Conner Business Systems Family
About

A St. Louis records industry that traces back to 1950.
A firm built to carry it forward.

The Records Resource Group is the modern records and information management practice of Conner Business Systems — a St. Louis firm founded in 1990 by Gary Conner, who came up in the records industry through the family business his grandfather started in 1950. This is the story of the firm, the people behind it, and the long view that shapes how we work.

The Firm

Conner Business Systems. Founded 1990. Still here.

Conner Business Systems was founded in 1990 by Gary Conner in St. Louis, Missouri. The firm has operated continuously for thirty-five years, through every economic cycle and every wave of technological change in business records management — from microfiche to networked file servers, from paper-based filing to electronic document management, from local databases to cloud platforms, and now to AI-enabled document processing.

We've outlasted most of the firms we started alongside. We've adapted as the technology landscape has shifted. We've kept clients for years and decades — many of whom started working with us in the early years and are still working with us today. The longevity isn't accidental. It's the result of a deliberate philosophy: build slowly, do the work properly, stay current with the tools, and never grow faster than we can serve well.

We're not a startup. We're not a roll-up. We're not backed by private equity. We're an independent, founder-operated firm.

For thirty-five years we've been quietly serving established mid-market organizations. We intend to be doing this work for at least another three and a half decades.

That intention is the foundation of how we operate. When we tell a client we're built for the long record, we mean it — because we have the operating history to back it up.

Today, CBS operates as a family of related practices. The Records Resource Group is the managed records and information management service. eForms & More AI is the document management platform that supports much of the work. Engineered Shelving handles the physical archive shelving, library systems, and high-density storage that complements the digital programs. Different practices, one operating philosophy — and one continuous craft, carried forward from 1950.

A Long Lineage

Records management has been the family business since 1950.

The work began in St. Louis in 1950, when Gary's grandfather started a records management business at a time when the discipline was almost entirely physical — paper files, filing cabinets, retention policies enforced by hand, document retrieval that required someone to actually walk to the right shelf. The firm served St. Louis-area businesses for decades, and the standards of the discipline were established in Gary's family during that era. Many of the underlying principles his grandfather worked by — classification, retention, defensibility, accessibility — haven't fundamentally changed. What's changed is the tools.

Gary worked in his grandfather's business before the firm was sold, stayed on after the sale to work for the new owners, and continued there until he founded Conner Business Systems in 1990. Working inside a records business through both family ownership and post-acquisition ownership shaped how he understood the work — and ultimately convinced him that an independent, founder-operated practice was the right model for the discipline. When he founded CBS in 1990, he was carrying forward a craft he'd grown up inside, applied with the most current tools available, and structured deliberately as an independent firm with its own identity.

1950
The family enters the St. Louis records industry
Gary's grandfather founds a records management business in St. Louis, serving area businesses through the era of paper filing, retention policies, and physical document retrieval.
~1980s
Gary works in the family business
Gary works in his grandfather's records management business, learning the discipline from inside an established St. Louis firm.
~Late 1980s
The firm is sold; Gary stays on
Gary's grandfather sells the business. Gary continues working at the firm under its new ownership, gaining perspective on records management through both family-owned and post-acquisition operating models.
1990
Conner Business Systems founded
Gary founds Conner Business Systems in St. Louis as an independent, founder-operated firm — carrying forward a craft he'd grown up inside, applied with the most current tools available.
2025
The Records Resource Group launched
RRG is established as the firm's modern records and information management practice — built on thirty-five years of independent operating history and a family lineage that traces back to 1950.

A continuous family connection to the St. Louis records industry going back to 1950 is unusual in this field. It's part of why we approach records management as a craft rather than as a software category. The technology will continue to change. The craft is older than any of the technology, and it persists.

Gary Conner, Founder
Gary Conner
Founder · Conner Business Systems
The Founder

Gary Conner.

Gary Conner founded Conner Business Systems in 1990 after earning a degree in accounting and spending years working in the St. Louis records management business his grandfather had founded — first under family ownership, and then under the new owners after his grandfather sold the firm. The combination of formal accounting training, direct experience inside the records discipline, and the perspective of having watched a successful records business transition through ownership change shaped the practice he built.

He saw that mid-market organizations were systematically underserved by the records and document management industry — the large national firms were chasing Fortune 500 contracts, the small operators didn't have the technical depth to handle complex compliance and integration requirements, and the mid-market was caught in between. Thirty-five years later, that gap still exists in most regions. RRG was built specifically to serve it.

Numbers should be honest. Work should be verifiable. Promises should be specific. These are accounting principles applied to a different but related discipline.

Gary's accounting background informs how the firm operates. Records management at scale is fundamentally a discipline of accuracy, accountability, and defensibility — the same principles that govern good accounting. The firm's commitment to transparent pricing, milestone-based billing, and honest assessment all trace back to that foundation.

His years inside the records industry — first in his grandfather's business, then under the firm's new owners — shaped a different dimension of the practice. Records management done well is craft work — slow, patient, governed by principles that have to be applied consistently over years. Mass-market technology vendors don't understand this. Bookkeepers and IT generalists don't either. The discipline is its own thing, and it requires people who have spent enough time inside it to understand how it actually works. That kind of grounding is rare in today's records and document technology market, and it's part of what differentiates RRG from competitors who came at the discipline from a software-first perspective.

