Executive Mosaic is pleased to announce the addition of Craig Halliday to the 2024 class of the Wash100 Award, an annual accolade conferred upon the 100 most influential and impactful leaders within the government contracting space.
The Popular Vote Competition of the 2024 Wash100 Award runs through April 30, 2024. Click here to vote for Craig Halliday as one of your favorite GovCon industry leaders!
Halliday is the CEO of Unanet, a provider of enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management offerings. 2024 marks the second straight and second overall Wash100 win for Halliday. This year, he is being recognized for leading his company to sustained business growth, resulting in new customers and recognition by industry.
Jim Garrettson, CEO of Executive Mosaic and the founder of the Wash100 Award, praised Halliday’s company leadership, saying, “Unanet occupies a vital segment of the GovCon market and plays an essential role in enabling government contractors to plan, track and manage their operations and projects. Under Craigâs leadership for the past five years, Unanet has notably expanded its market share, accelerated technological innovation and acquired key companies. Weâre including Craig on our Wash100 list for the second year in a row because of his reliability and his knack for achieving sustained growth at the helm of Unanet.”
This sustained growth is most visibly manifested by the numerous customers that adopted Unanet’s ERP and CRM offerings in 2023 alone. These customers include design and architecture firm GSG Architecture, which, in February, selected Unanet’s offering to address its CRM needs. GSG was already a user of Unanet ERP and sought to modernize its customer relationship management processes.
Michael Hoffman, chief financial officer at GSG Architecture, said at the time, “Unanet will help us simplify many of our business development processes, including reviews from multiple consultants, that we werenât able to execute previously.”
Another example is the service-disabled, veteran-owned small business Planate Management Group. In anticipation of business growth, the government contractor sought to address the inefficiencies brought on by its use of disparate off-the-shelf accounting software. In March, the company turned to Unanet ERP GovCon, which offered a modern and integrated platform.
In October, prior positive user experience resulted in Unanet GovCon ERP being selected by Magnum Opus for the consolidation of various back office functions, including finance, accounting and compliance, into a single platform.
Regarding the selection, MO Financial Controller Candace Brown, whose responsibility was to choose the company’s new ERP platform, said, “I had used Unanet at a previous position, as well as another well-known ERP, and it was clear to me that Unanet was the best choice. The features are specifically built for companies like ours, and the support and feedback from Unanet are the best.”
Unanet’s business expansion continued into the first quarter of 2024, with its products being chosen by even more customers, including Eikon Research, a woman-owned radar engineering firm that serves the Department of Defense. Eikon sought to consolidate its processes and procedures into a tool that is compliant with DOD standards and went with Unanet GovCon ERP and CRM.
Chezney Orcutt, chief financial officer at Eikon, said, “Unanet will provide one, centralized system to help us eliminate multiple spreadsheets for timekeeping, project, and financial management, and give us the intuitive dashboards we need to analyze our financials and forecast for our growth.”
Under Halliday’s leadership, Unanet’s success was recognized not only by customers but by the industry as well. In November, Construction Executive Magazine selected the company as a 2023 Top Construction Technology firm for its CRM offering.
Halliday expressed pride at his company’s being chosen for the accolade, saying, “Awards like CE’s Top Construction Technology Firms demonstrate Unanet’s growing market share and industry presence.”
Most notably, Unanet was named to the 2023 Inc. 5000 list for being one of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. 2023 marked the sixth straight year that Unanet has been made part of the list. In 2022, the company was ranked 3,534; in 2023, the company went up to 1,708.
Commenting on the award, Halliday said, “Few organizations receive this recognition six years in a row, and itâs an honor we take earnestly.”
But Unanet’s chief executive also made sure to recognize the contribution of the workers in his company, saying, “All credit goes to our employees for continuing to deliver thoughtful, innovative solutions that surpass our customers’ expectations.”
Unsurprisingly, employees themselves hold Unanet in high regard as illustrated by two other awards.
Unanet was honored as a Top Workplace in 2023. Companies selected to the Top Workplace list are evaluated using employee feedback collected via a confidential third-party survey.
Regarding the recognition, Halliday said, “From our roots as a woman-founded enterprise over 30 years ago, to our ongoing commitment to helping recent graduates, Unanet always has been and will continue to be community- and people-focused. We are a better company because of that focus.”
More recently, Unanet was named to Built In’s 2024 Best Places to Work list. Winners are determined with the use of an algorithm that weighs a variety of criteria, including various data about the company, including compensation and benefits.
Unanet’s achievements in the past year is demonstrative of the quality of leadership that Halliday delivers. It is this kind of leadership that the Wash100 awards celebrate and stand for.
Congratulations to Halliday and his team for this second straight Wash100 win!
Click here to choose Craig Halliday for the Popular Vote Competition!
