Rent-to-own News - High Touch named 'Best in Business' by Wichita Business Journal

The Wichita Business Journal today announced the winners of its annual 'Best in Business' competition, which judges companies on their financial health, recent innovations and community involvement.

Among this year's WBJ winners is the rent to own industry's largest software provider, High Touch.

The company was noted for its recent business acquisitions, new product offerings and community support of the Special Olympics State Softball and Golf Tournament and and the creation of a High Touch Scholarship through the WSU Alumni Foundation for a full-time student in the MIS department.

New business acquisitions helped increase the technology company’s regional footprint, and new product offerings made business easier to manage for its client list.

It also racked up an impressive list of nonprofit and charitable efforts during 2010.

Growth and community have been important facets of the company since it began, but both are only possible because High Touch takes care of its own.

“We try and approach the business in a way that says, ‘Hey, we’re a business that treats its employees like family,’” CEO Wayne Chambers told WBJ.

In 2010, the work of the High Touch family helped make the company one of the Wichita Business Journal’s Best in Business.

New footprint

The company acquired Kansas City-based IT Pros Corp. in May and continued its growth by buying Denver, Colo.-based Attain Technologies Inc. in February.

“We made a strategic decision to grow our business, and the vertical that we’re in right now has been pretty stable for many years. It’s not growing,” company vice president Vernon Dolezal says. “As we want to grow our company, we need to look outside those areas.”

Until recently, High Touch has focused primarily on managed services — providing ongoing management of businesses’ computer networks.

The company has also added a managed services offices in Corpus Christi, Texas, as part of what Dolezal calls High Touch’s organic growth.

High Touch also developed new product offerings in 2010, including Envia Mobile Forms and the ASAP Kiosk.
The Envia project pushes most any forms a business would use onto an iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone.

The goal, says High Touch director of research and development Jason Mock, is to provide clients more ways to conduct business in an increasingly paperless world.

The ASAP Kiosks provide customers a kind of one-stop-shop remote setup and can be used as order and payment stations, information hubs and interactive marketing displays.

Another product innovation, Mock says, is the AutoQue voice dialing system, which automates the collection process by sending out calls to remind customers when payments are due.

High Touch has also developed a web-based fleet management system that not only tracks where delivery vehicles are, but also when they are due for maintenance.

And like many of its other products and services, all of the new products can be customized to meet a client’s specific needs.
“That’s actually a lot of what we do,” Mock says.

Home on the Range

Staying involved in the community is also a lot of what High Touch does.

One of the largest efforts was in underwriting the Special Olympics State Softball and Golf Tournament.

The event was hosted in Wichita for the second time last year after a 34-year run in Winfield, Kan.

In all, High Touch employees spent about 550 hours planning the event.

About 50 company employees and family members also pitched in as volunteers.

Another nonprofit effort saw High Touch repair and upgrade more than 2,000 old IBM PCs through a partnership with Rent-A-Center, many of which went to Wichita Public Schools.

The company also participated in a Build Day with Wichita Habitat for Humanity.

Then there was the company’s five year commitment to provide IT services to Rainbows United as that nonprofit gets back on its feet.

High Touch also sponsored events for the American Red Cross, Girl Scouts of Kansas Heartland and Greater Wichita YMCA.
There are also High Touch employees and executives sprinkled throughout a number of local boards and organizations, such as Wichita State University’s MIS Advisory Board, Global Learning Centers of Wichita and Wichita Rotary.

Chambers says all the community involvement is an outward extension of the “moral and ethical” fiber that runs through every level of High Touch.

Everyone there believes in giving back, and although it’s not something required of employees, there is never any shortage of them working to better the community.

The company also worked with the WSU Alumni Foundation to create a High Touch scholarship for a full-time student in the MIS department.

That’s a scholarship company leaders hope will eventually help them mine some local talent in what High Touch Director of IT Managed Services and Web Development Kevin Colborn calls “the Silicon Prairie.”

“We definitely have the talent here,” he says.