Small Business Spotlight: Leveraging Technologies

Technology can be your friend, yes, but technology can also be confusing.

Technology in the workplace can do so much and there’s so much of it available, evolving at warp speed. Sorting it all out can be mind-boggling. That’s where a company like Leveraging Technology comes in.

The High Falls-based firm, essentially, helps business clients get the best bang for their buck when it comes to information technology. Company president Jim Cantin uses words like “architecture” (but not the kind involved in constructing buildings) and “integration.” He’s gotten plenty of vacant stares.

“I tell people, I’ve killed a lot of cocktail parties trying to describe what we do,” Cantin said. “It is a challenge. It’s a lot of engineering, a lot of redesign, the next evolution of IT.”

Describing the work can be difficult. The end result is pretty easy to comprehend — having a computer system that best suits the needs of your business.

Wayne VanNewkirk, Leveraging’s director of sales, calls the effort “thought leadership” and talks about challenging the status quo. He mentions the “API economy,” short for Application Programming Interface, and talks about startups like Uber and how that business philosophy has stirred up the marketplace.

“There’s a lot of disruption going on by small entrepreneurs,” VanNewkirk said. “Companies are looking at new ways to bring new technology to bear to grab millennials. Companies are trying to figure out new strategies for new business channels.”

That’s how Leveraging Technologies can help. Cantin and VanNewkirk are two of four former Kodak employees who started Leveraging Technologies back in 1998. Cantin, who worked in the office imaging division, said switching to a startup was no big deal.

“You would think it would be frightening, but taking things into your own hands is less frightening than leaving them in others’ hands,” he said. “With the team we had, I knew we were not going to fail.”

The business started in loft offices above the Fairport library. Within three years, Leveraging Technology moved to the old Button Factory building on State Street across from Frontier Field. The business has been just around the corner, at 4 Commercial St. in High Falls, for the past 10 years.

The main customers are big companies like regional banks, health-care payers, manufacturers and even retail grocery. The health care connection is Leveraging’s strongest, and Cantin said one client is the largest Medicaid processor in the country. Another is a large electronics distributor.

All of those companies had technological gaps that needed to be addressed, and Leveraging Technology did the work, Cantin said.

“In the conceptual world, data and processing, things like that that are invisible, are what drive companies,” he said. “We look at what is strategic, and what is the appropriate design to meet the strategy.”

Leveraging Technology has developed something called Aware Solutions that runs in the cloud communications network. “All the data is fed there for analysis purposes,” Cantin said. “Our focus lately has been to build upon what we know in integration and build upon analytics. We know how to move data around in real time and we’re doing the same with analytics.”

It might be difficult to understand or describe what Leveraging Technologies does. But customers appreciate the end result.

Alan Morrell is a Rochester-based freelance writer

Leveraging Technology

Founded: 1998.

Location: 4 Commercial St., Rochester.

Executives: Jim Cantin, president; Wayne VanNewkirk, director of sales; Mike Cardillo, executive director of Enterprise Architecture; John Sack, executive director.

Employees: 25.

Website:www.leveraging.com.