Nexigen assists Tristate companies with a full spectrum of IT services.
For years, the IT industry has had its own language and parlance. Engineers, coders, technicians and even customer service personnel often spoke in terms that were not easily understood by the business community in general.
But there’s a Cincinnati-area company headquartered just across the river in Newport that has changed all that. Basing its growth on clear communications to build a level of trust with its many clients, Nexigen is a company that offers a full spectrum of IT services.
“We are able to offer full-stack IT management for many organizations acting as their in-house IT department that is down the street rather than down the hallway, or we will take on a single project that meets a company’s specific IT needs or to fill a skillset that they don’t have in-house,” says Chris West, director of sales and marketing for the firm.
Clear communications, says West, are the best way to mitigate IT challenges in either circumstance.
“So when we recruit new engineers, service desk personnel or even new administration hires, we are looking for folks who are people bent,” says West. “They don’t mind having a conversation about technology, but do so in terms that are understandable and actionable by nontechnical people.”
It’s been a successful formula for this company, which has grown between 15 and 20% per year. And much of that growth has come through referral.
“Our referral network is made up of businesses that have either worked with us directly or from companies who might have heard about us from their own customers,” says West.
Which is unusual in this day and age.
One of the greatest interests across the IT industry today is anything related to a new standard called CMMC, which stands for the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification. This new standard reviews and combines various cyber security standards and best practices and maps these controls and processes across several maturity levels that range from basic cyber hygiene to advanced. When implemented, the standard reduces risk against a specific set of cyber threats.
“Like most companies at this time, we are in the process of becoming CMMC compliant, but we also provide CMMC compliant consulting,” says West. “We are not an auditing firm, but if there is an organization that needs help achieving and maintaining CMMC compliance, we can help them get prepared for that audit.”
Naturally, with the onset of COVID, the corporate shift toward working from home has offered up its own challenges as well. Many organizations were used to having people work from home occasionally but shifting to an entire staff working from home is different.
“Historically, you would secure your site, your data center, co-locations and things like that, which was very static,” says West. “But when you make the complete transition to work from home, it becomes very dynamic. Now you have to manage endpoints from computers or mobile devices that might be in someone’s home, or could really be anywhere. You have a highly variable degree of performance or visibility.”
Nexigen was able to adapt to its clients’ home model easier because it has a lot of experience with smaller startup companies in the Greater Cincinnati area, where working from home is a normal part of the process. But in addition to the work at home shift over the past year, Nexigen is also seeing challenges from supply chain disruptions across the multiple industries serviced by the company.
“We are pretty comprehensive when it comes to industry experience, and there are not any specific verticals that we exclude,” says West. “But we are very strong in financial, health care and construction, especially commercial construction.”
All considered to be bellwether industries in the Greater Cincinnati area. And this is one company that is proud to call Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky home.
“We are very proud to be a part of Cincinnati community and are all Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky born and raised,” says West. “We take that a step further by participating in a number of philanthropic efforts, especially when it comes to education.
“We want people to understand what tech means, what its caveats and benefits are.”
Especially in a market as diverse and dynamic as Greater Cincinnati.
