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Freight auditing firm rooted in technology, but CTSI stands apart with customer service

Memphis Business Journal 
By Christopher Sheffield
May 17, 2006

Like a lot of businesses for whom computer technology is the lifeblood of what they do, getting Y2K compliant was a pain in the neck.

For CTSI, it was the thing most responsible for taking the freight bill auditing company to the next level, says J. Ken Hazen president, CEO and sole owner of CTSI.

Starting in the late 1990s, CTSI, better known as Continental Traffic Service, hired two programming firms from India to reinvent its Legacy Information Technology System, the company's meat and potatoes proprietary software, and get it ready for the big meltdown, Hazen says.

The end of the world never happened, but CTSI was so impressed with the new Legacy system that CTSI exercised its option and hired away the two top Indian programmers who did the work.

Beefing up that system, Hazen says, enabled CTSI to grow 10-fold with 60 fewer employees.

"We took that opportunity (of Y2K) to totally change the way we do business," Hazen says.  'since that time it's served us well."

Indeed it has.  In 2005 the company processed 250 million freight bills for 350 clients valued at more than $5 billion.  For comparison, in 1982 when Hazen bought Continental, the one-man company manually processed 40,000 bills per year.  Likewise gross sales have obviously increased, going from $30,000 in 1983 to more than $20 million in 2005.

With 15 terabytes of online storage capacity, CTSI has the ability to store all the books located in the Library of Congress.  But instead of books, the company stores freight bills, more than 500 million of them.

"We're a data warehouse for all of our clients," says Hazen, whose client list is a Who's Who that includes IBM, Dell Computer, Harley Davidson, Gap and Avon Cosmetics.

CTSI keeps the bills because clients track all sorts of info on the bills, and when looking to cut costs, transportation and shipping is an ideal place to start.  Although auditing freight billing is a key part of what CTSI does and where it began, the company has grown into a full-service logistics company that provides information technology, transportation management systems and consulting.

Still, there are "a couple of hundred" companies who do roughly what CTSI does, Hazen says, but CTSI believes it sets itself apart by being adaptable and customer driven.

Banker Mary Ann Hodges has worked with Hazen for five years.  Her bank, Regions Bank, just featured Hazen in its 2005 Annual Report.

Not only is Hazen "fabulous" and "gracious," He's a bit of a Nostradamus.

"He's been a visionary and needed in that industry," Hodges says.  "The way he thinks He's two steps ahead of the market."

To his credit, Hazen says what he does best is hire good people.

He points to key staff like Mason Kauffman, the company's new marketing officer who was named Memphis Business Journal's Executive of the Year in 1999 as founder of Accuship, a one-time competitor of CTSI; Bill Fredrick, a two-time finalist for MBJ's Executive of the Year; and Don Piper, the ex-CEO Freight Facts, which Hazen bought in 1989.

"Adding ex-CEOs to the staff gives us remarkable bench strength," he says.