Long Beach Entrepreneur Bob Bond Reflects on His Journey as a Small Business Owner
On April 28th, I had the pleasure of attending the 15th Annual Entrepreneur of the Year Awards sponsored by the Long Beach Chamber. It was a great event, and a great opportunity to reflect on the founding of Bond Consulting Services (BCS) back in April 2000. At the time, my wife Alyssa and I just had our second baby, and we wanted a more flexible schedule to allow time for family and careers. I had 12 years of accounting and business systems experience with a couple very large companies (Deloitte and Fox) and one smaller entrepreneurial company (Pegnato Building System Services). Alyssa is an Attorney, and she also decided to start her own practice in April 2000, which provided lots of flexibility for us, but a lot uncertainty and risk.
The economic climate in 2000 was healthy as we all “survived” the Y2K crisis (that never happened), but we were starting to experience the DotCom burst. BCS’ focus on Great Plains Software implementations and support was well received in the marketplace, as stable integrated business software was finally evolving after the cobbling together of various half-baked solutions in the nineties. Clients appreciated our hands-on collaborative approach to integrating technology, accounting and operations. Microsoft validated our strategic direction by purchasing Great Plains Software in 2001, which began our extensive relationship Microsoft.
Growing the practice has been full of exciting opportunities and challenges. In 2003, we hired our second team member, George Rios, who is still a highly valued member of our BCS team today. George helped us scout out our office location, in which we have expanded office space significantly over the years, but we’re still in the same building. We continued to add team members and solutions to our portfolio, deploying CRM version 3 internally and for our clients in 2007. Things were humming along until mid-2008, when the stock and real estate markets tanked and the Great Recession hit. Fortunately for BCS, we were involved in a few very large projects that continued into 2010, when we were forced to cut back some of our growth.
We started our recovery in 2011 with several new clients that felt it was time to invest in new technology after holding back on new investments for several prior years. In 2012, the U.S. economic recovery was still quite slow, which allowed us to learn and help clients deploy another solution, Dynamics AX. Our focus on these three applications, Microsoft Dynamics GP, AX & CRM, enables us to provide solutions for accounting, distribution, manufacturing, sales, marketing and service operations for both small and mid-market companies. We now have 14 BCS employees and many very active partners that we work closely with to serve our great clients. In fact, our BCS company revenue hit an all-time high in 2015, and we’re on track to keep growing going forward.
I’m proud to say that my entrepreneurial aspirations continue to be realized through BCS. I’m very pleased to have such an amazing team of professionals working for BCS, along with our fantastic partners and clients that help make our business such a success. Everyday, we truly live our BCS mission… “To improve the lives and business success of our clients, team members and partners.” I’m also very happy to say that Alyssa’s law practice is still thriving, our oldest daughter is back east in college, and our second daughter is selecting colleges to begin her career aspirations…the cycle of life continues.
Bob Bond has 20+ years of experience implementing and supporting business systems, primarily Dynamics GP, AX & CRM for manufacturers & distributors. Bob founded Bond Consulting Services (BCS) in 2000 to help mid-market clients leverage Microsoft technology to improve business processes, efficiency & profitability. He is a member of the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP), Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, Long Beach Rotary Club and Provisors.