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Team Game

BYLINE: DENIS PAISTE Union Leader Staff
PUBLICATION: New Hampshire Union Leader (Manchester, NH)

SALEM -- A fresh investment from a $100 million management firm, a new management team and a cohesive group of employees has Denise Miano bullish on the prospects for her NEPS LLC, which creates software to manage document-intensive business processes.

"People are here, they've got their jobs, the business is growing; a month out of the shoot, we hit our numbers; it's all good stuff, and I'm real excited about this team," said Miano, founder and chief technology officer.

Based in Salem after a move from Londonderry, NEPS gained major backing last month from Hispania Capital Partners, a Chicago-based private equity fund, that gives Hispania more than 50 percent equity in the company.

Late last year, NEPS began talks with Hispania, which has more than $100 million in capital under management, the company said. NEPS is the seventh firm in its portfolio. The amount of the investment was not disclosed.

Hispania co-principals Victor Maruri and Carlos Signoret now sit on NEPS' board of directors. NEPS, Maruri said, was "by far the most attractive of anything else we had seen."

NEPS specializes in secure payment processing systems, printer and e-document management systems and automation of document management and information processing.

Industry players

Key to attracting Hispania were NEPS chief executive William Lowe and his wife, Cristina Salvatierra Lowe, who was 1989 Hispanic Businesswoman of the Year and is now NEPS chief marketing officer.

Miano and Lowe have a long-standing business relationship. Originally a part of AIG in Manchester, Miano's team first went on its own in 1988, beginning as New England Programming Specialists and primarily serving the insurance industry. Over the years, they formed relationships with major players in the industry like Xerox.

Lowe, who is well-known in high-tech circles for his role in helping to bring the IBM PC to market, had joined Xerox as vice president of worldwide development. Thus, Miano and Lowe would crossed paths through Xerox (where Lowe said he also met his wife, Cristina.) "We were putting new, high-end printers in place, and what I found was that there was this company that was located in Londonderry that provided software that drove high-end printers and she (Miano) had done it for IBM, Xerox and others," Lowe said. "I think Denise probably has the best reputation in the industry in terms of delivering quality product and being a quality person on her own," he said.

Their paths would cross again when Lowe was at Moore Corp., which acquired NEPS in 1996. NEPS then became Moore's Emerging Technology Division. "We stayed with Moore and instead of driving printers, we drove forms, and labels," Miano said.

The Lowes moved to Arizona.

Going independent

Meanwhile, Moore Corp. had merged with Wallace Computer Services Inc. in 2003 and Moore Wallace Inc. was acquired by R.R. Donnelly & Sons Co. in 2004. That pushed Miano into action to hold together her core crew of 20 who had been together since 1988. "They were on the IT side, so you know what happens when two large teams come together. Their jobs were at risk again because all the jobs were going to consolidate." Although she didn't fear for her own job security as the most senior female executive, Miano said, "I made the choice ... at the end of the day the people here were going to lose their jobs, so I just walked in one day, I said, " 'I want you to sever me, honor my contract, I'll try to find a way to keep the people whole.

" 'By the way, these are the people that support your largest customers, so if you just get rid of them, you're going to impact your largest customers.' " If her company went on its own, she said, she and her team could continue their work for those customers and "get some business back" right away." "We'll find a way to get this done,'" she said.

"Well it took us till August of 2004 to do the full buyout," Miano said. "As part of the deal with Donnelly, I not only took back my employees -- and when I say my employees, I mean people who have been with me since '88 -- but I also got a good group of people that worked inside my team but were part of the business we bought back," Miano said. "And so we had to keep those people employed as well, and we did."

Hispania support

While Miano was attempting to go independent again in New Hampshire, the Lowes moved to Chicago three years ago and began to work with Hispania. "Last December, a mutual friend of Denise's and mine called me, and said, 'Bill, I know you're looking for companies. Did you know Denise was on her own and looking for funding?' So we got together," Lowe said.

Hispania Capital Partners (www.hispaniapartners.com) provides growth capital to middle-market companies targeting the U.S. Hispanic market across a wide range of industries, including print media and broadcasting, consumer goods, food manufacturing and distribution, business services, health-care and financial services. Hispania carried out its due diligence and began funding NEPS Aug. 16.

"NEPS' heritage was driving high-end printers and supporting large companies, like IBM, Xerox, Hewlett Packard and others in helping them support large account applications through her software, through the NEPS software," Lowe said. "As a result of that activity with high-end customers like AIG insurance, Aflac Insurance, large health-care companies, through the years Denise's team built up the advantage to deal with data almost from any source, from any operating system source to the point where NEPS today is better positioned than anyone in the industry to go into a large company and kind of, you know, perhaps respond to a merger or acquisition and help them blend all their information."

"In addition to that software to drive large accounts, she has through the years developed applications that deal with the gaming industry, with health-care support, and so in addition to working with large accounts to help them manage their businesses and work with partners ... we have vertical applications," Lowe said.

Miano said the firm's survival is a testament to its employees who stuck together through tough times.

NEPS also has a Chicago office with nine sales and product support representatives.

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