I n February, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker visited the Waukesha County headquarters of Connecture Inc. to announce that the state would provide up to $1.2 million in credits and incentives over three years for the company to create 105 high-paying professional technology jobs.
Connecture is a national leader in sales automation software for the health care insurance industry.
“Jobs come from an idea that one or two or three people have. It builds out and takes off, and blossoms when other great people join the effort. That is what has happened here with Connecture,” Walker said during his visit to announce Connecture’s new headquarters. “The additional announcement that they will be relocating their headquarters here is good news for continued job growth.”
In 2004, Connecture chief executive officer Dan Maynard had sold his previous company, Riverwood Solutions Inc. of Waukesha, to Connecture, which at the time was based in Atlanta, Ga. Maynard, a native of Sussex and an alumnus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, had looked for a way to move the merged company back to Wisconsin.
“I always had an interest in bringing it back in Milwaukee. The state came with the incentives to allow us to invest in facilities here and hire more here in Wisconsin,” Maynard said.
Walker’s incentives enabled Maynard to move Connecture to Pewaukee. The company continued to grow and then announced in June it had signed a 10-year lease to move to larger headquarters in the Brookfield Lakes Corporate Center.
Connecture’s growth has been fueled by its contract work with insurance companies and by landing subcontract work to help states build their health care insurance exchanges to comply with the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. The company has landed contracts to help build exchanges for Minnesota and Maryland.
“Another one is about to be announced. We’ve won a third state, but I can’t talk too much about it right now,” Maynard said.
Connecture has submitted bids to help build the exchanges in five more states, Maynard said.
Walker announced in November that Wisconsin would not establish its own health exchange and would instead defer to the federal government to create an exchange for Wisconsin residents.
“We were definitely disappointed, given that many of the health plans right here in our state are our clients that would have benefitted. It would have been seamless,” Maynard said. “From our business’ perspective, we would have loved to had provided our services to the state of Wisconsin. We talked to them. I think exchanges can create a comparison shopping experience, where prices are provided side-by-side, similar to travel sites that do create competition to drive prices down. It allows people to compare apples to apples.”
So, was Walker’s deferral to the feds the right call for the state?
“Great question. Typically we shy away from making comments about the law itself. We have a diverse client base who have very different opinions about Obamacare. We’re more focused on trying to get the best possible outcome out of the law vs. debating whether it’s good or bad,” Maynard said. “We’re not politicians. At the end of the day, I think everybody agrees the system was broken. This is one possible solution. We might as well make the best of it.”
What can’t be debated is that the emergence of the state exchanges for Obamacare continues to provide growth opportunities for Connecture. The company has 160 employees in Wisconsin now and has openings for 75 to 100 more IT positions. The firm’s workforce will continue to grow in 2013 if it lands any other states’ exchange contracts.
