The CPI Group, Inc. Recognized Among State's Leading Companies

The CPI Group, Inc. identified as one of Mississippi's fastest growing companies.

Columbus, MS, October 19, 2001: Columbus based company, The CPI Group, Inc. was recognized in Jackson on Wednesday of this week as one of the 40 fastest growing businesses in Mississippi.  Mississippi's Fast 40 program recognizes the states fastest-growing privately-held companies and showcases a diversity of dynamic growth.

The program is a partnership of an accounting firm - KPMG LLP; an advertising agency - The GodwinGroup; a law firm - Brunini, Grantham, Grower & Hewes, PLLC, and the MBJ, Mississippi's only statewide business weekly.

The process worked like this: KPMG received nomination information and financial data from companies around the state. That information was analyzed and revenue information verified by the accounting firm personnel and the staff of the Brunini law firm.

The top 40 companies were ranked based on revenue from 1998, 1999 and 2000. The GodwinGroup produced an award video featuring the winning companies, which reflects the companies' operations and the impact these companies are having on the Mississippi economy.

Eligible companies had to be:
* independent and privately-held;
* have revenue of at least $1 million in 2000 and have three complete years of operations;
* have its home office and principal place of business in Mississippi.

This year's Fast 40 recipients were honored at an Oct. 18th luncheon at the Jackson Country Club.

Columbus Personnel Inc. opened in 1983 to provide all levels of staffing, including temporary, permanent and leased; in 1998 SmithAvery and Associates, LLC was formed to enhance the work of Columbus Personnel Inc.

Today, Columbus Personnel and SmithAvery and Associates make up The CPI Group, a full-spectrum "human capital management" company.

"We provide every single aspect of staffing," said Mark A. Smith, founder of CPI Group. "Human resource management, personnel, training, anything related to personnel issues, we can provide a solution. Additionally, we have a transportation company that is mainly on charter-type work."

That transportation company is known as Southern Charters Inc. and was founded in 2000. But the main work of CPI Group is "human capital management," as Smith puts it.

"It's a new term," Smith said of "human capital management." "Industries are headed with regard to personnel management."

When Columbus Personnel Inc. opened for business, it was just an employment agency. But change was necessary, Smith explained.

"We changed because our foresight led us to believe the clients were going to need more in the future," he said. "With the litigious environment we live in now, there is more red tape and more complicated issues - more programs were going to be needed in staffing to meet people's needs."

And considering the fact that every business is different, as the development of CPI Group was underway, it moved into many different areas of the human resources spectrum until finally it covered the entire gamut of the profession.

CPI Group has become successful because of several reasons, Smith said.

"We focus on building relationships for our clients," he said. "It has to be a win-win situation. Secondly would be the level of quality and professionalism. We absolutely tear our hair out in trying to be perfect. And third would be the fact that we can offer a solution for any type of personnel issue for our clients."

Additionally, CPI Group recently purchased human resource/candidate

tracking software - something Smith believes will make his company even more efficient in its efforts of achieving quality and, ultimately, success.

"We're in the process of implementing it into our system," Smith said of the software. "We should be through by Dec. 1.',

The fact that CPI Group is goal oriented also sets the company apart from others like it, Smith said.

"If you fail to plan, you plan to fail and that's what we think," he said. "There's a road map for everything we're doing. The fact that we are very goal oriented and we set goals and we plan out how we are doing what we do has helped us become successful."

That, Smith said, is the same way with any company's success story though.

"Every once in a while you're going to have to pull off the road and rethink things," Smith said. "But if you don't, you don't grow, and if you don't grow, you die."

Yet another thing that Smith believes has lent to the success of his business is his staff.

"Our staff is incredible," he said. "You're only as good as your people. That's the greatest asset." In the future, Smith plans to expand CPI Group into other markets and he is taking a regional approach to doing so. But, he maintains he is in no hurry.

"If you grow too fast, you stop keeping the main thing the main thing," he said. "We want to make sure that we grow in the right fashion. We're just waiting for the economy to pick up."

Smith credits much of the accomplishments of his business to the fact that he runs a "very strong, Christian-based company."

"We all think we're really responsible for what we do, but it's all His;

we're just borrowing that," Smith said.