Zach Pratico recently moved back to Rutland to launch his business, SmartScale360, that helps small and medium-sized business leverage offshore hiring.

By Lily Doton

The Pratico name is known throughout the Rutland area, specifically in connection with Pratico’s Landscaping & Fence — a family business that Zach Pratico grew up watching his father run. Now, with years of his own experience, Pratico is back in Rutland with a company of his own.

Pratico started SmartScale360, a company that works in business process outsourcing (BPO), in late 2023. Through SmartScale360, Pratico works with small and medium-sized businesses to find offshore, remote workers — mainly for back-office positions that businesses might have trouble filling.

“This has been a trend for a long time. Google and Amazon and all these corporate entities, these large corporations, have been leveraging offshoring or business process outsourcing,” Pratico said. “I want to bring it to small and medium-sized business owners that can leverage that same talent to help grow their business.”

Pratico’s company recruits college-educated workers with at least two years of experience, mainly from the Philippines.

Business process outsourcing is “one of the largest sectors of growth in the Philippines,” said Pratico. “A lot of these people have worked for Western culture companies, so they really have a good understanding of our culture.”

Kevin Pastor, located in the Philippines, was one of the first remote staff members that Pratico placed at his last company. Now, Pastor handles recruiting and talent sourcing for SmartScale360.

“I think (the) Philippines is one of the second or third outsourcing countries,” Pastor said. “It became a trend, especially back in the 2000s when outsourcing, BPO and call centers boomed, especially for the Philippines, India, all of Asia. So, people kind of adjusted to that.”

According to Pastor, jobs like these are attractive to workers in the Philippines, especially as more and more remote jobs became available post-pandemic. In what Pratico describes as a “symbiotic” relationship, workers are compensated well with above market salary and benefits — provided by SmartScale360 — while business owners have reduced labor costs and don’t have to go through the process of hiring and onboarding employees alone.

“I deal with all the headaches on the back end for the business owner … he just gets a good employee that shows up to work remote every day,” Pratico said. “There’s so many support roles in every business that can easily be done through outsourcing, and it’s kind of a win-win for everyone.”

Still, Pratico says that local, boots-on-the-ground employees are “irreplaceable,” and the goal of SmartScale360 is not to replace those workers.

“This is a supplement to their business, not a replacement of the people that you still need at a local level,” Pratico said, adding that he’s passionate about this work because of how it can help grow smaller businesses.

While SmartScale360 is a national company with international ties, the local aspect of his work is important to Pratico.

“I kind of wanted just to get back to my roots in Vermont and start the business here to try to give back a little bit to the area as best I can,” Pratico said.

Part of the reason why Pratico decided to come back to Vermont was his father, Miles “Skip” Pratico, who describes Zach as both “a great friend and a great son,” adding in a joke about how nice it is to have him home to do chores.

“I’m very proud of him,” Miles Pratico said. “He’s going to work hard at it, and I’m hoping that he can get it off the ground and get things going.”

Pratico says his father was “a huge mentor” to him growing up, and that he taught him how to sell and how to do business.

“He’s very proud of his roots, too. He’s been here for so long, and everyone knows him, and so he’s very tied into the community,” Pratico said. “I saw the impact of local business, and I saw the impact that relationships can provide for a business.”

Those local relationships were vital to the establishment of SmartScale360. To set up insurance for the business, Pratico went to his “family friend” Jill Maynard Nolan with Hull Maynard Hershey Insurance. For legal services and incorporation, he worked with Billy O’Rourke at Ryan Smith & Carbine. Jon Gicewiz with JEG Design Inc. is responsible for SmartScale360’s website design, while Andrew Simmonds at A.M. Peisch & Company provided accounting services.

Pratico and Pastor acknowledge that working with a BPO company might be daunting for business owners, but Pratico says their goal is to give “people that need the help, and maybe can’t afford the help, an opportunity to grow their business.”

“If you’re not ready, then we’re here. And if there’s more (you want) to know about it, then we’d love to tell you, to help you out with that. We’re not gonna be pushy,” Pastor said.

Lily Doton reported this story on assignment from the Rutland Herald. The Community News Service is a program in which students work with professional editors to provide content for local news outlets at no cost.