Larry Loocke, Partner at capSpire, recalls a conversation with his sister about eleven years ago when he was looking for a career change. He was ready to leave a leading ETRM vendor after several years of delivery roles and a stint with a Fortune 50 petrochemical company running their ETRM system.
“I remember talking to her and saying, ‘I can go work at his formal, established consulting practice. I’ll fit in great, it will be fine,’” he says. “My head was saying go to this large company, but my heart was saying there’s something about the discussions that I’ve had with capSpire I want to check out.”
Larry became the twenty-third employee at capSpire in 2013.
In 2017, he took over managing the Allegro practice while launching the North American advisory practice. Today, Larry runs sales and business development for North America.
A lot has changed at capSpire in the decade since Larry joined. Today the company has more than 300 employees with offices in ten countries across four continents. With over 200 successful client engagements and an unwavering dedication to creating raving-fan clients, capSpire is well-positioned to sustain its trajectory of impressive growth.
“I’ve seen a lot of firsts and a lot of transformations here, ” Larry says. But some things haven’t changed, like capSpire’s core values or “sticky statements,” as they are known within the company–like the belief that there is a better way.
“It’s why Jeff Hardcastle and Mike Scharf founded the company,” explains Larry.
“At that time, many ETRM projects were struggling with the lack of domain and market expertise that the client needed. The vendors also needed a trusted partner to help them succeed as they entered new markets,” he says. “Large project teams and project delays were fairly common in our market.” That’s where capSpire comes in. “We truly want to partner with our clients to create value for them with the systems we implement and the services we provide.”
Offering global advisory services, delivery of new technologies and processes, and operational support for continuous improvement, capSpire’s mission is to solve difficult business challenges by combining human ingenuity and market expertise with technological innovation.
What does a better way look like in practice? “We understand our clients’ requirements and have a keen interest in understanding what makes them unique. When it comes to solving hard problems, we want them to know that many times capSpire has solved these problems before for others and can leverage what we see as leading practice in the business problem they are solving” says Larry. There is a deep well of institutional knowledge and mindshare occurring in every project. “Let’s talk about what could have been done better and iterate on that,” he says. Asking questions, listening, and iterating helps capSpire find a better way.
This communicative and curious culture is what Larry describes as “global cross-pollination”–borrowing ideas, knowledge, and opinions from colleagues all over the world who deeply understand the industry and its challenges. “This approach means we’re trusted by clients and seen as extensions of their teams.”
Larry reflects on joining capSpire in 2013 and the same principles that have held strong since then. “It’s not easy to grow a company from 23 to 300. By doing the right thing for the customer, we’ve grown into the organization we are today and will be in the coming years. It’s our lasting relationships with our customers that keep capSpire going.”
To learn more about capSpire’s capabilities and approach, reach out to Larry on LinkedIn.
