With 600+ employees spread across 7 offices in the U.S. and Canada (and overwhelmingly remote due to COVID-19), MERGE needed a platform that could connect employees across the country to one another and to internal opportunities. The innovative culture at MERGE led them to seek new technologies that could enable agility, connection, and productivity across their decentralized teams.
In the words of Chris Gavazzoni, SVP of Client Solutions:
"Before Structural, we were blasting out emails trying to find the right people for internal needs and running into problems. How do I know if I'm curating the right people? And then our IT group is left having to manage all those lists. It just became far too cumbersome, there were so many missed opportunities."
Industry: Professional Services (Marketing)
Employees: 600+ with 7 offices across the U.S. and Canada
MERGE, a premium creative, marketing and technology company, announced in March of 2020 that it has acquired Sandbox, a similar, independent, full-service, strategic and digital agency, to create more transformational solutions for their clients.
MERGE works with a wide variety of clientele, from Sprint to Harley-Davidson to LG. Each client has very specific needs that they are able to match with the unique skill sets of its professionals, creating powerful results.
With the help of Structural, MERGE's more than 600 employees are empowered to connect with the right people and the right opportunities at the right time. According to Jess Bonfig, Senior Producer, “Content marketers at MERGE need to know people to get things done. Structural is like one-stop shopping for people, resources, and ideas.”
“Content marketers at MERGE need to know people to get things done. Structural is like one-stop shopping for people, resources, and ideas.”
Intelligent people search for faster, more effective connections.
Leaders at MERGE understand, as is the case with all service organizations, the health and well-being of their company rests squarely on the talented shoulders of their people and teams. They also knew that while their company was rich with internal client, project, and skills data, it was all locked away in silos and not nearly being utilized to its full potential. Structural was able to pull in this people data from internal and external sources and instantly make all that previously inaccessible data 100% searchable and useful for everyone.
Connecting People to Opportunity
A serendipitous thing happened. Employees at MERGE were organically using their Structural people directory to search and connect people to projects, gigs and learning opportunities. Meanwhile, Structural was developing an Internal Opportunity Marketplace that would utilize the data stored within profiles to match people with all of those short gigs, key projects, big roles, sales support, volunteering, learning, and mentoring opportunities that are a critical driver of every organization.
We ended up tapping into the expertise of our key partners and clients, like MERGE, to really refine the Opportunity Marketplace and even invited Chris Gavazzoni, SVP of Client Solutions at MERGE, to our official launch event (Sepetember 30, 2020) so he could tell his side of the story:
With the help of Structural, MERGE’s leadership now leverages their internal people data and expertise to align the right people with the right opportunities. This ability helps them decrease time to staff those projects and capture more business.
“Structural is ingrained in many parts of our business to where we always check it to find the right people to match to opportunities in our fluid talent model. The use is beyond what I ever expected.”
According to Mark Goble, COO: “Structural is a huge benefit to how we do our work. It is ingrained in many parts of our business to where we always check Structural to find the right people to match to opportunities in our fluid talent model. The use is beyond what I ever expected.” Utilizing Structural’s intelligent search has allowed MERGE to quickly find the people and resources they need and get back the time lost searching and connecting with their talent.
Connecting with purpose.
Structural Posts, alongside powerful communication integrations, have allowed MERGE employees to feel more connected to their company’s values, news, and one another - despite being spread across 7 locations. Perhaps Kim Klomes, Learning & Development Associate, said it best, "I use it [Structural] every day. I keep finding what I'm looking for, so I keep coming back!"