BrightStare Care Leesburg’s Partnership with Ingenium’s Finance & Administration Team created a stable basis for expansion.
Summary
Since partnering with Ingenium in 2019 for Back Office Services, BrightStar Care Leesburg has achieved the following milestones:
- Added health insurance and 401(k) plans for full and part-time employees
- Opened 2 new offices in new cities to expand operations; moved 2 current offices to better locations
- Switched to a bank that offered better loan rates
- Moved many payables to automatic ACH payments, reducing administrative costs
- Grew enough to hire Managing Director to oversee daily operations
Who is BrightStar Care Leesburg?
BrightStare Care Leesburg provides home health care services for clients located across Northern Virginia, from Winchester to Quantico and from Warrenton to Woodbridge. Their care teams are led by RNs who create personalized plans for all types of in-home care, ranging from companion services to skilled nursing care for individuals with dementia, disabilities, or caregivers needing respite services. Prior to working with Ingenium, their existing team held both field and back office responsibilities, leaving little time to focus on sales and growth. Their CEO recognized their staffing might be close to the requirement for offering health insurance, as well as the need to grow the business enough to hire a full-time Managing Director.
Moving from Surviving to Thriving
Step 1: Give many of the daily office operations to Ingenium, freeing up the existing team to focus on sales & recruiting.
BrightStar Care Leesburg’s office team had responsibilities that ranged from sales and recruiting caregiving staff to back office duties that included payroll, bills, invoicing, internet troubleshooting, insurance, worker’s comp claims, and business licenses. As many small business owners can attest, this split focus between driving business forward while ensuring all the back office details were covered meant that neither was happening optimally.
In August 2019, Ingenium stepped in to handle many of the back office administrative details, including streamlining many bills to be paid via ACH, overseeing the daily financials and reporting to the CEO, auditing the cell phone bill to ensure they were only being billed for existing employees, acquiring and setting up new phones for the offices, handling insurance renewals and claims, assisting with the PPP loan application in spring 2020, and filing for business licenses.
In turn, BrightStar Care Leesburg’s existing team was finally freed up to focus on sales, recruiting, and retention so that the business could continue to grow – all of this ultimately with the goal of hiring a Managing Director.
Step 2: Tackle the need for health insurance, 401k, & new offices.
When BrightStar Care Leesburg hired Ingenium, they knew they were close to the 50 full-time-equivalent (FTE) requirement for offering health insurance. Ingenium’s team established a relationship with the franchise-required health insurance provider to figure out when BrightStar Care Leesburg would reach that 50 FTE milestone, as well as what was needed to move forward with offering health insurance. During this process, Ingenium discovered a software connectivity issue that was affecting the reports being used to determine eligibility; our team cleaned up the data so it would show accurate benefits information and devised a work-around to ensure both software systems retained accurate records.
With Ingenium’s assistance, BrightStar Care Leesburg rolled out both health insurance benefits and a 401(k) plan in 2020. After the initial rollout, Ingenium continues to administer the plan through tracking eligibility, updating deductions, ensuring that any terminated employees are removed from the plan bill, and answering benefit questions from employees.
Step 3: Hire a Managing Director and retain Ingenium as administrative support.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit 7 months after partnering with Ingenium, BrightStar Care Leesburg was in a place to survive the pandemic and then continue growing enough to finally hire a full-time Managing Director in April 2021, 1.5 years after their initial partnership with Ingenium.
Ingenium remains a key partner with BrightStar Care Leesburg as we assist with ongoing administrative maintenance and tackling special projects as requested by the Managing Director. In our consulting role, Ingenium has assisted with conducting workers’ comp audits, updating and renewing auto insurance policies, managing insurance and unemployment claims, closing offices to open new ones, and switching banks to take advantage of better loan rates.
Level Up Your Admin Game
If you’re struggling to find the time to grow your business because you are swamped with administrative details, schedule a no-obligation, 30-minute consultation with one of our team. We’ll discuss your current processes, develop some preliminary efficiency ideas, and provide you with the next steps toward your business’ growth.