Gary is the President of Leap Managed IT, a business solutions firm started in 1937 by his grandfather. It was during an internship with the family business that Gary discovered the entire model would have to change in order to stay in business. Gary transformed the company from a printing business to an IT management firm. Although still offering some commercial imaging solutions, Gary’s company now focuses strongly on working with clients’ leadership teams to turn their IT deliverables into business models through backup, security, and compliance. Gary’s proud to work with area companies and organizations to align their business goals with ever-changing technology to increase their efficiency.
Transcript
My name is Gary Thomas. And I own a I-T company here in Muncie, Indiana called LEAP Managed IT. So our family business started in 1930 by my grandfather and he worked for the railroad. And then he got let go during the Great Depression. So then he was getting phone calls at home and he started his typewriter business out of his garage with him and my grandma. So that's how they got started. We have two divisions of our company. One is, we're in the imaging business. So big copier, and printer and scanner systems that you would see in most enterprise or office-level environments. The other side is our Managed I-T division which is our fastest growing division. And we work very closely with leadership teams of other organizations, ownership, presidents, CFOs, and we turn their I-T deliverable into a business model for them, and treat their end users like clients to make them more efficient. So everything from backup, security, compliance. Just alligning the business goals with technology to figure out, how do we make it move faster and do what they actually need it to do. So, I do a lot of business development. And also, too, from a leadership standpoint, with our clients, sometimes I'm that point-of-contact of having delicate conversations about the business, where they're trying to go, opportunities or challenges that they have. Maybe they have to make an employee change internally in their business. They need a liaison to talk to say, what's the impact if I have to get rid of my CFO tomorrow, or make a change in an accounting firm, or how this process flows and works. They consult with us on that and lot of times, it's just literally my cellphone because they wanna have a peer conversation with somebody that they can trust and kind of vent a little bit to, and say, okay, well how do we figure this out an solve it. The other side of the business that I handle and work with as a team is just the leadership side of just running the organization itself. So everything from assisting with H-R, goals, objectives, key performance indicators, what are we trying to tackle and accomplish, vendor relationships, sometimes a cheerleader internally. Really, it's just the people side and running the business. I just like to look at it as the technology is just a tool, so we can't be so driven that this technology is gonna continue to solve a problem because tomorrow we could be like, poof, there's a better cloud-based service out there. You don't need servers in-house. How does that impact and change the business goals?
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