How Business Transition 360 takes the pain and stress out of an office move
By Jennifer Morrell
Tim and Cassie McCormack (majority owner), watched their parents work hard in their own businesses and for businesses like Allied and United Van Lines, Shelter Insurance, and others. The couple developed strong work ethics and desires to be in business for themselves at a young age. Tim spent 25 years in sales and senior sales for United and Atlas Van lines, while Cassie worked in the medical field before joining her parents to run their prosthetics and orthotics business for 10 years. When the recession hit in 2008, the McCormacks saw an opportunity. Businesses that were downsizing, “right-sizing,” or transitioning were looking for help. This is where Tim and Cassie found their niche and their business, Business Transition 360.
With strong backgrounds in serving clients at a high level in sales, finance, property management and marketing, they approached furniture manufacturers who would consider them for resellers in the Southeast. In 2012, Business Transition 360 was born with an emphasis on reducing the stress with some “360 tasks” associated with a company in transition. Whether a company was downsizing, acquiring, merging, renovating, or redesigning, Business Transition 360 wanted to bring the solution to the client. “Our goal is to save clients time and money, and keep the retiring furniture assets out of the landfill,” Tim says.
Among their first clients, Tim and Cassie started working with Jacobs Engineering as they were in an acquisition mode, buying firms in the Southeast. Once BT360 (now rebranded) put in place their project management tools and furniture repurposing program, Jacobs was sold and started using them for national projects. Over the course of three years, BT360 was providing Jacobs with project management, new furniture design, layout and installation, helping the firm save nearly 40 percent on workstation costs — shifting the company from a Knoll product to a similar Open Plan product.
With a business transition event occurring every three, five, seven or 10 years, the strategy for helping clients had to include other accessorial services, such as meeting planning tools, whiteboard and vision board technology, training tools and furniture, furniture reconfigurations, and of course, expansion assistance when a company was outgrowing its space. Tim’s background in being in the C suite and presenting in the C suite continues to provide an edge for the company to be on the radar of CFOs and HR executives looking for FFE help. Their mission when starting, as it is today, is to help businesses create high-performing office environments to recruit, retain, and build highly productive, efficient, and happy employees.
Beyond this, the couple saw an opportunity to use the blessings of their business to help charities who were serving others during tough life transitional periods. After almost nine years of serving clients such as Fiserv, Veritiv, AT&T, Mark Spain, JLL, Cushman & Wakefield, Coca-Cola, Hello Fresh, and HD Supply, as well as favorite charities Atlanta Care Center, MUST Ministries, Goodwill, Rainbow Village and others, their success is evident in both the office furniture world and the charities that benefit from furniture donations, cash donations, or discounts for the creation of a nice office environment.
One of the best examples of this happened a few years ago, when the facilities team at Fiserv contracted BT360 Solutions to decommission and repurpose thousands of assets at their East Jones Bridge Road campus. Senior leadership at Fiserv approved the idea of donating furniture from a 30-room campus hotel. As a result, MUST Ministries and other charities were blessed to furnish apartments for women and children coming out of abusive homes and relationships. “While decommissioning the Fiserv Jones Bridge Road Campus, we donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in furniture, hotel furniture, and technology to these charities,” Tim says. “Fiserv contracted us to decommission their six buildings with 14 floors of furniture during a nine-month contract. Most of the 2,000 workstations were sold to clients and wholesalers, substantially limiting what was dumped.”
In another instance, United Methodist Children’s Home was leasing a new corporate home and needed to stay within a certain budget for the renovation. BT360 Solutions repurposed a Coca-Cola inventory at a substantial discount to help the designer and the church achieve a beautiful new office and training facility for their staff and those in need.
With many reputable and professional furniture dealerships in Atlanta, BT360 has to be creative, responsive, professional, and outstanding at listening to the needs of their clients. Each and every employee within the company, from installers and movers to the executive team must complete certain service delivery programs and a communication skills course each year to ensure serving and dealing with customers in a specific, client-centric way. BT360’s staff are absolutely passionate about getting buyers comfortable and even at a place of enjoyment when partnering on projects. The team makes a habit of reaching out to the leasing and property management executives that work in the buildings they enter to ensure a complete understanding of how a project will affect other tenants, keeping the managers up to speed on every facet of the furniture project. Property managers, executive leasing agents, and designers are great referral partners for furniture dealers.
The company now offers up to 60 lines of new furniture and six lines of reconditioned or gently used furniture solutions, as well as space planning, design, move management, and a unique furniture decommission consignment solution. For example, HD Supply benefitted by contracting BT360 to sell hundreds of workstations, recouping nearly $100,000 in furniture resales. The decommission consignment program works well when a large user of furniture has the time to exercise such a process. Obviously, you have to have a sizable network of resellers or client prospects who might consider purchasing used furniture in larger quantities, but the solution saves a facility executive thousands of dollars in removal costs, hundreds of hours in managing the removal, and it keeps the cost down for the resale purposes of the assets. The overriding benefit from BT360’s standpoint is that they continue to reduce the furniture that ends up in landfills, and the company can offer select items to charities or it can repurpose assets for companies looking to save as they startup, expand, or renovate.
As BT360 evolves, now employing a designer, a contract furniture installation team, a digital marketing expert, and innovative COVID safety tools, the company can now comprehensively manage any and all aspects of your next office furniture challenge. You can find more information at bt360solutions.com. “We consult on air quality, relevant to COVID,” Tim says. “Clients find it hard to believe their employees spend about 13.5 years of their lives in an office. Hence, we need to protect them while there.”
The company regularly publishes blog posts about furniture updates, white papers, ergonomically correct seating, and office management ideas to keep your office teams engaged, happy, and productive. COVID-19 certainly has added a new dimension to the office furniture industry. Thus, BT360 Solutions invested in the team and the support to ensure it is at the forefront of safety tools now required by the CDC as companies reopen their offices. Learn more at businesstransition360.com/prepare-your-office-post-covid19/. Whether you are concerned about air quality, screens for desk or cubicles, needed signage, or simply require a consultation (free) on better ways to manage in the post-COVID era, reach out to Tim, Cassie, and the rest of the BT360 team.
Like any business in 2020, it has been both challenging and a blessing, as far as Tim and Cassie can see. BT360 saw opportunity to consider how it could best serve businesses and people struggling with the economy, job loss, working from home, home schooling, etc. Whether it was the mission to help a company sell assets at limited cost, create a home office environment, doing Zoom calls to just listen and pray, or strategizing with executives to consider what their offices would look like in 2021, BT360 continued to manage, engage and serve one client, prospect or friend as needed. Cassie and Tim see their business and its growth and sustainability as a constant conduit for serving others. Like so many that finally take the step toward business ownership, they are extremely grateful for the economic downturn that motivated them into creating and building the Business Transition 360 brand and company. All told, they keep 40 employees and contractors routinely busy, creating good lives for their employees and contract partners at CWI Furniture Installation. They work from their home offices in Buford and have a warehouse in Fulton County and showrooms in Doraville and Midtown.
