At Mariner Logistics, the revealing number was about three dollars. That was the cost per bill before a change in the company’s operating model, according to a customer video published by GRIFFIN Global. After working with GRIFFIN’s hybrid-shore team, the cost fell to less than half. Ken Apple, Mariner’s chief technology officer, describes an overextended operation gaining room to grow. The interesting part is what he was buying: people organized differently, with different economics for getting the work done.
- Custom software, data engineering, automation and testing for business customers.
- U.S. leadership paired with East African engineering; managed projects or extra team capacity.
- Acquired by Doeren Mayhew in June 2026, while retaining the GRIFFIN name.
That is a useful entrance to GRIFFIN. A software company can describe itself through programming languages. A buyer usually arrives with something more awkward: an understaffed team, an unreliable application, or systems that refuse to exchange information. GRIFFIN sells the capacity to deal with those problems. Its strongest argument concerns the arrangement of the work.
The founder came through recruiting
Matt Turner’s route into software ran through retail management. In 1998, he moved into technology recruiting and then sales management. He started a business with a partner in 2001; his alumni mentoring biography says they grew it past $10 million in revenue. GRIFFIN followed in 2009.
That background offers a clue to the business he built. Turner’s current biography describes someone whose expertise lies in management, finance and operations, rather than technology by trade. Finding people, assembling teams and connecting their work to a client’s objective became central capabilities. The inference is straightforward: a recruiting background makes the organization chart worth taking seriously.
Under its earlier name, GRIFFIN Solutions Group, the firm appeared on the Inc. 5000 three years running: No. 4,969 in 2015, No. 2,670 in 2016 and No. 1,817 in 2017. The contemporary description emphasized collecting, reporting, integrating and migrating data using Microsoft development tools. The work already lived inside other businesses’ operations.
Two shores. A decision about ownership.
GRIFFIN dates its expansion into Kenya and Ethiopia to 2020. Its explanation points to education, emerging technology talent and the opportunity to build lasting teams. The company’s careers material adds a less glamorous ingredient: workplaces that allow both collaboration and concentration. For a distributed software business, the quiet room matters alongside the international footprint.
The arrangement becomes concrete at the point of purchase. One engagement model gives GRIFFIN responsibility for project management and execution. The other places its specialists inside the customer’s existing tools and processes, with the customer retaining direction. Those choices answer different management problems. A business short of delivery leadership needs a different relationship from one whose engineering manager simply needs more capacity.
Here is the useful distinction from a generic outsourcing pitch: GRIFFIN describes who manages the work. Its hybrid-shore geography supports that offer, but geography alone cannot resolve an unclear brief. A customer still has to decide what success looks like and who can settle a disputed requirement.
The plumbing beneath the AI
GRIFFIN’s services now stretch from custom web applications and integrations to data engineering, business intelligence, automation and quality assurance. Its public technology list spans .NET and open-source development, SQL, Databricks, Snowflake and Power BI. These are tools for building and connecting a customer’s systems; the commercial offer is a services relationship.
The sequence is easy to picture. Information has to move between applications. Pipelines have to keep it usable. Reports have to present it in a form somebody can act on. An automated workflow then needs tests to establish that it behaves as intended. GRIFFIN offers work across those stages, including API testing, regression testing and performance testing.
Its AI offering sits within that wider machinery: custom agents, predictive analytics and automated decisions. For a buyer, the appeal is continuity across the surrounding work. The same brief can require a developer, a data engineer and a tester. A clever demonstration leaves plenty for that team to do.
What a billing number can tell you
Mariner’s reported result makes the economic case tangible. A recurring operation became cheaper per unit, and Apple says the resulting capacity helped the business pursue work it otherwise could not have taken on. That is a customer account, rather than a universal savings promise.
The bill behind the build
Other customers illuminate different needs. Cerebri AI’s Jean Belanger discusses access to talent for machine learning and large language models. Stellantis Financial Services’ Ryan Miller describes a relationship lasting more than eight years. Leprechaun Promotions’ Sean Kindrick recalls an internal software rescue followed by a website build. These accounts suggest several entry points: specialist capacity, sustained delivery and a system that needs attention now.
Then an accounting firm bought the team
On June 4, 2026, Doeren Mayhew announced its acquisition of GRIFFIN. The buyer described a delivery operation with nearly 50 U.S.-based developers and project managers alongside 200 professionals in Kenya. Founder Turner and CEO Dan Hoover remained as principals, overseeing daily operations.
The buyer’s stated rationale was access: its clients needed application integration and AI capabilities without building whole internal teams. GRIFFIN would retain its name and operate as a separate subsidiary. Read as a market signal, the deal suggests that business advice increasingly creates demand for people who can implement the recommended systems.
“Leadership isn’t defined by ideas. It’s defined by execution and accountability for results.”Dan Hoover / GRIFFIN principal, Doeren Mayhew biography
Start with the handoff
The copyable lesson is a purchasing habit. Specify the workflow, choose a unit of value and assign responsibility before discussing team size. Mariner’s cost per bill is one example of a measure that makes operational sense. Another buyer will need a measure tied to its own problem.
This approach fits work that benefits from a continuing delivery relationship. A standard application may already cover a simpler requirement. Distributed delivery also demands decisions, access to relevant systems and people available to answer questions. GRIFFIN’s proposition becomes most useful when a customer can supply that context and needs a team to carry it into working software.