Challenge

Stanley Steemer was offered the opportunity to significantly expand its service portfolio and add a new revenue stream – but that meant the company first had to significantly upgrade the way it managed its third-party suppliers.

Stanley Steemer, best known for carpet cleaning, is a family-owned company with 63 branches and 220 franchise locations. At the time, it had a very manual approach to vetting and onboarding potential vendors and other third parties. The process required a substantial amount of low-value, resource-intensive work to track down isolated documents, contracts, and approvals, which were often stored in different areas of the organization. This also made integrating key third-party information and analyzing supplier risks nearly impossible.

To take on this new business opportunity, Stanley Steemer would have to vet, onboard, and manage 10-12 new vendors at each operating location – a daunting task given its inefficient, manual approach.

The leadership team quickly realized that modernizing and automating the third-party management process would be instrumental to success.

“We needed a more efficient and effective approach but didn’t want to add headcount or increase costs,” says Michelle Middendorf, workers’ compensation & vendor risk manager at Stanley Steemer. “We looked into broker solutions but determined they weren’t economical. Our best option was to develop a custom, technology-led solution that could seamlessly manage our contractual obligations, insurance certificates, and W-9 compliance.”

“We turned to Riskonnect for the solution, and they delivered.”

Michelle Middendorf
Workers’ Compensation & Vendor Risk Manager, Stanley Steemer

SOLUTION

Stanley Steemer implemented Riskonnect to streamline and centralize vetting, onboarding, and managing its growing list of vendors.

With Riskonnect, Stanley Steemer can:

  • Easily manage contracts, insurance certificates, and W-9 compliance.
  • Save time and improve reliability by automating workflows.
  • Provide a digital portal for third parties to submit information and responses.
  • Track compliance of third-party suppliers’ insurance certificates.
  • Seamlessly submit third-party suppliers’ W-9s to accounting.

RESULTS

Riskonnect drastically cut the time and costs of onboarding vendors and other third parties. As a result, Stanley Steemer was able to profitably expand its service portfolio, take advantage of the new revenue opportunities, and improve the way it manages its third-party relationships.

The company’s third-party supplier data is now centralized in one platform, which:

  • Simplified third-party contract and tracking.
  • Reduced labor, TPA, and broker costs.
  • Increased contract control, management, and compliance.
  • Freed time and resources to focus on more strategic, value-added tasks.
  • Improved decision-making through sophisticated, yet easy-to-use, reporting and analytics.

Stanley Steemer now knows which vendors are compliant and which services that can provide at any branch. Says Middendorf: “Ultimately, this ability has increased our revenue – and saved us money.”

For more on Stanley Steemer and how technology can reduce third-party risks, check out our on-demand webinar.

If you’re ready to draft an RFP for a third-party risk management solution, download this list of the most critical TPRM-related questions, which can be easily modified to suit your needs.