During his 16 years at the helm of Fiserv Inc, George D. Dalton transformed a data-processing outfit with 120 customers and 300 employees into a $1.6 billion (€1.72 billion) global organisation with 14,000 employees and 10,000 customers.
At age 72, one might imagine that Mr Dalton, the founder and former chairman and chief executive officer of Fiserv, would begin to slow down.
But instead of easing into retirement he has founded a new company, Call Solutions.com Inc, in Waukesha, Wisconsin, to take advantage of what he perceives to be an enormous new opportunity in outsourcing: providing call centre services.
About 80 per cent of companies run their call centres inhouse, but outsourcing has begun to take hold, Mr Dalton said. According to his estimates, the market is extremely fragmented, with 3,231 outsourcers in the United States.
From Call Solutions' offices at Criet's Field, a small airport west of Milwaukee where Mr Dalton keeps his airplane, the company's chairman and chief executive has embarked on the same type of acquisition streak that characterised his tenure at Fiserv, where he made 92 acquisitions.
In its first six months, Call Solutions bought two companies: GLS Direct of Philadelphia and Advantage Line Telemarketing of Williston, North Dakota. The acquisitions give Call Solutions eight call centres, annualised revenues of about $20 million, and 1,100 employees.
For Mr Dalton, the new gig fills the gaps that six grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, civic activities, a Harley Davidson motorbike and a small airplane could not.
He said he left Fiserv only after deciding that he needed "to get out of the window because I wasn't a youngster anymore". Also, at age 56, Leslie M. Muma, Mr Dalton's successor at Fiserv, "created a better image", he said.
When he started casting about for a new full-time engagement, he found that the call centre industry was "a tremendous opportunity", because it was "ripe for consolidation and improvement in terms of quality of service".
Handily, Ross L. Housley (60), one of Mr Dalton's best friends and a neighbour, happened to be president and chief executive officer of GLS Direct. The two began to talk about setting up a new venture last spring, around the same time Mr Dalton retired from Fiserv. (He remains a director on the board.) Mr Housley became president and chief operating officer of Call Solutions when it acquired GLS. Call Solutions acquired Advantage Line, an inbound call centre, in November.
Mr Dalton said he expects that by this month the company will have doubled its centres and employees through additional acquisitions. He used his own money and bank lines of credit to finance the acquisitions.
Mr Dalton says he hopes to differentiate Call Solutions from other outsourcers by providing additional services, such as fulfilment and printing. "Most centres don't do fulfilment, printing or warehousing, so this will make us unique."
Call Solutions is aiming to serve businesses with $10 million or less in annual revenues that cannot afford to set up their own call centre and fulfilment operations, Mr Dalton said. "They don't have the talent or the capital. We can eliminate the redundancies for them in the area of technology."
Mr Michael Coady, senior equity analyst at Sidoti & Company, a New York brokerage firm that focuses on small-cap companies, says technology and the Internet are creating a need for improved call centre services.
"To be competitive in this space, a company needs to have e-mail management capability, including automated and/or customised responses," he said. "And it needs the ability to update a customer's account in real time, regardless of the means of communication, whether by e-mail, phone, or fax."
Even organisations with very large customer bases, such as financial services firms and telecommunications carriers, are starting to outsource sales and customer service to one or more third-party providers, Mr Coady says.
The Internet has increased the need for better call centres, Mr Dalton believes. "Even in the electronic world, there's a need for humans." Call centres of the future will incorporate more automation to help humans serve customers better, he said. "People don't give the telephone enough recognition. I think we'll improve the delivery system."
Eight people work out of Call Solutions' head office, including Edward P. Alberts, senior vicepresident and treasurer, who spends his winters in Palm Springs California. Mr Alberts, who is aged 77, retired as senior vice-president of finance at Fiserv in May 1999, but has been enticed out of retirement "mostly by George," he said. "He's a piece of work. He likes to work with me, and I like to work with him. It's been fun."
He continues to advise Mr Dalton on the structure of acquisitions by evaluating the target companies' financials. "I think George is going to build another company that is going to be a success," he said. Mr Muma, president and chief executive officer of Fiserv, said, "George is focused and a tenacious son of a gun. If anyone can succeed in the call centre business, he can". The industry is potentially a high-growth one, Mr Muma said, though the business can be tough "because of the people turnover."
Mr Arthur Gillis, president of the Computer Based Solutions consulting firm in Dallas, said Mr Dalton's move into the call centre industry was not something he expected. However, "he really has a sense for what works in this business," Mr Gillis said. "He's got the record, and he's got the energy. The only factors that could slow him down are conditions in the marketplace.
"I know him as an honourable, straight-talking guy . . . Unlike other guys who may have smarts and skills, George has a huge heart. He's a people man."
Mr Dalton, whose workday generally begins at 6.15 a.m. and ends at 6.30 p.m., shows no signs of slowing down. "This is what I do for my fun," he said.
