Administrative Professionals Day!

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Administrative Professionals Day

As we took this picture, Sara was concerned with which side was her better side!

Today we want to recognize Sara Warhold for her outstanding work as the ABG Capital Office Administrator. Sara is a fantastic employee and we appreciate all she does for us. The office wouldn’t be the same with out her! Sara was also our March Employee of the Month and here are some nice things that people had to say when they nominated her:

I voted for Sara as she has been a huge asset to helping out Erica and myself. Since she started, we were able to move some tasks that I was doing, over to her and she has handled those like a ROCK STAR. She was able to adapt to a new situation and she welcomed the extra tasks given to her with open arms.
− Nick Jenkner

In addition to Nick’s comments, I too am very pleased with the extra effort Sara continues to provide on an ongoing basis. As our Office Administrator, Sara continues to be a great asset to our company. She works very hard and is productive in performing her administrative tasks above and beyond what is required. Sara takes pride in her work and sets high standards for herself. She has made a huge impact on assisting with company communications, leading up committees and organizing our employee events (among a whole lot of other things..) We should all be thankful for Sara! Her efficiencies, positive disposition and “let’s just do it” attitude help mold our ABG Culture and set the stage for future success! Thank you, Sara! Keep up the great work!
− Sharon A. Kolesar

We also had a chance to talk to Sara and get to know her a little better today. Here are her responses to our questions:

How long have you been with ABG? – I started in September of 2012, so a little over 7 months.

What are your favorite things about working for ABG? – My favorite things about working at ABG are my coworkers! I also love coming in every day and seeing what the next “adventure” will be!

What’s your favorite part of your job? – My favorite part of my job is planning the activities, volunteer opportunities, and gatherings we have. But I also like leaving at the end of the day and looking back on the things I did to help someone get their job done. I want to be the person people can come to when they need help with a project or a task. It makes me glad to see those projects through.

Where do you think you’d be if you weren’t working here? – Before I started back to work, I was a stay at home mom with my son Max and I was also a Jazzercise Instructor. But honestly, I don’t even want to think about where else I might have ended up. I feel very fortunate to have found a place here, and I hope to stay for a long time!

Administrative Professionals DayTo show our appreciation for Sara, we got her flowers and a card that was signed by everyone in the office. Thank you for all you do! Any organization would be lost without their administrative staff, so we would also like to send a huge thank you to all administrative professionals out there!

Just another Friday at ABG

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Well isn’t today just a rainy day in Pittsburgh? Despite this weather today, we’ve had a beautiful and sunny week! It’s also been a week full of excitement for us here at ABG Capital.

The first piece of exciting news we have to share with you is that we have another new employee to welcome to the ABG Capital family! Her name is Jenn and she is Inspira’s newest Customer Service Representative. If you missed the post we wrote about her this week, click here and get to know her better.

This week Jeff Tapolci, CEO of ABG Capital and Jason Tapolci, President of VoIP Innovations took Tyler Weimerskirch and Natalie Decario to lunch at the Rivers Club. They do this for every new hire at ABG Capital because it’s a great way to get

Natalie and Tyler from ABG Capital

to know the new employees on a more personal basis. Here’s a picture of Tyler and Natalie before they left!

We also need to address our lunch from today. All employees at ABG Capital are assigned to a lunch committee. Once a month a different committee has to prepare a lunch for the entire office. For April, we had Dan Ravenstahl, Mark Fleckenstein, Justin Cornish, and Tyler Weimerskirch. These guys did a great job ordering Chinese for everyone. We had a great variety of food and it was all delicious. Thanks for arranging that today guys! Chinese at ABG

The last newsworthy piece of info we want to share with you today is about the geese we have in the front of our office. These geese have a long standing history with ABG Capital and we feel it’s important that we share it with you. These geese have been in this complex just about as long as we have and they have surely made it their home. Look for a blog post next week that talks more about these geese and their history with us.

As always, thanks for reading and have a great weekend 🙂

Another New Employee for Inspira!

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Jenn WIlliam, InspiraWe’d like to give a warm welcome to our newest employee Jennifer Williams! Jenn is joining us from Equifax in Moon Township where she worked as a Vendor Manager of appraisals. Jenn also has experience from working as an appraisal representative for Lenders Services. She is the newest addition to the Inspira team and will be taking on the role of a Customer Service Representative.  She will be working with Collin and Kathy who just joined the team not too long ago themselves.

Let’s get to know Jenn a little better! She is the mother of a 12 year old son who will be celebrating his 13th birthday on May 5th, Cinco de Mayo! Her son is a seventh grade honor student and athlete who loves baseball. Jenn is an outdoors enthusiast who loves to take bike rides and walks. She also enjoys being with friends and watching movies on a rainy day. When she’s not busy with these other activities, she’s scouring the Food Network channel for great baking tips. She says cupcakes are her specialty… Maybe we’ll get to try some one day!

As a new addition to the Inspira team, Jenn will be working in our temporary office space while the renovations continue to move along. Everyone, please offer Jenn a warm welcome to the ABG Capital family!

