Pushing for paperless

WILKES-BARRE – If there are eight million stories in the Naked City, about a third of them involve minor violations of law like hopping a subway turnstile.

Keeping track of the ensuing paperwork has kept a city company busy for more than two decades.

PC Data Centers of PA Inc. has been operating quietly since 1989 from sixth-floor offices on Public Square, managing tickets handed out by the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority and doing work for other city government agencies.

“We are the deepest, darkest secret in Wilkes-Barre,” joked president and CEO Dorothy Holtzer last week.

That’s about to change. A new marketing push will target local companies for the document management specialist that also counts Fortune 500 companies among its customers, most of them headquartered in New York.

The Big Apple itself is a major client; between tracking scofflaws on the subway and bus system and other work, PC Data Centers handles 10,000 to 15,000 transactions daily. Corporate work includes managing the customer loyalty program for nationwide office supplies retailer Staples. And the company has handled the payroll for highly regarded Yeshiva University for 20 years, Holtzer proudly points out.

Holtzer and recently hired marketing director Tom Williams said the new emphasis on nearby business is a response to declines elsewhere, some of them tracing back to the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on Manhattan. When the World Trade Center towers fell, some of PC Data Centers’ customers were devastated and never recovered.

“We’ve had all this work from New York City; now we don’t,” Williams said.

By the time of the attacks, the company had been headquartered in Wilkes-Barre for a dozen years. The move came after winning renewal of the city work. Getting the bid meant lowering the price and that required cutting costs.

Also, equipping two offices with “extremely expensive” technology was prohibitive – one software license can cost more than $100,000 and sophisticated scanners go for $50,000 each, Williams said – so Holtzer had to choose where to invest.

She considered relocating to Scranton, Hazleton and Connecticut. “Wilkes-Barre rolled out the red carpet for us,” she said, crediting then-Mayor Lee Namey. In return, “we brought millions of dollars of work here to Wilkes-Barre.”

Another challenge has been the wide availability of inexpensive scanners and organizing software for personal computers. That has led some offices to take a do-it-yourself approach to billing and record-keeping.

Holtzer, who declines to give her age and maintains a rapid-fire New York pace even after living in Bear Creek since 1989, says few individual businesses can afford the time to properly do that work.

“We give them a retrieval system,” she said, after scanning documents with highly sensitive equipment. “All they have to do is hit three keys and get any data they want.” She sees potential in local law and medical offices or any business that accumulates paper records, such as a trucking company.

“We could do this work for people around here that want to get rid of paper,” Holtzer said. So far it’s been a challenge to find willing candidates. “They just seem to like paper,” she mused.

Williams plans to attend an upcoming meeting of Luzerne County officials looking for the best way to manage its records, many of them now stored in boxes at the Thomas C. Thomas building.

“We want to see if we can offer some direction,” Williams said, whether that means doing the work for the county or providing a document management system and training county personnel.

Williams, 40, came on board about two months ago, charged with rounding up local business. The West Pittston native spent seven years in Colorado as a professional skier after earning degrees from Luzerne County Community College and Penn State.

“Passion about using the Internet,” Williams started and later sold a website design and marketing firm and still owns goregister.net.

After taking a job in Chicago, then working for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign he returned to the area looking for the right career fit, finding it in PC Data Centers.

In addition to developing a marketing plan, Williams quickly set up an internship program with local colleges.

“I love helping youth and mentoring youth,” he said and already has recruited two interns from Wilkes University while establishing ties with Misericordia University and other local institutions.

PC Data Centers employs 35, with a dozen of them full-time. At its peak there were more than 100 but improved scanning technology has lightened the workload. Still, people are the last and best check for accuracy and skilled operators hands are a blur as they enter or correct data.

“We’ve trained all of Wilkes-Barre,” Holtzer said with pride. While many former employees have moved on to other jobs, “we kept the best. Ninety-five percent of our employees have been with us 15 or more years.”