While many of Spokanes largest employers have been slashing jobs over the last year, the Liberty Lake operation of Software Spectrum Inc. has been expanding its work force.


The Garland, Texas-based software seller and technical-service provider added about 30 workers to its Liberty Lake operation in 2001, boosting it to about 650 employees currently, and says it potentially could add up to 300 more jobs here by the end of this year, fulfilling a prediction made early last year.


We see lots of growth in Spokane for our business, says Toni Portmann, Texas-based vice president of sales and marketing for Spectrum Contact Services, one of Software Spectrums two main business units.


The companys possible addition of several hundred employees here would depend on it landing a couple of pending mid-sized to large contracts, and then deciding to have that work handled at its Liberty Lake facility rather than at one of its other locations, Portmann says.


Even if the operation here doesnt get that additional work, We know its going to continue to grow, due partly to a fast-rising demand for Web-based contact services, including from the companys current clients, she says.


Thats where we see lots of growth, and Spokane will be a major beneficiary of that, Portmann says.


Software Spectrum, which employs more than 2,100 people companywide, is a global provider of business-to-business software-management and contact-center services.


In the software-management, or product, side of its business, it sells tens of thousands of business software products. It also tracks software upgrades, suggests new products that a client might find beneficial, and maintains licensing agreements that software makers have with large business customers for specific desktop and other software programs.


On the contact-services side, the companys Spectrum Contact Services unit contracts with clients to provide third-party technical support and other services.


The latter business segment is by far the smaller of the companys two focuses, accounting for only about $55 million of its $1.2 billion in revenues last year. At the Liberty Lake facility, however, its the dominant side, providing employment for more than 500 of the 650 workers there.


Software Spectrums contact-services revenue fell last year, but operating margins are improving so far this year, and Portmann says the companys board last month reiterated its support for growing that side of the business.


Software Spectrum changed the name of its support-services division to Spectrum Contact Services early last year and broadened its services in hopes of boosting the companys share of the hot contact-services market, which has been projected to grow to $51 billion in 2004, up from $18.4 billion in 1999.


Portmann says consumers increasingly want to get software help via fast, electronic means such as e-mail, online chat sessions, and remote diagnostics, in addition to conventional telephone interaction, and the software makers that contract with Spectrum Contact Services are responding to that demand.


Software Spectrum has been impressed by the availability and quality of Spokane-area workers who possess the high level of customer-service, technical, and problem-solving skills needed to handle those responsibilities, she says.


We have actually shifted some work out of Texas to Washington for those reasons, she adds.


Portmann says the companys Liberty Lake operation by far outperforms our other sites in competition among the sites over service-level agreements, which set forth quality- and efficiency-related parameters expected by clients. Those agreements monitor things such as how quickly and how well software users calls are handled, she says.


Also, the Liberty Lake facility has less than a 25 percent annual attrition rate, whichfor the call-center industryis incredibly low, and prompts inquiries from clients and others about the companys secret to retaining employees, Portmann says.


I think that speaks highly for great performance, great place to work, she says.


Software Spectrum is working to obtain what is called Customer Operations Performance Center (COPC) 2000 quality-assurance certification, and Portmann says, You have to be operationally excellent, or you cant be certified. Spokane is our leading site and (will be) the first to be certified in the company.


She says the resilience and growth of Software Spectrums Liberty Lake operation last year, in the midst of an economic downturn, was due partly to the company continuing to provide services there for one large client and adding a significant new client. She declines to name either client, but says the former is one of the worlds largest software providers, and the latter is one of the worlds largest entertainment companies. The company said in its most recent annual report that Microsoft Corp. accounted for about 70 percent of Software Spectrums product sales and that AOL Time Warner Inc. was its largest contact-services customer.


A Spokane-based human resources executive for Software Spectrum told the Journal of Business in January 2001 that she expected the company to add as many as 300 employees here last year, which would have boosted the companys local work force to about 900 people. Portmann says that that prediction was too optimistic and that it has a stronger chance of coming true this year.


Software Spectrum bought the corporate, government, and education division of competitor Egghead Inc., then based in Spokane, in the spring of 1996 and took over part of Eggheads 115,000-square-foot facility at Liberty Lake. It now occupies a total of about 108,000 square feet of floor space in two buildings there.


Software Spectrums Liberty Lake operation remains its second largest, based on employment, behind an 800-employee call center in Tampa, Fla., but ahead of the 633-employee company headquarters in a suburb of Dallas. Two of its other larger operations are in Dublin, Ireland, and Sydney, Australia, each of which has about 120 employees.


Software Spectrum, which is traded publicly on the Nasdaq stock-quotation system, had net income of about $3.9 million on record sales of more than $1.2 billion in its fiscal year ended April 30, 2001. For its most recent fiscal quarter, ended Oct. 31, 2001, the company reported net income of about $1.4 million, slightly higher than in the year-earlier quarter.