Spokane-based business software company Imprezzio Inc. recently has landed a big contract with a major insurance company. The company is looking to fill 18 positions now—and perhaps that many more later this year, says Lisa Bick, Imprezzio's recruiting specialist.

One of Bick's current challenges is to find qualified applicants for open professional- and skilled-salary positions—not because the talent is lacking in the Spokane market, but because potential job candidates haven't heard of Imprezzio, she asserts.

"Potential applicants in Spokane don't know we're here, and don't know the positions we have available," she says.

Imprezzio develops business software that handles all aspects of contact management. The company also provides digital marketing services for businesses.

The company's software products aim to increase productivity through work-flow automation that reduces repetitive tasks, says Dave Talarico, Imprezzio's board chairman and creative director, who co-founded the company here with Kelly Birr in 2004.

In one example of work-flow automation, Imprezzio developed an application through which agents for a national insurance carrier could quickly generate quotes under a number of scenarios. Prior to using the Imprezzio application, quotes often took more than 30 minutes to generate.

The insurance software suite, called AgentsAlly, is one of Imprezzio's core products.

The recent insurance client, which Talarico declines to name, is Imprezzio's third large insurance client.

Imprezzio currently has a total of 91 employees. Of those, 43 people work at its corporate headquarters on the sixth and seventh floors of the American Legion building, at 108 N. Washington. Its technical operations office is based in Kirkland, Wash., where it has 12 employees led by Birr, the company's chief innovation officer.

The company's Internet marketing arm, Imprezzio Marketing has 17 employees at an office in Toronto, Canada. A subsidiary, Imprezzio Global, which is based in Cluj Napoca, Romania, has 19 employees, and serves customers in Europe and the U.S.

Later this year, Imprezzio plans to hire about 18 more employees, Bick says.

Talarico says he's confident Imprezzio will continue to grow.

"We're looking at expanding in insurance," he says.

Imprezzio's largest insurance clients are captive-agent companies, meaning their agents only sell policies for one company.

He says the company plans to tailor products to serve independent insurance agencies, which handle policies through a number of companies.

"The independent market is the next big push," he says. "There are hundreds of those agencies across the country."