Site Consolidation, Relocation, and Process Design Process Annual Revenue: 241.7 Million
Principal Consultants:
President: Daniel Ulibarri, Ph.D.
Sr. Vice President: Elena Mason
When this finance, tax and flood insurance company decided to consolidate its Tax and Insurance services from its primary office in Northern California with additional satellite offices in 34 different cities and 24 states throughout the United States) to a single location. UM Global HR, (Ulibarri & Associates, at the time) was hired by corporate human resources to work with the executive transition team. UMGHR’s task was to assist with the process redesign analysis, reorganization and transition associated with the centralization of functions, and corresponding administrative support efficiencies, to determine cost benefits, and to provide the research and survey services associated with contacting city councils, coordinating visits and selecting a city.
The project’s objective was twofold: 1) identify existing work processes and functions, staffing and resource needs and reconfigure them to a consolidated and centralized location, while reducing redundancies, streamlining processes, and sharing of resources; and 2) ensure a successful transition by identifying a city that met business and employee transition needs such as affordable office space and housing, retention of key employees (40% to 60%) who would move to the new location, and provide for availability of new hires with appropriate programming experience (e.g., AS/400 – renamed IBM iSeries™).
The challenge was to meet the project’s requirements, while maintaining confidentiality of cities under consideration. The requirements were to identify a city with a major airport, adequate schools, an educated workforce, low crime, affordable housing and job opportunities for spouses for the over 1500 employees affected by the consolidation.
UM Global HR used its proprietary “Organizational Scan” process to identify and rank site features that would most influence employee decisions, as well as meet specific business criteria.
As part of the organizational scan validation process, business/employee climate surveys” were developed and sent to managers and employees asking them to rate the importance of several quality of life and business climate criteria. Data was broken out by various employee groups (e.g., job, gender, age, years of experience). The results for the and requests for information were sent to the Economic Development Councils and Chambers of Commerce of 25 cities that met specific business requirements.
Cities That Met Specific Business Location Criteria
1. Albuquerque, New Mexico
2. Atlanta, Georgia
3. Austin, Texas
4. Charlotte, North Carolina
5. Chicago, Illinois
6. Cincinnati, Ohio
7. Columbus, Ohio
8. Dallas, Texas
9. Denver, Colorado
10. Detroit, Michigan
11. Fort Worth, Texas
12. Greensboro/Winston-Salem, North Carolina 14. Houston, Texas
15. Indianapolis, Indiana
16. Kansas City, Missouri
17. Louisville, Kentucky
18. Nashville, Tennessee
19. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
20. Phoenix, Arizona
21. Portland, Oregon
22. Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina
23. Salt Lake City, Utah
24. San Diego, California
25. Seattle, Washington
26. St. Louis, Missouri
UM Global HR prepared the results and presented the information, which resulted in the identification of 5 preferred cities from the above list. Our strategy was to combine employee desirability information with business climate data and organization needs (e.g., infrastructure) to produce an index rating for various cities. The results of this survey are summarized below:
UM Global HR’s organizational scan included an in-depth analysis of the company’s business processes and predominant job duties associated with Real Estate Tax, Flood Insurance, and Mortgage Insurance functions. From this analysis, work requirements, staffing needs, as well as knowledge transfer and other factors associated with maximizing a successful transition were identified and acted on accordingly.
Additionally, office, equipment, square-footage and other analysis were completed and used as part of the facilities acquisition process. Eventually, the corporation consolidated its services in Dallas, Texas, due in large part to meeting business and employee criteria, as well as an extremely favorable commercial and home real estate market.
WATCH OUR SEGMENT ON WORLD BUSINESS REVIEW
UM Global HR's Dr. Daniel Ulibarri and Eléna Mason were interviewed by General Alexander Haig on The World Business Review.
