EDCO adds 100 jobs with IMS acquisition

File this one under A for ac-quisition strategy.

EDCO-The Document People will add 100 jobs in Springfield as a result of its acquisition of Information Management Sys-tems Ltd., a 25-year-old At-lanta-based company specializing in hospital medical record conversion and storage.

The deal, which closed Jan. 10 in Atlanta, is the first step in EDCO's planned acquisition strategy.

"We've been on our own hunt, so to speak," said EDCO President Dona Elkins. "We've been researching the industry and making contacts and developing opportunities, and (IMS was) a good fit."

Elkins was aided in the acquisition by Jim Lewis, of Oak Tree Resources in Spokane, Wash., a merger and acquisition adviser to the information and document management industry.

The IMS purchase increases EDCO's market share and revenues and will enable econ-omies of scale. Adding IMS's volume will enhance EDCO's ability to provide both film-based solutions and CD-ROM imaging alternatives.

"We expect our large processing capabilities to improve the IMS turnaround time. In addition, we offer ideas that will im-prove the process and cost-effectiveness of document conversion for these new custo-mers," Elkins said.

"We are all very excited with the synergy that has been created," said IMS President Bob Godelski in an EDCO press re-lease. "We're combining large pools of talent, expertise and over 60 years of experience. Coupled with the technologies that EDCO offers, our clients will benefit immediately and for years to come."

In coming months, all of IMS's document conversion work will be moved from Atlanta to EDCO's 53,000-square-foot DocuCenter at 1351 N. Belcrest in Springfield. In addition, EDCO operates more than 75,000 square feet of storage and retrieval facilities.

While some IMS sales staff stayed on under EDCO "We have salespeople who will continue to live and work out of the southeastern United States," Elkins said the 100 new jobs in Springfield will be mainly for document conversion specialists.

"They will take documents understand primarily hospital records and be able to either film or scan them," Elkins said.

Hiring has already begun, and "we would like to have the additional em-ployees in place by the middle of April," Elkins said.

The company is well-prepared for its expansion.

"We have the physical plant to accommodate the capacity. Our processes and our systems which we've really developed over the last six to eight years are in place, and that's an opportunity to really bring more work in here to utilize that development," Elkins said.

"EDCO has a strong base and we will be looking for, or we're looking at, other companies similar to this as well companies in other industries that will complement what we do."

Acquisition candidates would be companies that "deal with document management, some would be the actual handling of documents, conversion of documents; other activities would be in the area of electronic document management," Elkins said.