Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

Hey everyone! We hope you’ve been having a great week. In today’s Just another Friday at ABG Capital, we’d like to spend some time with a few of our most recent hires. We asked them a few questions just so we had the chance to check in with them since they’ve been here a few months now. Justin Sparks and Rhonda Taylor-Boles were kind enough to take few minutes out of their busy days to answer these questions. Here’s what they had to say:

Justin Sparks – GlobalPOPs Technical Services Representative

Q. What has been your favorite thing about working at ABG?
A. Before working for this company, I have had very few former coworkers I would have spent my free time with. However, the people here are more than coworkers, they are friends.

Q. What has been your favorite thing about your position at ABG?
A. Solving complex problems. I am challenged each day when I come in, and it keeps things from getting stale.

Q. What has been your proudest moment?
A. When I started, I was originally hired for EUS. After only 4 days, I was moved to Global Pops.

Q. What has surprised you the most about working at ABG?
A. Three words: Scotch Cart Friday.

_______________________________________________________________________

Rhonda Taylor-Boles – Inspira Customer Service Representative

Q. What has been your favorite thing about working at ABG?
A. I think my favorite thing about working for ABG is being able to form ideas, solve problems, and the complete openness and honesty of not only Inspira, but the whole company.

Q. What has been your favorite thing about your position at ABG?
A. Getting to speak my favorite language every day, and being able to be my whacky self with no judgment.

Q. What has been your proudest moment?
A. Every day I get something accomplished is a proud moment. I think translating the forms that go out to people every day and having a banker tell me that they were well done and informative. That was a proud moment for me. Translating into another language is tricky and time-consuming. Hearing that someone who was not familiar with Inspira, or me take notice of the work I did was a proud moment.

Q. What has surprised you the most about working at ABG?
A. Well, I think that everyone here is on the same page to make the company a better, and thrive more every day. You don’t see that much anymore. Everyone has the same goal.

Thanks for stopping by for another rendition of Just another Friday at ABG Capital!

We Launched The New ABG Capital Website!

Posted on May 12, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

Our Marketing Communications team has been working on creating a new ABG Capital website for weeks and it has finally been launched for the public to view. Keeping a fresh looking website is important to us and we have put a large amount of time and effort into the new site.

The overall look and feel to the website took the most time because we wanted something that was welcoming and professional at the same time. We also wanted to incorporate a borderless look so the site feels much more open. We wanted visitors to look at the new ABG Capital site and not feel like they were visiting some faceless organization.

“Our website is an extension of our people and our culture and it should be representative of that,” said Jeff Tapolci, CEO of ABG Capital. “We have such a unique atmosphere at ABG Capital and we want people to feel as welcomed while they cruise our website as they do when they walk through our office.”

We are a very family oriented organization here at ABG Capital and we really wanted that to show through with our new website design. As you can tell from looking at the new site, the tone of the content and the images take on the same feel as our culture. Part of the design plan was to reduce the amount of content on the site so that the remaining content would contain the most meaningful information. We wanted to focus more on images than text because after all, a picture is worth a thousand words!

The most successful part of our new ABG Capital website is the inclusion of all of our employee pictures. We highlighted all ABG Capital employees as well as all employees working for our four portfolio companies.

Please take a few minutes to explore the new site and let us know what you think by leaving us a comment in the comment section below!

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on May 9, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

Welcome back to your weekly Just another Friday at ABG Capital blog post! The biggest news that we have to share with you today is that a few members of our executive team will be out of the office all next week at the Fortune Leadership Summit in Orlando, Florida. There are two Gazelles Summits a year, one featuring individual growth and the other featuring company growth. During this Summit, they’ll hear from speakers like Verne Harnish, Pat Williams and Bill Treasurer. We’re sure they’ll come back to the office with all kinds of great information that will help ABG Capital grow even more as a company.

At the end of May we’ll be going to the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies to help them get ready for their Memorial Day ceremonies by cleaning headstones. We’ve been volunteering here for a few years now and it’s always such a rewarding experience. Below is a picture from when we went last year.

