From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia CDI Corporation
CDI Corporation
CDI Corporation CDI Corporation supplies engineering, information tech-
nology and staffing services to customers in the United
States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The company
has four divisions, Anders, Engineering Services, Infor-
mation Technology Services and Management Recruiters
International.
Type Public
Traded as NYSE: CDI
History
Industry Engineering, Information Technology,
Staffing
Beginnings
After World War II, the growing importance of technolo-
Founded 1950 gy and the rush to be first to market made it necessary to
Founder(s) Walter R. Garrison, Founder, Chairman of have a larger number of engineers with increasingly di-
the Board, Chairman of Governance & verse backgrounds working with the company. Because
Nominating Committee and Member of this had to be done without dramatically increasing over-
Executive Committee
head costs, employers were required to minimize the
Headquarters Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States number of direct employees receiving benefit packages
from their respective companies. It was for this reason
Key people Paulett Eberhart, CEO, President and
Director;
that CDI Corporation, originally known as Comprehen-
sive Designers, Inc. was founded in 1950. The company
Mark A. Kerschner, CFO; was put in place to hire additional engineers on a tempo-
rary basis with reduced benefits, and was one of the first
Andrew D. Cvitanov, President of CDI IT companies to offer temporary services to manufacturing
Solutions;
companies.
Robert Giorgio, President of CDI Though CDI had great potential due to the booming
Engineering Solutions; automotive sector and defense activity related to the
Cold War, the company grew slowly during its first
Robert Romaine Rob, President of decade in operation. In 1956, CDI hired Walter R. Garri-
Management Recruiters International, Inc.
(MRI); son, a 30 year old aspiring aeronautics engineer from The
University of Kansas who helped the company grow. Gar-
Mark Balawejder, Senior Vice President of rison joined the company as a chief engineer that year
Solutions Delivery - CDI IT Solutions; and was promoted to Vice President and Director two
years later.
Joseph R. Seiders, Chief Legal Officer, Chief
Compliance Officer, Senior Vice President
and Secretary; Purchase of CDI Corporation
By 1961, Garrison and his family owned almost 45% of CDI
Brian D. Short, Chief Administrative
Officer, Senior Vice President and General
Corporation. He and two colleagues bought out the re-
Counsel; mainder of CDI’s shares of stock and set about to revive
the fledgling company. With the Vietnam War and its
Steven Levenkron, Chief Information subsequent arms race abounding, U.S. defense spending
Officer and Senior Vice President was set to reach record levels. With such sophisticated
Services Engineering, Information Technology, advances in technology to come, it followed naturally
Outsourcing, Staffing that technical services such as those provided by CDI
would be needed in the near term. It was for this reason
Revenue $0.93B(USD) in 2010
that Garrison started business and recruiting offices na-
Employees 10,000 (at end of 2010) tionally in order to adequately perform all of the services
Divisions 4 that would be needed. Sales by the technical services in-
dustry were estimated at $500 million USD, with CDI Cor-
Website www.cdicorp.com poration being ranked in the top two with annual rev-
1
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia CDI Corporation
enues of $40 million USD. Eighty percent of these earnin- temporary services market involving clerical and entry-
gs were related to military expenditures. level workers. Adding offices as quickly as possible, the
In 1967, company sales doubled when the company new division quickly went into the red, characterized as
won a bid to work on the Lockheed C-5A aircraft. This a reality of such expedient growth.
contract ended in 1968, and the company’s defense con- In the late 1980s however, CDI’s Temporary Services
tracts fell at the end of the Vietnam War in the early division strived for 500 offices. In 1989, this division
1970s. The company was able to weather the storm, how- reached 145 offices and $111 million in revenue without
ever, as such customers only comprised 33% of company making any profit. Though 45 of their worst performing
sales. The remainder of their business was provided by offices were eliminated, the division was still unprof-
over 100 manufacturing firms in Europe, the Middle East itable. Nevertheless, Garrison decided to acquire Todays
and the United States. At that time, CDI had 3000 tempo- Temporary of Dallas, Texas for an undisclosed amount of
rary workers at any given point who could be shifted be- money.[1]
tween several different cities to serve the needs of any
given contract.
Divisions
Establishment of in-house engineering
Engineering Solutions
facilities
Engineering Services provides design, facility layout, out-
In the early 1970s, in order to speed project completion, sourcing, logistics, project management, staffing solu-
CDI established engineering facilities, within which out- tions and systems development to alternative energy,
sourced projects could be worked from start to finish on biopharmaceutical, chemicals, commercial aerospace,
company premises by employees of CDI prior to delivery defense industry, energy transmission, gas, heavy manu-
to the customer. This project philosophy was more pro- facturing, marine, military aerospace, nuclear, oil, phar-
ductive than sending workers to a client’s location who maceutical, power generation, regulated medical ser-
may have little familiarity with the project. This business vices and refining organizations.[2] CDI acquired the
model continued to expand to the point where close to computer and technical services divisions of United Engi-
40% of CDI Corporation’s work was performed within its neers Inc. in 1993.[3]
own walls.
IT Solutions
Purchase of Management Recruiters In-
CDI IT Solutions provides information technology ser-
ternational vices such as direct placement of business consulting,
In 1972, the company purchased Management Recruiters employees, outsourcing and staffing augmentation.
International (MRI) for $1.3 million. Though the compa-
ny was fledgling at the time of purchase, once it was Management Recruiters International
acquired, offices began appearing all over the United Management Recruiters International is a franchisor that
States, most of them being franchises. Recruiting was provides support services and training to franchisees
CDI’s top segment in terms of profit rates, focusing on that perform recruiting of executive, professional, super-
middle management (supervisors earning between $25 visory and technical candidates.[2]
000-125 000 United States Dollars), the most prominent
segment of administration, many of whom were expect- AndersElite
ed to make several career changes prior to settling on
CDI AndersElite provides temporary and direct hire em-
a longer term employer. Since this acquisition occurred
ployees working in architecture, construction and other
during the baby-boom generation, there were likely to
related fields.
be a multitude of qualified managers to fill the company
ranks. MRI was never more than a fraction of CDI’s over-
all revenue, but the division provided as much as a third References
of the company’s operating income.
[1] "CDI Corporation" FundingUniverse LLC
[2] ^ "CDI Corp" Bloomberg Businessweek
Entry into the traditional temporary [3] Christopher Geehern. "Philadelphia company buys
services market UE units", Union-News (Springfield, Massachusetts),
During the recessions of 1974-1975 and 1982-1983, CDI March 6, 1993, Business section, page 14.
learned that the technical services business was highly
vulnerable to recession. At other times, the profit mar-
gins were quite slim, sometimes as low as 2.5%. For this
External links
reason, Garrison decided in 1982 to enter the traditional • Official website
2
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia CDI Corporation
• http://www.cdicorp.info • AndersElite http://www.anderselite.com
• CDI IT Solutions http://www.cdi-its.com
• MRINetwork http://www.mrinetwork.com/
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=CDI_Corporation&oldid=442684264"
Categories:
• Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange
• Engineering companies of the United States
• Companies based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Companies established in 1950
• Company stubs
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