James Taylor, CEO of CHR Solutions since December 2006, oversaw one of the more significant acquisitions in the BSS/OSS space in the last two years when his company acquired Martin Group in September 2009. That’s kind of his thing, growing companies. A growth rate of 143 percent over three years earned him and his company a ranking in the upper half of Inc. magazine’s 2010 survey for private companies and earned him personally his third consecutive finalist nomination in E&Y’s Entrepreneur awards. And CHR was named the 33rd fastest growing company in Houston based on its growth from 2007-2009.
Perhaps more impressive is its market share. CHR has 875 of the roughly 1,342 Tier 3 telcos in the U.S. as customers. And for a company that serves primarily the rural independent telco market, it also has clients in 14 international locations. It’s pretty hot in the Pacific Rim. Taylor, recently named to B/OSS' Best In Leadership, spoke with B/OSS editor Tim McElligott about his company’s leadership position, trends in the Tier 3 space and the long lost art of executive leadership training.
B/OSS: You have four elements to your business – consulting, engineering, software and managed services – so what is CHR really all about?
James Taylor: We believe it is all about solutions. In today’s world, that means a combination of software, services and infrastructure. We have four data centers that we own. Nobody else owns their data centers. We offer cloud computing, Software-as-a-Service and are really focused on the overall solution that best meets a client’s needs. It takes a lot of people to help you get it done. We have over 510 professionals.
In addition to having roughly 875 of the roughly 1,342 Tier 3 telcos in America, we work with a number of local municipalities as well as cable companies – some of which also have wireless and wireline. We have clients in 14 international locations. Whether they run on fiber, copper, coax or wireless, we provide the full suite of services to help them strategize, plan, engineer, implement, manage and operate as a communications service provider.
We have the size, scale and leverage to service the bigger guys, but we also focus very hard on having the local client touch and customer services to handle the small guy. Because the small guys has the same requirements but less resources to get things done.
B/OSS: It sounds like a pretty handsome trick to maintain a personal touch with so many rural providers. How do you manage?
JT: First we have our client solutions group and a client services group. The solutions group is in the field all the time. They are engineering, regulatory, cost separation, strategy and marketing. Each practice leader maintains the touch they have always had with those small accounts. Laid over the top of that we have our account management team, dedicated folks who focus on nothing but Tier 3s. We separate the teams so the accounts that are Tier 3s are not competing with Tier 2s for account management resources.