We shared this very interesting article on our social media sites this week called, This Company’s Secret Hiring Weapon? Ping Pong. Since we just got a ping pong table a few weeks ago, this article really resonated with us. The theory behind using ping pong as a hiring tool is that you can use it to gauge whether or not the candidate is the right fit for your company. They could have been the most impressive person you interviewed, but how do you act when they lose a game? How do they act when they win? Is this really the person you want your team working everyday? The way a person acts during a game of ping pong (or any other game for that matter) is a great tool for seeing how they’ll behave in the workplace. Check out the article and let us know what you think about this by leaving us a message in the comment section below.

We’re glad you had the chance to stop by and read our Just another Friday at ABG Capital blog post. We hope you all have a fantastic weekend!

Just another Friday at ABG Capital

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

It’s finally May and that means summer is right around the corner! In celebration of starting a new month, we’d like to mention the ABG Capital Birthdays and Anniversaries for May:

Birthdays
- Sally Stewart May 11^th
- Sara Warhold May 12^th
Anniversaries
- Jason Tapolci May 26^th 16 years

As you know, we’ve been doing some massive art projects throughout the office. Well, this week we made another huge addition to the ABG Capital Office. That addition was a giant collage that includes everyone in the office. This was one project that we’ve been most excited about and we’re thrilled that it came out as perfect and we hoped. Check out the time-lapse video below to see it being installed.

While we were celebrating the new collage, we had a visit from our property managers who haven’t seen the office since we started the build out a year ago. We have made some pretty drastic changes since then and they loved everything that we’ve done. They even brought a great bottle of Scotch as a gift (which we opened for an impromptu Scotch Friday). We’re very proud of the office we have now and we’re glad they love it as much as we do.

Shannon Hogan, the newest addition to the Inspira Call Center, got to celebrate making it to her 30 day mark by going to the Rivers Club for lunch. Jeff and Jason Tapolci make it a point to take new employees out to lunch and get to know them. See how great they looked in the picture below!

Thanks for checking in with ABG Capital this week! We hope everyone has a great weekend. 🙂

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

Welcome back to this week’s Just another Friday at ABG Capital! Today we want to share some things that were announced in our month end company meeting. But first, we want to once again give a huge thank you to Sara Warhold, our Office Administrator, since Wednesday was Administrative Assistant Day! Sara is a fantastic employee and makes our office run smoothly. Thank you for all that you do for us, Sara! If you missed this holiday and didn’t get to thank your Administrative Assistant, then stop what you’re doing and go thank them right now! We all know that they are one of The Most Important Assets You Have!

As for our Month End Meeting Announcements, we’d like to congratulate the following people on their dedication and passion for their jobs and for ABG Capital.

Joe Aponick and Sharon Kolesar!

March Employee of the Month – Joe Aponick
April Spotlight of the Month – Denise Breide
March Honorable Mention – The VoIP Innovations Team

Also in today’s meeting we had to congratulate our Lead Systems Engineer, Tim Linn, on qualifying to be a member of Mensa! In January he took their “at home” practice test and scored pretty well. After reviewing his score, Mensa suggested that he should take the actual admissions exam to see whether or not he is eligible for membership. In mid-March he took the test and was notified that his score qualified him to become an official Mensa member. This is a fantastic achievement and we’re happy to spread the great news about one of our ABG Capital employees! Congrats, Tim!

We also want to take a minute to recognize and share the message of another employee. Jessica Young is planning to participate in the MS-150 Bike Ride in June to raise money for the Multiple Sclerosis Society. The route is a 150 mile trip from Pittsburgh to Lake Erie and she is hoping to raise $500 for the National MS Society through generous contributions from friends and family. If you’d like to help Jessica reach her goal, then please visit the National MS Society, Western Pennsylvania Chapter website and make a donation!

