CoreCentric has been helping clients around the world build business value and increase customer satisfaction through the recovery, repair, and return of appliances, parts, and related consumer goods since 1995.
In 2016, CoreCentric got the funding they needed to consolidate and strengthen their overall operations by opening a new centralized global headquarters. While the move set the company up for continued growth, their CFO Brian Cassell realized that CoreCentric needed to rethink their entire approach to HR and get more strategic in order to manage these new whole-company responsibilities in ways that were scalable and made sense. As Brian said himself,
“Our HR processes were very manual and time-consuming. Because of this, our staff’s time was spent mostly on putting out day- to-day fires rather than moving forward long-term strategic objectives. We had challenges unifying the HR function behind the company’s long-term strategic goals.”
CoreCentric identified that they needed to address every aspect of their HR function, from hiring processes and workload planning to employee benefits. They realized their relationship with their benefits broker had stagnated, and they were dissatisfied with both their rising premiums and the lack of effort being put into empowering them to manage costs better.
Initially, CoreCentric planned to start self-funding their benefits to address some of these needs, but they quickly realized that the numbers just didn’t make sense for a business in their position. CoreCentric reached out to Launchways looking for a total HR partner who could help them streamline operations and address benefits overspend. After just a few exploratory conversations, Brian knew Launchways was the way to go.
“I felt that Launchways provided more value at a significant cost-savings. For us, Launchways presented an end-to-end solution to tackle our HR challenges. I knew Launchways would be a very good ongoing resource for our team moving forward.”
Launchways’ first action item was to assess and benchmark CoreCentric’s current approach to HR from top to bottom. When they realized the department was understaffed in a way that would make expedient improvement difficult, Launchways’ own team members provided ad hoc support to make their consultancy impactful as quickly as possible.
With some guidance from Launchways, CoreCentric was able to automate and outsource time- and human-intensive HR tasks to create more time for strategic HR initiatives. From there, Launchways immediately transitioned into helping CoreCentric develop a new approach to hiring that would help the company continue to grow. As Brian says,
“Now, we’re strategically automating portions of our HR operations and it’s resulting in huge time savings for our team. With the time we save, we’re able to focus on bigger-picture issues rather than constantly dealing with putting out day-to- day problems as they come up.”
With the HR function improved and a roadmap for continued hiring success in place, Launchways passed the reins back to CoreCentric’s core HR team while continuing to consult them on emerging strategic HR best practices.
At the same time, Launchways completely took over benefits management for CoreCentric, further reducing the workload on the internal team and setting HR up to maximize their attention on hiring and strategic growth initiatives. Unlike their old broker, Launchways was able to help CoreCentric fully understand and manage the balance between employee benefits offerings, attracting great talent, and managing ongoing costs. They also connected CoreCentric with powerful best practices for enrollment and employee benefits education.
“Launchways helped us craft a strategic benefits program. They did all of the research and presented the best practices – they vetted all the information before presenting it to us so we could make informed purchase decisions. Our entire strategy and process around benefits is much more automated now with Launchways’ help.”
Just a few years later, CoreCentric’s health insurance carrier announced a major rate hike, which they felt the provider could not adequately explain. Fed up with being in a traditional employee benefits model, they worked with Launchways again to help them transition toward self-funding once and for all.
Launchways helped CoreCentric shop carriers to find self-funded benefit options, and even though none of the offerings made sense for CoreCentric’s immediate future, Launchways provided a strong interim solution, connecting CoreCentric with a more cost-effective, transparent carrier as the company grows toward self-funding.
CoreCentric came away extremely satisfied with their strategic partnership with Launchways, both from an HR maximization and employee benefits optimization standpoint. CFO Brian Cassell believes the company will continue its relationship with Launchways to continue implementing innovative, strategic HR and employee benefit initiatives:
“I see Launchways as our long-term strategic partner. It’s a relationship that continues to evolve and I know as we grow they will continue to ensure we’re following best practices and providing maximum value to our employees. If you’re looking for a strategic solution provider versus just a broker, Launchways is the place to work with.”
Key Takeaways:
- Launchways provided CoreCentric with significant employee benefits savings as well as a path towards the independence and reliability of self-funding.
- Launchways identified and corrected inefficiencies in CoreCentric’s approach to HR, creating new time for strategy and minimizing day-to-day firefighting.
- Launchways created a framework for talent acquisition and management that will help CoreCentric scale up in powerful, sensible ways.
- Launchways helped CoreCentric provide and present employee benefits in a way that attracts, engages, and delights talent without breaking the bank.