Just Another Friday at ABG

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Welcome back to the Just another Friday at ABG Capital post! We just have a few updates for you and then you can enjoy the weekend knowing that you’re all caught up with your ABG news.

This week we had a few people attend the 3 Rivers Venture Fair at PNC Park. The Featured Keynote Speaker was Josh Linkner, the Chairman and former CEO of ePrize and New York Time Best-Selling Author. It was a great event and gave us the opportunity to network with other people in our industry.

ABG Capital Cinco de Mayo basketCinco de Mayo is coming up on May 5 and to celebrate that day at ABG Capital, we are having a pot luck lunch and selling raffle tickets for a Cinco de Mayo themed basket. If you are interested in purchasing a $5 ticket, please send an email to natalied@abgcapital.com. The last day to buy them is Friday, May 3 and we will be pulling the winner that same day at 1pm. The only thing is we ask is that those interested in purchasing a ticket be in the Pittsburgh area so there are no issues with picking up your tickets or the basket if you’re the lucky winner.

As you’ve read about in our other blog posts, our build-out is well underway. With more construction coming our way next week, we needed to start moving some things around. We had some employees working this morning to get get things moved quicker. Today we were moving files Moving boxes to a new homefrom the old room to their new location in the old office of our HR manager. The next step will be to move the rest of the things in the old storage room to a locker out in the parking lot.

We can’t spend too much time moving today though, because around 12:30 we’ll be leaving to go play an ABG Capital kickball game! It’s always a fun time to get everyone together, outside of the office, to just have some fun. To any of our customers, there will still be support staff on duty waiting to assist you with any questions! Make sure you’re checking our Facebook page on Monday for pictures from today’s game!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Just another Friday at ABG

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Welcome back, it’s good to see that everyone has survived another work week 🙂 It seems as though everyone at ABG Capital has had a pretty good week and we even have some congratulations to give out today!

First off, we have officially migrated off of our old email systems and are now up and running with the new system. With that migration, we also got a new portal site for our employees. It’s a great way to share information and keep everyone up-to-date. **If you are an employee who is still having trouble with this migration, please send an email to Steve or Jacob at the Help Desk and they’ll address your issue.**

Denise Breide, Employee of the Month

Denise Breide, Employee of the Month

We want to give a shout out to our Employee of the Month, Denise Breide and our Spotlight of the of the Month, Natalie DeCario. Denise works for VoIP Innovations as the Project Provisioning Specialist and Natalie is the Communications Specialist for ABG Capital. Congratulations to you both!

Since it’s the start of the month, we want to share all our April birthdays and anniversaries with you. Dustin Campbell, a VoIP innovations Technical Services Coordinator, will celebrate his birthday on April 10.  Dan Ravenstahl, President of GlobalPOPs and End User Services, will celebrate his on April 18 and Heather Halpern, a Provisioning Coordinator for VoIP Innovations, will celebrate hers on April 29th. Help us wish these folks a happy birthday!

As for our Anniversaries this month, we want to congratulate Mark Fleckenstein, the Marketing Director at InspiraFS, for making it to 3 years at ABG Capital. We also have two employees who will be receiving their 5 Year Service Awards! Congratulations to Nathan Rupp, the Platform Manager for Inspira, and Jerry Eddy, the Director of Development and IT Services for ABG Capital, for making it to 5 years!

KICKBALL2-1529373In other news, next Friday we’re going to be playing some kickball! The teams are made and everyone is ready for the game. Those who can make it to the game will be leaving the office around 1 and we’ll be able to play until 5. As we mentioned when we went bowling, there will still be members of our support staff who stay in the office and continue to solve any customer issues.

To wrap this post up, let’s talk about some upcoming events. As you know, our Friday lunches are a big part of life at ABG Capital. In May, everyone is looking forward having a Cinco de Mayo Pot Luck Luncheon  Also in May, we will be taking employees to volunteer at the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies to clean off headstones. There will be more information to come!

If you’re going to be in the Pittsburgh area this weekend, make sure you go outside and enjoy the nice weather we’re supposed to have. Have a great weekend everyone!

Our Office Build-Out

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under_construction_animation_3Construction at ABG Capital is well under way and we’re excited to share some more great updates with you! When we wrote about The Start of Our Expansion a few weeks ago, we were talking about the contract we signed in September for about 2,700 square feet of new space. That meant bringing our office to 12,000 square feet.

Well, we’ve just upgraded from that. On March 29, we signed a new contract that added 2,900 square feet to our layout. That means that we’ll have about 15,000 square feet! That’s a huge amount of space from what we had with our very first lease back in 2007 that only totaled about 9,400 square feet.

The need for this expansion is due to the rapid (and we mean RAPID) growth of Inspira and VoIP Innovations; we have to meet the demands of our work flow! The original plan included a multi-purpose room big enough for about 50 people, some new offices, a call center for Inspira, and a gala kitchen. The amendments to the contract added even more to this.