Since ABG Capital has been rapidly growing, we need to be on top of the rules and regulations for employers and employees. We just recently exceeded 50 employees and one of the new things we need to get familiar with is the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). A few members of our executive team attended an all-day training workshop yesterday to learn the ins and outs of FMLA so we can be the best resource for our employees if they have questions about it.

That wraps up this week’s Just another Friday at ABG Capita! We’re glad you got to stop by and read about the great things happening in our office. Make sure to check back next week for another great post.

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

We should have really changed the name to Just another Thursday at ABG Capital for this week’s post! Since tomorrow is Good Friday, we realized that there are going to be numerous people out of the office, so they might miss this post. We don’t want anyone to miss this, so that’s why we decided to post it today.

As we mentioned in last week’s Just another Friday at ABG Capital post, we have a few job openings that we’re still recruiting for. If you or someone you know is interested in working with us, please send your resume and cover letter to sharonk@abgcapital.com. The positions we have open right now are:

Technical Service Representatives
Customer Service Representatives
Web Developers (please know that we’re looking for experienced candidates for this position)

In other exciting office news, WE GOT A PING PONG TABLE! The idea of getting another game for the office has been bouncing around for months. It’s gone from air hockey to foosball but we finally decided on Ping Pong. All in all, we say it’s a pretty awesome choice! Check out these pictures of the table in action!

The last piece of ABG Capital news we want to share is that part of our team spent all last week at a VMware Boot Camp. Members of our IT, Engineering and Development teams attended the 10 hour-a-day sessions to learn exactly how our VMware software works. We place a high value on training and development so losing these employees for a week was something that had to happen. Understanding how to properly work with the VMware software is what will bring ABG Capital and its Portfolio Companies to the next level. In June we’ll have a second group of employees attend this Boot Camp, which means we’re going to have an office full of VMware experts!

We’re glad you made it to the Just another Friday (Thursday) at ABG Capital. We hope you have a fantastic weekend and a very happy Easter!

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on April 11, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

Welcome back to another great Just another Friday at ABG Capital. This week we got a few more pieces of artwork added to our office. There are only a few more projects left to complete before the office is finished. Here are some of the projects we have coming up next: a giant collage of employee pictures, a Make-A-Wish wall (to remind everyone in the office that this is a cause that is near and dear to our hearts) and a sports wall to represent the four major sporting activities we have each year (Bowling, Kickball, Softball, Football). Below are some pictures of the new things we added to our office walls. We also want to mention that Sir Speedy has been printing and installing all of this artwork. They have been fantastic to work with and have done a great job with everything. Thank you to everyone at Sir Speedy!

Yesterday two of our employees went out with Jeff and Jason Tapolci for their Lunch with Leadership. Chris Wallet and Jenn Williams have been with us for more than 30 days (which is usually when we have our Lunch with Leaderships), but they were just recently able to go. Both Chris and Jenn are working for Inspira and we’re happy to have them as part of the ABG Capital family!

Jeff Tapolci, Chris Wallet, Jenn Williams, Jason Tapolci

As we mentioned in last week’s Just another Friday at ABG Capital post, we have a few job openings. If you or someone you know is interested in working with us then please send your resume and cover letter to sharonk@abgcapital.com. The positions we have open right now are:

Technical Service Representatives
Customer Service Representatives
Web Developers (please know that we’re looking for experienced candidates for this position)

As we close out this week’s Just another Friday at ABG Capital, we’d like to get your opinion on something. We posted an article to our social media sites yesterday that talked about France making it illegal to handle work emails on mobile phones or computers after they leave the office. This may seem absurd to some of us, but it’s affecting 200,000-250,000 employees in the French workforce. What would you do if you had to abandon all forms of communication that tied you to your job once you left your office? At ABG Capital, we always need to be available for any issues that could potentially affect our customers. On the positive end of the spectrum, making this kind of ruling could help employees create a better work/life balance and reduce the number of burnt-out workers. While making it illegal to send emails after work hours might seem ludicrous, it could be the future of something that creates a healthier workforce!

What benefits and drawbacks do you see with having a ruling like this in place? Let us know in the comment section below!

