Relocation – Weichert Relocation Resources Inc.

Buyer Details
Member Industry: Aerospace and Defense
Revenue: $14 billion
Employees: 53,000

Existing Condition
With over 50,000 employees and the acquisition of several companies, an aerospace and defense company with an annual revenue of $14 billion decided to examine its relocation program and determine its competitiveness in the market. Until then, the company had a decentralized program and various relocation policies. The company assembled a team to take the entire program out to bid. During the RFP process, the company signed on as a member of Corporate United, and although they were interested in Corporate United’s offering, they decided to continue with the bid and invite the purchasing organization to participate.

Solution
Corporate United’s relocation provider, Weichert Relocation Resources Inc. (WRRI) worked very closely with the relocation services category manager to point out the benefits of the WRRI / Corporate United agreement. The aerospace and defense company quickly realized that the advantages of the purchasing organization’s offering were superior to the other seven companies participating in the bid. WRRI’s superiority in the market led the team to eagerly sign the Corporate United agreement for their domestic business. The first task was for WRRI’s consulting team to complete a total policy analysis with detailed benchmarking for the company. Once the supplier and the company came to a decision about the correct policy, WRRI’s implementation specialists had detailed conversations with all involved parties – five organizational groups around the country – to ensure the smoothest implementation possible.

Results
With a deadline of forty-five days to fully implement the relocation program, WRRI’s implementation team managed to rewrite the company’s existing relocation policies, establish a policy grid for use by the company’s relocation counselors, work with payroll to manage the transferee relocation expenses, and ensure with the tax department that the method used for tax gross-ups was equitable for both the transferee and the company.

In the first eleven months of contract utilization, the aerospace and defense company initiated 460 relocations, even though they had advertised to the bidding companies that they expected around 300 per year. By simply rewriting and adhering to the policy, the company began to see savings throughout the program. The organization expects to see a yearly hard dollar savings of 12% through other elements of the Corporate United contract, such as the “Home Sale Credit” program. And though the company initially involved Weichert Relocation Resources Inc. only in its domestic business, it is now looking to transition all of its international business as well.