Joel Russell, founder and CEO of tech solutions company eimagine, didn’t initially expect to stay in Indianapolis for long. After graduating from Stanford University, he followed his wife here as she completed dental and orthodontics school and they both chose to build their businesses and life together in Indy.

Joel Russell

Joel RussellFounder and CEO

Starting in 1998, early successes with state and federal clients helped founder Russell build up a loyal group of employees and clients, both of which include people who remain part of the team and clients today. “In the technology space, maintaining good working relationships for 15+ years with employees and customers alike is pretty rare these days,” Russell said.

After years of information technology staffing and a brief stint with a branded software platform that ultimately failed, eimagine shifted its experience and focus in 2010 to business management and technology consulting, or “project work,” and the company’s growth has remained steady.

Today, with 40+ employees, a customizable mobile enterprise app (Chava), and a reputation as a go-to firm for complex tech projects and integrations, eimagine has relaunched its brand with a new look and the company is looking to have more of an impact locally.

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“As is often the case with technology, we can do what we do anywhere in the world and many of our clients have been out-of-state and at the state and federal government level,” Russell said. “As a company based in Indianapolis, we’ve always been involved in the local community, but now we’re just being more intentional about wanting to tell our story and work with more local commercial customers as a way of helping Indy move forward.”

eimagine’s ideal client spends up to $500,000 a year on technology such as Microsoft SharePoint, Dynamics CRM, and Salesforce integrations to name a few, which isn’t a small amount. According to Russell, the Indianapolis market has a fair amount of competition at the high end and low end of the market, but fewer firms competing in eimagine’s sweet spot, which typically deploys four- to seven-person teams including a project manager, business analyst, software architect and software developer.

“At first blush, business management and technology consulting can sound boring or benign, but in the end we enable our clients to do what they do better faster and at a lower cost,” Russell said. “That’s why we focus on hiring and keeping the best of the best technologists. Our clients have a lot at stake keeping people healthy, keeping them safe, and doing other remarkable things that we help them achieve through technology.”

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eimagine team members having some fun with a silly pose at the Best Places to Work in Indiana awards ceremony earlier this year.

The company prides itself on being experts in resource management helping clients make the most of their assets. Russell calls it “supercharging” their people, financials, and equipment. Here are some examples of projects eimagine has worked on with other Indianapolis-based companies:

CLIENT A

A large cancer foundation still tracked all patient information — documents, appointments, medication, test results, insurance information, etc. — in a physical binder, which made it difficult for parents to be involved in the process. eimagine created a mobile app that allows families to keep test results, medications, expenses, insurance information, and important contact information all at their fingertips.

CLIENT B

A large automotive part manufacturer struggled with users on the factory floor having recent and up-to-date copies of specifications and sharing of documents was a very manual and cumbersome process. This was of particular impact during the audit process as documentation retention is required to adhere to explicit specifications.

eimagine worked with the manufacturer and leveraged SharePoint to develop a customized document control system. This system allows for custom workflows for routing of document and approvals. Adherence to ISA TS specs is also built into this system in order to allow for better and more consistent audits. This allows people on the factory floors to not only have access to the most recent and up-to-date specifications required to perform their duties effectively to and to spec, but has streamlined the process for sharing documents that require changes.

CLIENT C

A large promotional products company expanded and their team began to be overloaded with day-to-day shipping needs. Not only shipments to clients, but incoming and outbound shipments to and from vendors were causing their team to spend entire days managing communication, coordination of shipment tracking, and management of inventory.

eimagine worked with the company and their shipping vendors to create a shipping integration service that not only pulls shipping information (tracking, box numbers, locations, etc.) but have automated this process in such a way that this process has significantly decreased to 1-2 hours at most spent managing shipments. This has allowed the promotional products company’s team the necessary relief to be able to focus on the growth of their business.

While eimagine does still do some IT staffing and some custom software development, the company is mostly focused on project work and platform integrations.

With Salesforce now having such a major presence in Indianapolis and many of its clients using the platform, eimagine has a number of Salesforce Certified employees and the company itself is Salesforce Certified.

“We often get called in on projects because people have spent a great deal of money on a platform that isn’t working for them or it’s not delivering the results they expected,” Russell said. “That’s one of our specialties, our niches – we know how to structure and integrate their systems, regardless of the technologies, so that they get more than they expected out of the money they already spent.”

eimagine is currently hiring in a variety of positions, several of which are listed on the TechPoint Job Board.