We’re off to play our Annual Kickball game. Check our our Facebook page later to see pictures! Have a great weekend everyone. 🙂

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

Happy Friday everyone! How has April been treating you? It’s been great so far for everyone here at ABG Capital. We want to start off by giving you a little recap of the blog posts we’ve featured this week. They both revolve around customers and offer great tips on what you can do at your organization to be more successful.

The first post we had was called, Does Your Business Need a VP of Customer Success? Your customers should be your primary focus. If you don’t have someone to manage that, then it might be something you want to look into! Did you realize that having a VP of Customer Success could help direct your team to a more customer centric focus? Did you know that a VP of Customer Success could also help boost sales? Well, both of those are true and there are even more benefits outlined in the post.

The second post that we had to share on the ABG Capital blog this week was, Enhancing Customer Experience Using Big Data. If you’ve never heard of big data before, just know that it is defined as data that is too large and complicated for traditional tools to capture, store and analyze. The article explains that utilizing this data can give you a better understanding of your customers, which makes your job as a business owner much easier. More importantly, it makes your customers happy and that’s ultimately what every business strives to accomplish.

Just to make a quick announcement, we are currently recruiting for the positions listed below. Our HR Manager, Sharon Kolesar, recently attended a job fair at CCAC and while, she met some great candidates, we are still searching for new employees.

Technical Service Representatives
Customer Service Representatives
Web Developers (please know that we’re looking for experienced candidates for this position)

If you are interested in any of these positions, please send your resume and cover letter to sharonk@abgcapital.com.

While we’re looking for new people to add to our team, we can’t forget for recognize some of our current employees! Let’s share some of the birthdays and anniversaries that we have coming up in April:

Birthdays
- Rhonda Taylor-Boles – April 9th
- Dustin Campbell – April 10th
- Dan Ravenstahl – April 18th
- Kimmie Rivetti – April 28th
Anniversaries
- Jerry Eddy – 6 years on April 3rd
- Mark Fleckenstein – 4 years on April 16th
- Jennifer Williams – 1 year on April 16th
- Nate Rupp – 6 years on April 25th

While we’re talking about celebrations, we have to announce something on behalf of one of our portfolio companies, VoIP Innovations. Today they are taking the afternoon off (their support staff will still be working) to celebrate hitting a fantastic revenue goal that has been escaping them for years. A giant ABG Capital congratulations goes out to everyone who is part of the VoIP Innovations team. You are all A players and we couldn’t be more proud to have you as part of our amazing organization. Keep up the great work!

This week we also had Brad Withers join us for the second year in a row to do a workshop with our managers. This year he focused on team building strategies and our managers had a VERY interesting day because he came ready to do all kinds of activities. Any speaker can come in and read a manual to your for 8 hours, but Brad explained the value in teaching the concepts behind the content. Our mangers built index card towers, spaghetti and marshmallow skyscrapers and they even played a little catch with noisy stuffed animals. It wasn’t the activities themselves that taught them about team building; it was the debriefing once the activities were over. There was a great deal of valuable information talked about during this workshop and we can’t wait to see how these mangers put their newly learned skills into action! Here a few pictures from the workshop.

Before we close out this week’s Just another Friday at ABG Capital, we wanted to let you know that next week we’ll have our annual kickball game. This is the second sporting event of the year and we can’t wait! Below are a few pictures from last year’s game.

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on March 28, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

Welcome back to a new Just another Friday at ABG Capital blog post! Today we want to recap the events from this week, go over some things you can expect to see next week and then we’ll fill you in on some company updates from our Month End Meeting.

Let’s start with the blog post we featured this week that concentrated on employee health and wellness. Did you know that active, healthier employees make more productive employees? Well, it’s true! Some employees get so caught up in staring at their computer screen for 8 hours a day that it causes them to be unhappy and it ultimately drags down morale. One way to bring those employees back to life is to institute some health and wellness initiatives. Without them, your business might begin to suffer. Check out the article because it talks about some of the major implications associated with unhealthy employees.

