Baton Rouge Business Report
September 27, 2021
-By Stephanie Riegel

Baton Rouge-based IT firm Vinformatix is positioning itself for growth in the government contracting sector through a new joint venture with The Parnin Group, an Alexandria, Virginia, consulting firm that specializes in working with governmental agencies.

The 8(a) joint venture, which will be called PV Group LLC, is not a merger or acquisition but an opportunity for the IT firm to partner with a management consulting firm on lucrative federal contracts.

“We are marrying our skills with this other firm’s skills to provide a more holistic approach,” says Vinformatix’s director of business development Kelli Cagle. “It’s just another avenue for engagement.”

Both firms are already registered and certified for the federal government’s System for Awards Management, or SAM, which is required of all federal contractors. Perhaps more significantly, the new venture qualifies as a woman-owned small business and HUBZone, thanks to Vinformatix; and also as a socially disadvantaged business, thanks to The Parnin Group. Taken together, the three certifications will give the venture a leg up on the competition in what is an increasingly lucrative arena.

“We believe there is really a need to not only look at the IT perspective that can be improved with an agency but in really improving the structure of the organization, the people, their workflows and using IT as one avenue to do that,” Cagle says.

The high-stakes field of big government contracting is far afield from how Vinformatix started out in 2008 when Padma Vatsavai created an electronic health records system for primary care physicians.

In 2013, she expanded her small company to become more of an IT services firm.

Earlier this year, Vinformatix won its first federal government contract as a subcontractor on a two-year, $4 million deal doing data analytics for the National Science Foundation.

Vinformatix director of data analytics Keith Toussant believes big data is the future for the firm and says the joint venture will enable the company to increase the rate of its growth.

“Data analytics is the new buzzword and people are realizing now that all these numbers that they have been collecting over the years can be turned into actionable insights,” he says.