“Serving the Clients with Best Solutions”

Richard Long joined Technology Group Solutions (TGS) because of the company’s dedication towards its customers. Richard had prior experience working with the company's founders (Lenora Payne and Doug Floersch) while he was with several OEM technology companies that were, and still are, partners of TGS. “I found the TGS “customer first” approach to be refreshing, given my experience with “other” Value Added Resellers I worked with in the past who seem to care more about “the PO” than they do about the client and their business outcomes,” says Richard, the Senior VP of TGS. “Secondly, because TGS is a Certified Woman and Minority owned business, giving back and investing in our community is core to the TGS culture. We treat our employees, clients, and partners like people, not job titles and staff members.”

For Richard, the ideology of TGS is what matters the most. The company helps its customers adopt technologies that enable their businesses to thrive in a connected world. The process begins with building a relationship that allows TGS to understand the client's business objectives and needs wholly. From there, Richard and his team tailor solutions around next-generation technologies to drive specific business outcomes and accelerate the customers’ return on investment. “And because we work with industry-leading technology partners, we’re in a unique position to offer the latest, leading-edge technologies and solutions available in the marketplace today,” elucidates Richard. “A team of dedicated technology experts, community leaders, teachers, and advocates, we’re more than an IT solutions provider. Our business is built on relationships, and since 2005, we’ve helped shape the way businesses approach IT by providing solutions that help our clients become more efficient, more accountable, and more profitable.”

TGS is a full service IT consulting firm with capabilities to manage all aspects of your IT environment – from data centers, hardware, software, security platforms to end-user devices. Looking to move your office, build new, or expand your IT environment? TGS has the expertise to get the job done right.

When TGS decides to enter a new space, product offering, or service category, aligning the company's many teams and business units is always a herculean effort. The most recent success for TGS was the advent of its Cybersecurity practice. As Richard states, a comprehensive Cybersecurity practice requires immense talent, planning, training and education, and organizational growth. Sometimes inspiration comes from external resources for the team, and hiring an outside industry expert to lead the effort was a pivotal step in advancing TGS's mission. Bringing in someone with deep knowledge and experience in the field, well-known and respected in the industry, was a massive advantage to inspiring the existing team.

“I expect 100% effort from every employee based on their skill level, time in the industry, and time with the company. Our greatest strength is our employees. We consider our “pedigree” to be one of highly trained, highly skilled, problem solvers and critical thinkers, solution architects, systems engineers, and service technicians,” explains Richard. “We use a variety of tools and methods to measure our business and use the various data to react according to our client’s needs, the market, and the economy. Our tools include subscription services from ZoomInfo, LinkedIn, ConnectWise, etc. We also leverage annual reports and other publicly available data sourced directly from customer and prospective customers’ website.”

For the near future, Richard and his team anticipate doubling in revenue over the next five years and increasing headcount by nearly 30%. “Apart from that, believe it or not, we’re super excited about our community initiatives to elevate young African American’s and other minority groups in the most underserved areas of the communities we serve,” says Richard. “Today, African American’s make up LESS than 9% of the IT workforce in America. We believe this is an injustice to the African American community, but it also presents an incredible opportunity to tap into a largely ignored pool of talented individuals in our inner-city schools.”

Hence, TGS has built a program in partnership with the Kansas City Chiefs and Cisco that they call SHIPS. Ships are InternSHIP, ScholarSHIP, ApprenticeSHIP, MentorSHIP, LeaderSHIP, and PartnerSHIP. The program is funded through TGS Profits as its customers, and prospective customers (the PartnerSHIP piece of SHIPs) invest with TGS as their IT Consulting and Services partner; they can fund the program through the profits. “If we hit the revenue growth that we’re poised for, we’ll fund 100’s of kids through this program in one way or another, changing the trajectory of their lives forever, and build generational change for the betterment of our communities,” adds Richard. IE