While we do not have a formal health and wellness program in place here at ABG Capital, we have instituted “Tend to you at 10 and 2” breaks. These breaks encourage our employees to get up from their desks twice a day and go outside to walk around, play catch, roller skate; whatever they like as long as it’s some kind of physical activity to get the blood moving!. We also recently set up a basketball hoop that employees are free to use at any time. Our company Portal is also stocked with plenty of handy health and wellness information that is always available to our employees.

Here are two great posts that we have coming up next week on the ABG Capital blog:

Does Your Business Need A VP Of Customer Success? – Self-centered organizations often define jobs by their internal function, but cutting-edge companies are taking their viewpoint to heart by creating roles that are truly customer-centered.
Enhancing Customer Experience Using Big Data – Large amounts of data generated through client interaction allow businesses of all size to gain a better understanding of their customers. Amazon’s “suggestions” are just one example of how well this can work.

Now for some important ABG Capital updates! This week was the official start day of a new Customer Service Representative for Inspira and her name is Shannon Hogan. Welcome to the team, Shannon!

While we’re on the topic of new employees, Justin Sparks celebrated his 30 day milestone and had his Lunch with Leadership with Jeff and Jason Tapolci at the Rivers Club!

Here are a few announcements from our Month End Meeting:

February Employee of the Month – Collin Ballantine
February Honorable Mention – The Inspira Call Center
March Spotlight of the Month – Tyler Weimerskirch
Events coming up:
- Our Annual Kickball Game will be held on April 11th
- Our Annual Volunteering event at the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies will be held on May 23rd.

We also want to mention that we had a great time with the students from the Entrepreneurship Program at Canon Mac High School today. They visited our office last year and we’re so happy they returned again this year! Here are a few pictures from their visit:

We even brought out the Cruisin’ Cooler for them!

Thanks for stopping by for another great Just another Friday at ABG Capital blog post. We hope to have you back again next week!

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on March 21, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

Happy Friday everyone. 🙂 How was your week? Ours was great! Let’s get into this week’s Just another Friday at ABG Capital blog post! On the blog, we featured a great article that talked about employees and retirement plans. Do you use your company’s retirement plan as an incentive for prospective hires? This article is advising that you do. More and more people are looking for jobs that offer the kind of “exit strategy” they desire. Having a well-defined retirement plan makes your employees want to stay loyal to your company and it also brings a sense of ease knowing that there is a plan for their future. Check out this article and make sure you’re doing everything you can to offer the best retirement plan in the industry!

Next week on the blog, we’ll have an article that talks about how instituting good employee wellness programs can really be beneficial for your business as a whole. This is one thing that we value very much at ABG Capital and starting last year we decided to have Tend to You Breaks at 10 and 2. These breaks are designed to make everyone get up from their desk twice a day and go outside for a walk or toss the football around. It’s great for increasing productivity and boosting employee morale. It also helps with those employees who can’t wait for our quarterly sporting events!

In the office this week, we had a Lunch & Learn that was presented by our Office Administrator, Sara Warhold. Sara attended a workshop on Managing Multiple Projects and Tasks a few weeks ago and she shared some of the great tips with our staff. One of the tips she brought back with her was to “eat the frog”. Now before you go jumping to conclusions, let me explain this a little further. “Eating the frog” simply means doing the task that you’re dreading the most. It’s best to do this first thing in the morning so you get it out of the way. This method will give you a great sense of self-fulfillment and it will ultimately reduce your stress level. Next time you’re asked to do that awful project, just remember one thing: EAT THAT FROG FOR BREAKFAST!

Thanks for reading this Just another Friday at ABG Capital and have a great weekend!

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Just another Friday at ABG

We Launched The New ABG Capital Website!

Just another Friday at ABG

Just another Friday at ABG Capital

Just another Friday at ABG

Just another Friday at ABG

Just another Friday at ABG

Just another Friday at ABG

Just another Friday at ABG

Just another Friday at ABG