In October of 1993, after the sale of Selecterm, a NASDAQ company where Dave Gravel was CFO/COO, Cathy encouraged Dave to start his own business. Dave & Cathy formed a new company called MBA Associates focused on helping businesses solve problems and improve productivity. In January of 1994, Cathy and Dave partnered with with Suzanne Vocatura a Controller who had worked with Dave at Selecterm and they changed the name of MBA Associates to GraVoc Associates, Inc.

The name GraVoc represents the first three letters in each partner’s last name which explains the capital V in the middle.

GraVoc moved to 365 Chatham Street in Lynn, MA, a building owned by our first customer, Reid Land Surveyors, (Dave Gravel’s brother-in-law, Ralph Reid). On March 8th, 1994, GraVoc Associates, Inc. became an official corporation filed with the Secretary of State in MA. GraVoc worked with Reid Land Surveyors providing accounting, tax, and IT services.

At the same time GraVoc closed its first ERP opportunity with CP Berry Construction, and supported a successor corporation to Selecterm called Microscript with accounting services as well. The combined services GraVoc was providing became what we know today as Software Solutions and IT Services.

We hired our first full-time employee, Bill Jackson. Bill was committed to GraVoc’s mission and exuded humility, kindness, gentleness, respect, passion, and insight. Bill was also instrumental in helping us land our first regional accounting firm as a customer and partner to support their client base.

Bill unfortunately has since passed and in 2021, we established the ‘Action-Jackson’ award in his memory. This award is presented annually to a member of the GraVoc team who embodies Bill’s compassion, dedication, and pride. His smile and heart will be with us always!

Suzanne Vocatura decided to leave GraVoc to pursue her own interests, and sold her shares of the corporation to Dave and Cathy.  With 100% ownership Dave & Cathy through GraVoc embarked on new adventures and challenges, as customers referred us to other customers and expanded the services that we were offering.

This sometimes introduced us to an entirely new line of work. Our referral base grew as we succeeded in completing projects. Our company was starting to grow and we added additional employees to meet the needs of our customers.

More employees required more space, so at the end of 1997 Dave and Cathy moved the company back to Peabody and established an office at 49 Lowell Street.  Here we had room for a network operating center, a workshop for network and workstation configuration and space to grow.

As we celebrated our 5th year in business, the world was preparing for Y2K. Our regional accounting partner asked us to participate in a series of IT audits to help their customers prepare for the potential of a Y2K disaster. As a result, we began drafting disaster recovery and business continuity plans for financial institutions throughout New England.

The heightening demand for contingency planning combined with sweeping data security regulations, like the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, led to the formation of what we now call our Information Security practice.

As our company matured in years, so did our skills. Dave, took on a number of assignments with private equity firms and start-up companies to provide interim CFO services while also implementing their accounting solutions. The scope of assignments expanded as applications and customer requirements became more sophisticated and complex. Instead of simple accounting systems, our customers were seeking enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems with fully integrated accounting, manufacturing, sales, and customer relationship management (CRM) modules.

In response to customer demands, we expanded our Microsoft Partner certification and added new talent  to our team who specialized in software development and customization. We began building custom applications and solutions and integrating them into existing systems to improve overall functionality – Our customer base continued to grow.

Shortly after celebrating our 10th year in business in 2004, we experienced what we call the ‘Water Curse’. In 2005, a fire broke out in the adjacent building to GraVoc, resulting in significant water and smoke and electrical damage to the building.  Ever determined, Dave and Cathy set up a temporary office in the garage of their home and did not miss a day of operation as a result.  We then moved the entire operation to another temporary location in Peabody above a bakery while we finished the buildout and renovation of the 49 Lowell Street office.

Less than 1 year after the renovations were complete in May of 2005, the Mother’s Day flood hit our region and destroyed the basement of 49 Lowell Street as well as the electrical infrastructure.  Once again, we were back in the garage and home of Dave and Cathy without missing a day of work.  Another renovation was completed and we decided –  Time to move!

