The controversial 2000 Presidential elections, with its hanging chads and voter irregularities, ultimately worked out in favor of a man from Texas named Bush.
But for a Bloomfield guy named Jerry Long, the subsequent talks about voter and election reforms spurred what would be a profitable growth spurt for his information technology business.
After George W. Bush signed the landmark Help America Vote Act in 2002, nobody was celebrating longer and louder than the staff at PCC Technology Group LLC, which had dedicated much of its energies into developing a centralized voter registration data base in Connecticut.
The Help America Vote Act provided billions of dollars in federal funding to radically transform voter registration systems across the country. PCC had already contracted with Connecticut.
Now, all of America was open to installing state of the art voter registration systems and reforms.
“We went berserk in this office,” said Long, president and CEO of PCC, “because we had a solution.”
In 2004, PCC set up West Virginia’s first online, real-time centralized system, under then Secretary of State Joseph Manchin III. Manchin went on to become governor and later U.S. senator. PCC’s business continued to grow during Manchin’s ascension.
Soon, other states would also become clients, including Rhode Island, Idaho, New Jersey, Maine and New Hampshire. PCC estimates that it serves about 25 million customers in the states where they have set up IT programs.
“We are implementing right now a centralized voter registration for the state of Georgia and that’s a huge opportunity for us,” Long said. “They have three and a half million voters.”
New York City and California are markets PCC would like to tap as well.
Long’s dream of running his own business would have never happened if he was not downsized by The Hartford Insurance Co. on a date he recalls with fondness — “Jan. 14, 1988.”
That date was a seminal moment in his life.
“I had been asking my manager to lay me off, because I wanted to do something else,” Long, 61, said. “I wanted to do this.” Prior to The Hartford, Long had worked in the business sector, including 13 years as a manager at GE.
PCC started as a home consulting business — the acronym standing for Personal Consulting Business — in Long’s basement in 1988. He recalls working 18-hour days, manning the phones to cultivate clients, installing computers and teaching customers how to navigate this thing called a mouse. But soon, the need for that type of training was dissipating. PCC needed to evolve. In 1995, he and his business partner Joe Singh launched PCC Technology Group LLC with a new focus on internet technology solutions.
PCC was working with Connecticut to develop software for a centralized registered voter data base and a system for filing campaign finance reports online. The company later expanded its product line and developed a program for Connecticut that allows businesses to register online. The Commercial Recording Division product also enables states to compile an annual report on the businesses registered.
About 65 percent of PCC’s business is election and campaign finances; the rest deals with IT solutions for the utilities, transportation, health care and manufacturing sectors.
The company has doubled its revenue in 10 years and is recognized as one of New England’s leading providers of IT and e-government services. Long estimates PCC will bring in about $10 million this year. There are about 45 employees, mostly business analysts, programmers and those called architects, people who focus on logistics and the cohesion of the products.
Long and Singh met through mutual friends years ago. These days, Long focuses on relationship management with clients, while Singh handles the bulk of the technology issues and works with staff to educate consumers.
“My strengths are relationship management,” Long said. “I’ve got relationships with a lot of different people. And managing those relationships, leveraging those relationships, turning those relationships into business, I think that’s my greatest strength.”
The partners see social media and mobile devices as significant opportunities to enhance PCC’s business, while helping governments promote democracy and transparency. The next step for PCC is to reach out to towns and cities within the states, not just the states themselves. The minority-owned company makes its money by charging a fee to set up an IT solution and also a usage fee. It’s a model similar to the business structure of a utility.
The risk Long and Singh took almost 20 years ago is paying off. Both are finding fulfillment and excitement as entrepreneurs. “We look at this as an opportunity to transform what we’ve done until now,” Singh said. “And this growth has allowed both mine and Jerry’s entrepreneurial spirits to rise. It’s a fun time right now.”
“It’s a joy,” said Long. “I was able to find a niche, focus on it and do the best we can within that niche. And it’s important to me because of the voting piece.”
Long, an African American and native of Tennessee, is sensitive to the long history of voter disenfranchisement. His grandfather, Luther Long, never had the opportunity to vote for president. The Voters Rights Act was passed in 1965. Luther Long died in 1967, a year before the presidential elections.
So, while PCC conducts its business on the election and campaign finance reform front, the endeavors are very much personal for its founder.
Stan Simpson is host of “The Stan Simpson Show” (www.ctnow.com/stan and Saturdays, 6:30 a.m., on FoxCT) and senior executive adviser at the Hartford Journalism & Media Academy. His ‘Faces of business’ column appears monthly. Know someone who’d make a good subject for ‘Faces of business’? Contact Simpson at Faces@stansimpson@comcast.net.
