2024 Economic Impact Awards 1-10 Years in Business: Next Level Solutions

Although now categorized as a global company due to their new offices abroad, Next Level Solutions still has love for the Queen City. Starting six years ago with headquarters in Springfield, CEO Chris Sawyer and Chief Operating Officer Michael Smith began providing implementation of Duck Creek Technologies’ services for property and casualty insurance companies.

Now, after expanding their services, they’re focusing on the goal they had when they started out, which is to provide excellent IT services and bring jobs to Springfield’s workforce.

“I think it’s a little bit of an indirect correlation,” Smith says. “What our work with our clients allows us to do is provide very competitive salaries and benefits for people to find this place a very solid place of employment.

“Whenever you can provide that kind of environment for the employees, the employees latch on to the missions of the company.”

In 2023, Next Level Solutions recorded $51.7 million in revenue, with a target revenue of $60 million this year. Within the past year, the business has maintained employee growth and opened new offices in Puerto Rico and Honduras, today operating four brick-and-mortar locations. With 329 employees in total, about half work at the Springfield location.

“In our mission statement, it says we’ll do good work for our employees, clients and community,” says Hailey Kolstad, public relations manager at Next Level Solutions. “Between fundraisers, rallying around our employees when tragedy strikes – there’s something special about people in 417, so it’s been really cool to take that part of our mission statement on.”

Kolstad says Next Level Solutions has partnered with Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Ozarks, engaged in community service acts across town, and donated $25,000 to local organizations and charities in 2023. She also says Smith has been the top fundraiser in the state the past three years for the American Cancer Society’s Men Wear Pink campaign.

Smith says implementing roadmaps has improved project management.

“I think the biggest impact over the last couple of years has been investing in our overall project process improvement,” he says. “From the time of initial discussion with the client all the way through to the go-live of the implementation – we took apart the history lessons we’ve had and evaluated the pros and cons of how those implementations went.” 

The Next Level Solutions mindset and motto also plays a role in the company’s success.

“The ‘Do Good Work’ mentality is focused on our leadership doing good work at providing guidance and mentorship for the rest of the teams, so the teams can focus on doing good work on their specific niches of the implementation,” he says.