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Unicorns are Real!

I’ve been hiding something from you all, I’m ashamed to admit. But it’s time I fess up and come clean about my guilty pleasure. Please don’t judge me too harshly, but I have a thing for unicorns. Yes, unicorns. And wouldn’t you know it, my love of those mythical beasts is seeded in none other than commercial billings and payments. Indeed, it’s true…

It all began several months ago when two of my colleagues and I were on a conference call with a client. The client was mourning his inability to secure a certain fleet’s interest in the private label program we operated. In the end, it came down to a business problem that had yet to be solved.

You see, the fleet employs both company drivers and owner operators. And the fleet assumes financial responsibility only for parts and maintenance services its company drivers purchase on its behalf, while owner operators are individually responsible for their purchases. But nevertheless, dealers continue to bill the fleet for owner operators’ transactions. Understandably, the fleet was reluctant to join a private label program in which dealers could erroneously charge the company for an independent contractor’s purchases. This fleet needed a fool-proof way to ENSURE that dealers contacted the company’s support group for approval to bill the company’s private label account for EVERY purchase.

Mike, Jason, and I began to ask ourselves “What if?” And several rounds of What If’s later, we had devised a solution. Give the company’s support group the ability to generate a single-use private label account number. This would require all dealers to contact the company’s support group before billing ANY purchase to the fleet’s account (because you can’t very well bill if you don’t have an account number to bill to).

Long story short, the client embraced the idea and pitched it to the fleet, who accepted it as a viable solution to a previously unsolved business challenge. And after we hung up the telephone, quite pleased with our ability to think outside of the box, Jason said quietly, “It’s sort of like we made a unicorn.”

Perhaps it was the marathon conference call we had engaged in, or perhaps it is simply the fact that we have all worked together for far too long, but Jason’s statement made complete sense to both Mike and me. And so it began…our quest to make unicorns real, i.e., bring to life projects that break the mold of what exists today at Multi Service.

So now, just a few months later, my desk is adorned with entirely too much unicorn paraphernalia. But, more importantly, we have more than one dozen “unicorn projects” on the horizon, each bestowed with a beautiful, fantastic name befitting only a mythical unicorn.

--Jenny