companies will require more locations nationally and eventually overseas, Kelly said.

"The reason that we're on a journey to a billion isn't because that's fun," Kelly said. "It's so that we can continue to add value and service our clients more broadly across all their entities."

ThreeBridge currently has about 1,000 consultants working with 150 clients and 100 staff.

Q: How do you get to $1 billion?

Kelly: We tend to grow at 15% a year organically. If we do $50 million to $75 million of acquisitions every year, that gets us to a billion in five to seven years. There is a gap in the consulting market for another firm of that size. There aren't enough of them to service the Fortune 500 today.

Q: What is your business model?

Kelly: We operate on something called convergent consulting. It's three concentric circles. The first is thought leadership. Clients are buying thought leadership and digital transformation. The second circle is talent. We have a very innovative talent engine in Crew that not only helps us build talent but helps our clients grow their future talent base. The third is a flexible engagement model with our clients and our consultants.

Q: Why should consultants work with ThreeBridge?

Kelly: We're trying to build a firm that treats them like the important strategic asset that they are and help them grow their career. If you're a high performer and want to grow your career, we've got all the support you need to do that, including a great client list.

Gorman: The common denominator of everything we do is people. We have a team of people that are coming together to solve big hairy problems for our clients. And our clients are full of people trying to service their customers, who are all people.

Todd Nelson is a freelance writer in Lake Elmo. His e-mail is todd_nelson@mac.com.