My Benesch My Team Campaign - Park Place Technologies

Established in 1991 as a computer hardware reseller, Park Place Technologies has evolved to become a premier provider of data center hardware maintenance. It serves customers ranging from middle-market companies to some of the world’s largest and best-known entities, operating from more than 40 service locations in the Americas, Europe and Asia. It’s “Service First” philosophy has resulted in a 98 percent satisfaction rate from its customers.

Below is a testimonial from Ed Kenty, President & CEO, Park Place Technologies.

Tell me about how Park Place Technologies has grown.
We were once a much smaller service company focused primarily in North America, but we’ve landed so many high-profile global accounts in the U.S. that it’s taken us abroad. We’re in just about every market overseas now. Our growth has been steadily 24 to 28 percent a year for the last six years, so it’s been pretty impressive.

Along the way, and where Benesch became so instrumental, we actually had two businesses under one umbrella. We felt like it was confusing for people from a branding and name recognition perspective, so in 2009, we decided to split the two apart. We really saw the value in Benesch when we did the split. There are a lot of legalities and liability ramifications when you split companies, and Benesch walked us through that process nicely. As of January 1, 2010, we are now officially two legal entities, due in large part to Benesch and the help and guidance they provided us. Park Place Technologies has about 270 employees, and our sister company, Park Place International, focuses on technology for the healthcare market and has about 110 to 120 employees.

How long has Benesch been part of your team?
We’ve been working with Benesch for six or seven years. As we grew, like a lot of companies, we outgrew our local law firm. It was fine the first few years I was here, but the larger you get, the more complex the matters become. And the more global you become, the more legal ramifications of doing business offshore. It’s been very helpful that Benesch has such breadth of expertise regionally, nationally and internationally. When we first began, we were pretty much just doing contracts— that was the extent of our interaction with our previous law firm, and even initially when we worked with Benesch, because that’s basically the essence of what we do. But even the contracts became more complex as we grew. We got into employment law and international law and things we hadn’t experienced in the past. Benesch helped navigate those waters for us. If I had to summarize the relationship, I’d say they have somebody who meets every single business need we have. Anything we’ve come across— and we’ve come across, to us, many new and challenging situations—Benesch has been able to handle.

Do you work with anyone in particular at Benesch?
Ira Kaplan is our go-to person. He helped us on a major transaction recently in November 2012 where we brought in a private equity partner that basically bought the controlling interest in the company. Benesch really showed their strength in getting us through that transaction. We also work with Mike Buck, because the larger we get, the more complicated employee issues become, and he’s been good with that. We work with Rick Tracanna on tax issues and audit/accounting things.

So tell me about your clients? Are they primarily large companies?
We pitch ourselves as a middle market solution provider, but we’ve really gone upstream. The larger you get, the more notoriety and better branded you become and the more appealing what we do becomes to larger entities. We have service contracts with many very large companies: ExxonMobil, AOL-Time Warner, TNT, Verizon. But again, through all the growth we’ve experienced. Benesch has helped us better prepare for the challenges we’ve had to meet over the past 3–4 years. For example, we had Mike Buck here doing a management training seminar. We have some new managers, their organizations are growing, and they’re running into situations around employment law that they haven’t seen before. Mike was very preemptive in that he came in and put together a good class for those folks that got very high marks.

What makes Benesch work for you?
I recently completed a client satisfaction survey meeting with Benesch, and I told them that this is the happiest I’ve been with any legal partner we’ve had. I feel like I know these people well enough to go directly to the person I need in a particular situation. I don’t have to go to Ira [Kaplan] to get somebody to call me back. Everyone is very responsive, so if any of my people call a specific lawyer at the firm, they get right back to us.

As I mentioned at that meeting, and I would say the same to you, I’ve been here over nine years now, running this company. I’ve gone through a lot, and this is the most comfortable I’ve felt with a law firm that supports this business.