There will now be a climate controlled call center that will house the Network Operations Center (NOC) for VoIP Innovations and GlobalPOPs as well as the call centers for Inspira, VoIP Innovations, and GlobalPOPs. We are also adding an even larger and more functional kitchen, a small conference room, and a few more offices.

These are exciting times for everyone at ABG Capital and we can’t wait to share more updates with you as this process continues.

Just another Friday at ABG

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Welcome back to our blog, it’s time for Just another Friday at ABG Capital!  We want to start off by recognizing some more new employees who joined us this week. We’d like for you to welcome Collin Ballantine and Kathy Scheidlmeier to the ABG family. They will both be working as Customer Service Representatives for Inspira. If you want to get to know them better, check out their blog post from earlier this week.

Today was the ABG Capital Month/Quarter End Meeting where we discussed what has been going on in each of our companies. At ABG Capital we talked about how much growth we’ve been seeing throughout the organization, the new training our managers have been receiving, the build-out and all of the fun and exciting things that are coming with that expansion. We also had the chance to recognize our Employee of the Month for February which is Sara Warhold, our Office Administrator. Here’s just one of the comments made about her:

“I voted for Sara as she has been a huge asset to helping out Erica and myself. Since she started, we were able to move some tasks that I was doing, over to her and she has handled those like a ROCK STAR. She was able to adapt to a new situation and she welcomed the extra tasks given to her with open arms.”

During this meeting we also got to hear how great of a job all of our Portfolio Companies have been doing. Inspira has been exploding with new accounts and relationships, GlobalPOPs is expecting to see more and more growth in the coming quarters, and VoIP Innovations is moving and developing way faster than expected.

Easter 2As we wrap this post up for the day, we want to say have a great weekend and a Happy Easter!

 

We’re Still Growing!

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Most people in the Pittsburgh area today are well aware of the winter weather that is still upon us. Fortunately, we have a reason to take our minds off of the snow! In a blog post last week, we introduced you to our new employee, Jacob. Well, today we grew by two more. We are pleased to announce that Collin Ballantine and Kathleen (Kathy) Scheidlmeier will be joining our Inspira team as Customer Service Representatives.

CollinSmallCollin is an AppleOne recruit and is coming to us from the National Real Estate Information Services of Pittsburgh where he was a Foreclosure Specialist who managed all stages of property sales.  Collin is currently finishing his degree online at West Virginia University, while doing stand-up comedy on the side. He performs at open mics throughout various clubs in the area. Collin volunteers to help raise funds for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and tonight he is performing an act specifically for the foundation. He also has a 14 month old son, Ezekiel, who just started walking, wish him luck baby-proofing the house!

KathySmall

 

 

Kathy is joining us from Fidelity Bank where she worked as a Consumer Loan Processor.  Kathy received her education from Point Park University and completed her course work in liberal arts at Slippery Rock University.  In her spare time, Kathy enjoys babysitting her grandchildren and being great aunt to quadruplets. Kathy loves to cook and volunteers in her community by running a hospitality team for her church.

Help us in giving these two a warm welcome to the ABG Capital family!

Just another Friday at ABG

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How did your week go? Did anything great happen to you? We’d love to hear it, so comment below and tell us all about it! Today we just want to fill you in on everything that’s been going on around our office. To start off, we added two new employees to the ABG Capital family. They are Jacob Crisman and Scott Eckstrom. Jacob will be joining Steve Korbett in our IT Department and Scott will be working with Inspira. If you want to get to know these two better, read our New Employees blog post from this week.

Since Scott is working with Inspira, he will be located in the temporary space with a few other Inspira employees until our build-out is completed. Here’s a before and after shot of that space:

ABG Capital Temporary Space Before/After

We had to make them feel at home!

We all know that it’s Friday, and this week, we just had to have our own Fish Fry day in the office! We would like to send a special shout-out to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Carnegie for providing the fried and baked fish. Everything was delicious! If you want to see more pictures, check them out on our Facebook Page.

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Well, that seems to be all we have for you this week! We hope you all have a great weekend and let’s hope for some Spring weather to start coming around soon!

ABG Capital Welcomes New Employees!

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Hopefully you’ve been keeping yourself up-to-date with our recent blog posts and mentions of the office build-out we’re doing. If you have no idea what we’re talking about, then you should probably get yourself caught up and read The Start of Our Expansion. Our build-out became necessary when Inspira and VoIP Innovations were showing signs of rapid growth. Today, we added to that growth by bringing on Jacob Crisman.

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Everyone is curious about the new guy!

Jacob is teaming up with Steve Korbett in our IT department as an ABG Capital Systems Administrator. He is joining us from Staples where he worked as an Easy Tech Associate and sold consumer electronics hardware and performed basic computer repair in the retail environment. In his spare time, you can catch him playing on a semi-pro air-soft team or playing video games, which has recently been Dungeons and Dragons.  He received numerous awards for top placement in various regional computer network design competitions as well as certification with Cisco training.

We’d love for everyone to wish Jacob congratulations and good luck as he starts his new career with us!