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At the core to our strategy for improving bottom line growth is a continued emphasis on increasing the mix of higher-margin solutions business as a percentage of CTG’s total revenue. In addition to having a more favorable margin profile, solutions offerings represent higher-value services with the opportunity for deeper client engagement and increased loyalty. Today, we are well positioned for future growth with our comprehensive, yet adaptable, Application AdvantageTM and Enterprise Information Management (EIM) AdvantageTM solutions offerings. As part of our ongoing ONE CTG initiative to globalize our Solutions teams, we will also continue to expand our solutions offerings to address the evolving needs of both new and existing clients.
Specific to our Staffing business, we are being more selective in the new business opportunities we pursue. This includes targeting middle-market clients, especially for higher-value professional staffing, and continuing to improve our sales organization’s effectiveness. We also remain focused on other initiatives to enhance the future operating results of our Staffing business in North America, including optimizing recruiting resources and utilization levels, and retaining and more efficiently redeploying top talent in anticipation of future client demand.
These strategic objectives have been fundamental to the performance of our European operations – with a consistently expanding mix of Solutions business growing to approximately 50% of European revenue and contributing to nine consecutive years of profitable growth. This accomplishment was the result of strong teamwork to develop and execute on sound business strategies at the right time and with the right people. As part of our broader goal to drive improved company-wide performance, we are intently focused on replicating the success we have consistently demonstrated in our European operations across our enterprise.
Investments to Drive Future Profitable Growth
We continued to make significant investments to drive future profitable growth and revenue quality. As part of realigning the focus of our North America operations during 2018, we invested an additional nearly $3.5 million in personnel, including leadership, business development, recruiting and marketing. As a direct result of making these investments, we secured a number of new and expanded contracts during 2018, including our win with Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI). As further evidence of measurable returns on our investments, our Health Solutions business exited the year with a third consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth and an expanded pipeline of new engagements.
While we are realizing the meaningfultop-line benefit from these investments, the expected positive returns had yet to fully materialize byyear-end 2018. We have since begun to see small but increasing benefits from these efforts in the early part of 2019; this initial lag is also consistent with what we experienced during the earlier periods of similar past investments in our European operations.
We also plan to make meaningful investments in 2019 of nearly $1.5 million to expand, enhance and globalize our existing solutions offerings as well as continue to position our Health Solutions business to address the healthcare industry’s ongoing transition to value-based care.
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