Gary remains personally involved in every client engagement. The firm is structured deliberately to keep that possible — small enough that the founder is reachable, large enough to support every commitment we make. The Records Resource Group is capped at fifty clients precisely because beyond that point, the founder's involvement would have to be diluted, and the character of the firm would change. We've chosen depth over scale.

A Long-Standing Principle

For thirty-five years, we've worked alongside our clients' specialized systems — not against them.

The principle that drives how we work today — we don't replace your specialized systems, we make them work better together — isn't a positioning statement. It's how the firm has operated since the beginning.

When CBS was founded in 1990, our clients were running early accounting systems, custom-built operational software, and document management platforms that took years to implement. Replacing those systems wasn't on the table. The work was always at the seams between them — capturing records, routing documents, integrating data, making the existing investments work better together.

That principle has held through every generation of technology. The platforms have changed many times. The principle hasn't. We work alongside QuickBooks, Sage, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, Acumatica, Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, industry-specific MRPs and ERPs, and the hundreds of other specialized systems mid-market organizations rely on. We don't try to replace them. We make them work harder.

This is part of why our client relationships last so long. Clients don't have to choose between their existing investments and the records discipline they need. They get both.

How We Think About The Work

A few principles that haven't changed in thirty-five years.

Build for the long record.

Records management isn't a project — it's a discipline that has to be sustained over decades. The same is true of the firm. We make decisions that benefit the long-term health of the relationship and the firm, even when shorter-term gains are available. The clients who have worked with us for twenty years are the proof that this works.

The right technology for the right job.

We don't apply tools because they're available. We apply them because they solve the right problem. Some workflows benefit from AI. Some benefit from automation. Some benefit most from being redesigned as a human process with better records discipline. Knowing which is which is the craft.

Disciplined work, plainly described.

We don't oversell. We don't pad reports. We don't use language to obscure what we're actually doing. If the work is going well, we'll tell you. If it isn't, we'll tell you that too — and what we recommend doing about it. Plain communication isn't a marketing position; it's how we actually operate.

Stay independent.

We've turned down acquisition conversations more than once. Independence is what makes long-term decision-making possible. A firm beholden to outside investors would have to optimize for different things. We've chosen the option that lets us stay focused on the work.

Cap our growth.

We've deliberately structured the firm to operate at a scale where the founder remains personally involved in every engagement. Growth beyond that scale would change the character of the firm in ways we don't want. We'd rather be the right size and serve well than be larger and serve worse.

Work alongside, not against.

Your accounting system, your ERP, your CRM, your industry-specific software — these are investments your team has built around. We don't replace them. We integrate, share data, and make the existing systems more efficient. The investments stay intact. The expertise stays valuable.

Why We Built RRG

The discipline deserved its own practice.

For most of CBS's history, records and information management was one of several services the firm offered. We provided records consulting alongside business technology services, document management platform implementation, and the physical records products our clients also needed.

Over the last several years, two things became clear. First, the records and information management discipline was becoming substantially more demanding — driven by the volume of digital records, the complexity of regulatory environments, the pressure of cybersecurity and privacy obligations, and the emergence of AI-enabled document technologies that finally made comprehensive records management practical for mid-market organizations. Second, the buyers who needed this discipline most weren't being well-served by existing alternatives. The national records firms were priced for Fortune 500 budgets. The local document management resellers didn't have the records expertise. The mid-market was caught in the same gap that motivated the founding of CBS thirty-five years ago.

The Records Resource Group was created to address that gap directly. It's a focused practice within Conner Business Systems, with its own brand, its own identity, and its own service model — but built on the full institutional foundation of the parent firm.

Operating the practice as RRG rather than as a CBS service line accomplishes a few things. It makes the practice's identity clear and complete on its own terms. It allows the service model to be productized in a way that supports eventual reseller relationships and broader geographic reach. And it establishes the practice as a durable institution in its own right — one that will continue to serve clients regardless of which generation of the firm is leading it.

The Records Resource Group is built on three-quarters of a century of records industry heritage. It's structured to outlast its founder. It's designed for the long record.

Where We Are

St. Louis. By design.

We're based in St. Louis, Missouri, and we've operated from here for thirty-five years. Our regional grounding is deliberate. We work primarily with established mid-market organizations across the central United States, and we believe in the value of being physically present with our clients on a regular cadence — which is much harder to do at scale across a national footprint.

Our hybrid engagement model includes regular on-site presence with every client, regardless of tier. For most clients, that means we're physically at their location at least monthly. For some, it means weekly or bi-weekly. The remote work — platform operations, document processing, ongoing improvement — happens in parallel.

Being a regional firm with a national-quality practice is a deliberate choice. It means we can't serve every prospective client. It also means the clients we do serve get a level of attention that national firms can't match.

If you're outside our typical service area and our work seems like a good fit, talk to us. There are circumstances under which we serve clients beyond the central US, particularly when the work justifies it and the relationship can support an appropriate cadence. The conversation is the right place to figure out whether it makes sense.

A Personal Note

We chose to do this for a long time.

The firm we've built isn't an accident. It's the result of deliberate choices made over thirty-five years — to stay independent, to grow slowly, to invest in the discipline rather than chase scale, to serve a specific kind of client well rather than a larger number of clients superficially. If your organization has been around for a while and plans to stick around, we'd be a good fit.

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Built for the long record.