By: Philipp Kaeferle
It’s 1 a.m. in your store. Who’s there?
Unless you’re operating a 24-hour pharmacy or convenience store, odds are sales associates and the store manager are at home. However, as we all know in retail, after hours is when the real work begins. This is when most cleaning, and any major refresh or repair work takes place. Your only hope is that when you wake up, you walk into exceptional results.
How do you know you can trust the crew in your location to perform quality work with qualified staff, with sufficient resources to complete the job? If you’re using a NEST Independent Service Provider (ISP), it’s because we’ve undertaken a rigid vetting process that ensures that each is fully insured and in compliance with all regulations.
It’s 10 p.m. and you’re an ISP starting at a new corporate client. Who are they?
For any ISP, whether a large company or small entrepreneur, a new client is a leap of faith – will it pay promptly? If you’re a NEST ISP, you know those answers, because we’ve also vetted our clients to ensure they are a good fit for both you and our organization.
Compliance and risk management are among the most critical functions of a management consultant. These are usually functions a client does not want to think about and working with NEST, our clients don’t have to. NEST takes compliance very seriously for both our clients and our ISPs. Our primary responsibilities are avoiding threats to safety and health, while also avoiding financial and contractual risks. NEST works hard to carefully vet our clients and ISPs to ensure productive and profitable partnerships.
First, we take the time finding quality ISPs, those mom-and-pop firms that do exceptional work but may not be able to work directly for large national chains. The search involves many steps, including regional face-to-face interviews, referrals from other providers, word of mouth, trade shows and networking.
Once we’ve found a potential ISP, our in-house teams conduct reference checks, contacting previous employers, reviewing the volume of their business and making sure that all of the required insurances and licenses are in place. Some of these requirements do vary by state and by nature of the work. Examples range from certain malls requiring above-normal GL limits or various workers compensation requirements by state or county. Many providers reach out to us to become ISPs, and all of our requirements must be in place before we consider sending them to do work for our clients. And each year, our ISPs must re-qualify by proving that all background checks, licenses, and insurance remain in place. Our clients know that our ISP’s are qualified, licensed and insured professionals able to tackle the jobs needed.
Once on site, our 24/7 quality assurance team, also known as our “Boots on the Ground,” continue to ensure that the ISP’s are performing as expected.
Through the technology we supply to our ISPs, we can track productivity and opportunities, and offer assistance where needed. We serve as the intermediary for work orders and billing and can mitigate potential errors that waste time and money, and even could affect safety onsite. Thanks to our sophisticated GPS technology and 24/7 Command Center, we know when work has started, been completed and our clients can see the entire life cycle of a work order in real time through NEST Facilitate.
We take our commitment to our ISP’s seriously. In an effort to protect all concerned we have implemented a thorough credit approval process, performing a detailed credit analysis prior to approving existing and prospective customers. This approval is based on a review of their financial statements, both initially and ongoing depending on size and complexity of the relationship. Since two-thirds of our customers/prospects are public companies, financial information is readily available. This credit approval process helps to protect the interests of both our ISPs and NEST.
At NEST, we protect our clients by working with quality service providers and we protect our service providers by working with corporations with a commitment to rewarding good work with prompt payment. With sophisticated data collection and a commitment to quality and comprehensive checks, we also protect ourselves.
NEST stands by our work, our ISPs, and our clients. For us, it’s more than a matter of compliance; it’s a matter of trust and partnership.
Do you have any compliance challenges or successful processes you want to share?
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