In December of 2006, we moved into a new office located at 81 Main Street in Peabody. It was double the space of our existing office, giving us the ability to grow.  The water curse stayed with us in that building with the first winter storm of 2007 leaking through the roof and destroying a significant amount of newly refurbished work area including our new furniture.  We fixed that and several months later, an exterior drain in our front foyer backed up during a rain storm and flooded many of the offices.  In all of his our employees helped us through with cleanup, encouragement and their overall loyalty.  They are the rock of spirit upon which the company has been built!

As more and more businesses began looking to the Internet for content and digital marketing, we acquired DivergingSoul Media Production from Brian Gravel and Matt Molk. Our goal was to offer customers yet another avenue to improve their operation. Our customers began to leverage our Media Production team to carry out their web/app development, video production, and digital marketing initiatives.

We later changed the name of the team from Media Production to Creative Technology.

With 25 employees, 4 growing departments, and an evolving service offering portfolio, we celebrated our 20th year in business at Stonewood Tavern in Peabody!

In the fall of 2016, we moved our office from 81 Main Street to 10 Centennial Drive in Peabody, which is where we reside today. We were thrilled to move to our new office which gave us the necessary space and resources we needed to grow. Our new 15,000 square-foot state of the art facility includes a full green-screen video production studio and a 45-person training room. Most importantly we built it to remain full of natural light and openness for everyone.

In 2019, we more than doubled in size to over 60 full-time employees! 2019 also marked our 25th year in business which we celebrated with our customers, employees, and friends at Spinelli’s. Our portfolio continued to grow as we added new services, products, and technologies to our skill set. We began developing complex cloud applications and financial reporting dashboards to help our customers meet their specific business needs.

Our Information Security team began providing more web penetration testing services, specifically for cloud applications such as AWS and Azure. They also began providing more governance, risk and compliance services to customers as well as HITRUST and ISO/IEC 27001 certification preparation services.

As the global landscape shifted amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, we stood resolute in our commitment to empowering businesses with innovative, technology-driven solutions, ensuring their continued success in an evolving world. As remote work increasingly became the standard, businesses entrusted our team with greater reliance to ensure their systems were fully equipped to support remote employees.

Our Creative Technology team played a pivotal role in assisting retail stores and restaurants in transitioning their operations online, enabling them to stay operational amidst the challenges posed by social distancing protocols. Our Information Security team helped employees safeguard their data and assets from cyber threats while working remotely. Our IT team diligently ensured that our customers were equipped with the essential hardware and equipment required for their teams to seamlessly stay connected. And our Software Solutions team helped customers enhance their ERP and CRM systems during this time.

Despite these challenging times, we’re extremely proud of the work we did to ensure our customers were able to adapt and digitally transform their operations. Dave & Cathy are also extremely proud to note that no GraVoc employee was furloughed or laid off during  this time, and we continued to emphasize the family bond that we have as a company.

In 2023, we acquired two companies, MA-based Security Management Partners (SMP), and CA-based Strategic Systems Group (SSG). The acquisition of SMP expanded our governance, risk, and compliance service offerings and doubled the size of our information security team. The acquisition of SSG augmented our Microsoft Dynamics service portfolio and has improved our capabilities to support current and future customers in this arena.

We also saw management changes within our company during this time. Our Founder, Cathy Gravel, retired after nearly 30 years of service, and Nate Gravel became President of GraVoc.

From our very humble beginnings, our company has grown to 82 employees offering a complete suite of digital transformation solutions. Our mission has always been and will always be to help customers solve business problems through the development, implementation, and support of technology-based solutions. Over the course of three decades, we’ve remained steadfast in our mission, guided by our core values: Commit, Adapt, Resolve, and Empathize.

We firmly believe that our best years are ahead of us, remaining agile in our ability to move with the market and evolve with our customers. We will continue our commitment to developing and expanding our skills to address the needs of our customers, and our philosophy, as created by Dave in the very beginning remains the same  – “Our Business is Your Success!”