Nearly a year ago, Glynn Ingram had an idea. He wanted to provide bundled telecommunications services to small businesses and consumers on one bill.
So he and a few colleagues from MobileComm formed Unity Communications Services and hit the Mississippi roads to share the idea with potential investors.
The result was enough money to get the company to market.
“The amount of money we raised was phenomenal,” said Ingram, president and chief executive officer of Unity. “We raised enough money to get us to market and more.”
Ingram’s business practices may be old fashioned, but his ideas aren’t. He believes the new Jackson, Miss.-based company is well prepared to enter the dawning market of one-stop shopping.
“I see a lot of companies pitching bundled services that are not well positioned to offer service. The network and their products are add ons. We believe that everyone is doing a great job of creating demand, they’re just not doing a great job [of implementing it]. We want to meet the product before we launch service,” said Ingram.
Unity’s initial plans are to offer wireless telephone service, paging, long-distance service and Internet access when it launches its services in selected Southeastern markets this year.
With plans to become national in scope, the company will begin by focusing on second-tier markets with populations under 1 million. Eventually local phone service, cable and satellite services will be added to the bundle.
“We have set up to be a national distribution company,” said Ingram. “If we go into a market and find another company offering a better service, we can offer that service too.”
The company plans to have a national reseller agreement for every service it will offer. Ingram said Unity already has established a national agreement for paging service and is in the process of making proposals for long-distance service.
One important key to Unity’s success will be customer service-the Achilles’ heel for some of the larger players, commented Ingram.
“Most of the larger companies have billing systems that are large and difficult to modify very quickly. It’s very difficult to bring in a new product, and it’s cumbersome for customer service. Customers tend to get routed. Our basic principle is that (customers) will not be transferred. We are designing a system from the ground up. Our people will be well educated about every aspect,” explained Ingram.
Ingram, a former senior executive at MobileComm who left in April 1996 to form Unity, said the company will take a distinct and scientific approach when marketing its services.
“We want to go into the marketplace and identify every account and customer and approach each segment in the most efficient way,” he said.
Success for the future will require companies to be very relationship oriented, he added.
