A2U: IT Provider Future-Proofs Businesses with Winning Solutions that Disrupt Status Quo, Deliver ROI
A2U: IT Provider Future-Proofs Businesses with Winning Solutions that Disrupt Status Quo, Deliver ROI
Dan Dillman is quick to say that he’s not your typical CEO. He’s an engineer first and a CEO second.
As CEO, he looks at himself more as the chief motivator and evangelist and has always said that he’s never been driven by a fancy title or corner office.
“I never dreamt of being a CEO, I kind of fell into it. I just kept doing what I was passionate about and working hard at it. And, the rest is history,” Dillman said.
Dillman’s interest in IT started back in middle school when his uncle bought him his first computer. He didn’t use it for entertainment or to play video games, but instead would break it and then figure out how to fix it.
After graduating high school, he attended Computer Learning Center and earned an IT and support certificate and began working at FedEx.
It was during his time at FedEx that Dillman really developed a knack for IT, seeing it as more of a long-term career than “just a job.” Following his time at FedEx, Dillman accepted a management position at UPMC and then a few years later, made the jump as a sales engineer to Citrix. Not long after and at the persuasion of industry colleagues and friends, Dillman started Applications2U (now known as A2U).
As A2U continued to grow, what started as a side hustle in 2003 became a full-time job by 2013. The company was originally founded as a cloud hosting business but evolved into a full-service IT consulting shop.
“Our corporate strategy has been to think big but act small. That’s how we’ve come to celebrate 15 years in business, and that’s the winning plan we’ll continue to keep moving forward,” Dillman said.
Dillman’s company has grown rapidly. “In January of 2013, we started the consulting side with three employees,” he said. “Within three years, we were up to 45 employees.” Between 2014 and 2016, the company’s revenue grew by 199 percent.
And while the company started out as a regional player, largely focused on western Pennsylvania with some business in the central part of the state, in the last two years Dillman has expanded the footprint to include six states: Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware, West Virginia and Texas.
But as his company has grown, his role has changed, he said.
“When it was three or seven people, we were all talking to each other all the time, everyone was directly interacting. Everyone got to see me every day,” he said. “Now I have a team of professionals that have the same professional expectations as I have.”
Dillman said he’s always been interested in making processes more efficient – from tinkering with machines as a child to now helping people and companies stay connected in an always-on world.
Leveraging his IT background at UPMC and interest in health care, he has dedicated his life work to transforming the health care experience for patients and health care workers around the country.
“If a physician has 10 minutes with a patient, we don’t want that physician spending a minute of that time waiting for a computer to load,” Dillman said. “And in some cases, IT ROI is measured in lives saved.”
Biobox:
Dan Dillman
CEO, A2U
Career: Senior technical analyst, FedEx; architecture analyst, ACS Affiliated Computer Services; manager, Citrix and remote access, UPMC; sales engineer, Citrix; CEO, A2U
Community involvement: Sponsors Peters Township hockey; Penn Trafford football, wrestling and baseball teams and an adult hockey team at the UPMC Lemieux Complex; volunteers as career day speaker at Trafford Elementary School and Trinity High School; sponsors an 8-year-old child in Haiti through World Vision; volunteer, Cornerstone Ministries; sponsors annual food drives at Thanksgiving and Christmas, The Lighthouse Foundation; organized and coached Make-A-Wish dodgeball team