Case Study
An Accelerated Growth-Driven Franchise Group
Needed to leave a PEO for more HR support
The Client. One of the world’s largest, longest-established franchising organizations, with a strategic plan to grow quickly, powerfully, and soundly in its portfolio of highly-renowned service franchise brands and number of employees.
- High-profile service franchises in two countries (United States and Canada)
- Franchise presence in 40 states in the US
- Brand Portfolio growth from 7 to 20 service brands (in an 18-month timeframe)
- Employee growth of 400%
The Challenge
The franchising group had significantly outgrown capabilities of a leased employee (PEO) approach to HR support, workflow, and overall technology. Progress was greatly hindered by the PEO approach’s:
- Poor alignment with the franchise group’s size, accelerated growth, and strategy
- Failure to adapt to the group’s need for increased HR customization and control
- Ineffective and mismatched workflow processes
- Restrictive, outpaced technology that could not keep up with the company’s size and meet employees’ needs
- Impaired acquisition integration with corporate culture
- Escalating costs as a percentage of total payroll, increasing erosion to the bottom line
At this critical juncture of strategically-accelerated corporate growth and multiple acquisitions/transitions, the franchise group had clear needs for a customized solution that would make them more efficient and hence effective, along with the expertise to implement and maintain ongoing best practices.
The Solution
The franchising group signed on with Corban OneSource which designed a powerful HR support solution to successfully keep pace with and complement the client’s robust growth strategy, widespread locations, and growing number of employees. Employing proved best practices, an advanced HRIS system, and proprietary technology, Corban OneSource implemented Benefits Administration, Payroll, HR Technology, and other systems for the franchising group, emphasizing customized workflow and processes. HR outsourcing freed the client to expertly pursue business expansion (versus dividing priorities with HR administration).
- Benefits Administration. Enlisted a renowned insurance broker to establish benefits for the client’s growing group of employees.
- Payroll. Ensured excellent payroll administration throughout the client’s rapid expansion of franchise brands, employees, and locations.
- HR Technology. Provided a single, accessible, cloud-based platform that transformed the disparate PEO technology into centrally-connected HR management of the franchising group’s diverse and geographically-widespread businesses and employees. The technological transition was seamless, providing the franchising group with experts in the customized technology to achieve maximized efficiencies into the future.
- The Corban OneSource and client-branded Customer Relationship Management (CRM) was deployed, allowing the franchising group to support its enlarging customer rolls throughout concerted expansion and accelerated growth across the U.S. and Canada.
- The Corban OneSource HEROES Team (Helping Everyone Receive Outstanding Excellent Service) with its custom and dedicated employee support phone numbers and emails was implemented to reduce the quantity of employee support calls being routed to the client’s internal HR team. Ready-access to support has secured individual employees’ high levels of satisfaction with HR performance and responsiveness.
This franchising group’s experience exemplifies the opportunity to meet the challenges of a company rapidly growing in size, portfolio, geographical reach, and in number of employees. By partnering with a specialized, highly-skilled team of dedicated professionals to manage its human resources services, the company made a sound investment that optimized its budget, minimized its administrative burden, increased efficiencies throughout its domain, and positioned the franchising group for optimal success within each of its franchises and in the company as a whole.
The Results
With Corban OneSource expertly managing time-consuming HR administration functions—nationally and locally—and applying best practices, proven over decades of successfully providing outsourced support, the franchising group and its internal departments have been free to maximize:
- High-growth business opportunities/markets
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Focus on corporate culture in a rapid-growth environment, integrating multiple separate cultures into one
- Succession planning reevaluation due to exit of key executives
- Smooth integration of multiple acquisitions, including compliance issues, in states in which the client had never operated before
- Streamlining hiring and onboarding processes, focusing on revenue-generating positions (Salespeople, Marketing, etc.)
The client’s ability to focus on areas of core expertise—versus HR administration—has allowed the franchising group’s HR functions to keep pace with its impressive growth, and to pave the way for more.
The private equity firm is now considering a successful early exit due to overall profitability of the client.
Corban OneSource’s customized solution has proven extraordinarily effective and profitable for the client. As key results, the franchising group has achieved:
- $368,000 in savings in year one which was redeployed to reduce benefit expenses for its employees, hence reducing overall healthcare-related costs
- 400% employee growth within 24 months (to 750 employees)
- Currently at 20 distinctly-successful service-based franchises, each with strong brand recognition and customer recognition/satisfaction ratings—and growing
- Client now has 2,700 franchise locations in two countries, including 40 U.S. states and Canada
- Millions of customers served annually
- Profitable corporate purchase of franchising group by a Private Equity investor, due to the group’s rapid, productive expansion and seamlessly-successful Corban OneSource HR support. The P/E group’s purchase has furthered the client’s growth strategy with an infusion of capital.