Rallying Cry: Simplify to Win – Progress, Momentum, and a Winner!

At the heart of our journey this year is a powerful rallying cry: Simplify to Win. It’s more than a slogan, it is a mindset. It’s about making our work easier, faster, and more effective through automation, process improvements, clearer communication, and smarter collaboration.

We have some early wins that are already making a difference across the business:

Time-Saving Tech in People Services

To streamline the clock-in/out process, People Services has rolled out timeclocks across all U.S. locations. With a simple 5-digit PIN, employees can now clock in and out with ease—saving time and reducing hassle. So far, 183 employees have been trained and access to this new feature!

Smarter Quoting in Sales & Operations

A cross-functional effort between Operations, Purchasing, Sales, and Account Services led to a deep dive into our Buyer Quotes (BQs). As a result, prospects are eliminated from the quoting process. This change allows our teams to focus on faster, more strategic quoting—delivering better service where it matters most.

Clearer Communication Across the Company

Marketing and People Services have teamed up to draft our first-ever companywide communications guidelines. This initiative supports our Simplify to Win goals and strengthens our commitment to accountability and clarity in how we connect with one another. This idea came from our Accountability Focus Groups held in February. Watch for the rollout later this month/early August.

Marketplace Initiative in Motion

A collaboration between IT, eCommerce, and Accounting is underway to scope out our Marketplace initiative. This project aims to enhance the experience for both internal and external customers—making it easier to do business and serve our partners

New Help Desk Phone Support Hours for U.S. Employees

Our IT Support team have updated the after-hours support number to now offer phone support for the Help Desk from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Monday through Friday (Central Time). This service is currently available to U.S. employees only. We're actively exploring ways to better support our global teams.
For now, the best way to request help is by submitting a Help Desk ticket.

Simplify to Win – We Have Our Winner!

In Jason’s ELT update message in June, he asked all of us for examples of where we’ve Simplified to Win. Thank you to those who shared!

Please congratulate our winner of the Simplify to Win spotlight is…🎉 Bill Crowley! 🎉

Bill’s contribution stood out for its impact and alignment with our mission to simplify and succeed. Bill took the initiative to create the Resin Formulators (RF) club to help Sales and Service (Technical/Key Account Managers/Inside Sales/Account Services) simplify how to sell RF products. He established the RF Club TEAMs chat group that includes GR and Silmid to help us all grow the business. Awesome swag is on the way to celebrate Bill in style!

Special call out to the others who shared their efforts to Simplify to Win – including:

• Nicole VanWormer for consolidating and streamlining multiple processes to improve efficiency, reduce confusion and workloads.
• Alisha Hull for her collaborative efforts with Travis Marler to improve quality on ATS packets for Aerojet. These efforts are enabling us to find/address issues before delivery to the customer.
• April Svinning for collaboration between SkyGeek Accounting, Customer Service and IT to automate the recording of Credit Card transactions between our processor and SAP…all to simplify workflows.
• April Svinning for highlighting the Corporate Accounting Team’s work on starting the work to implement Planful Project which will simplify and expedite the month-end process for the domestic US companies. More to come on these key efforts.
• Ashley Fontes for starting to use unique reports to capture product sales relating to marketing campaigns. These reports will save her eight hours of work each month!
• Catherine French for developing a tracking process for open Corrective Action Requests (CAR) to increase awareness and efficiencies within the Quality Team.
• Cristina Burnett implemented Asana as the go-to project management tool to organize and prioritize tasks. The impact has been to seamlessly collaborate not only within our internal marketing team but also across brands and time zones.
• Cristina Burnett simplified our social media workflow which has created better alignment with campaign goals, supplier priorities, and event calendars.
• Yulia Rozenfeld highlighted that the Account Services team shared updated QC parameters to support their “do it right the first time” approach! Special shout out to Victor Bonilla and Astin Henry who helped with UAT (user acceptance testing).
  

More examples? Please share!

Have you simplified to win in your area? Send your example(s) to People Services and you could be featured in a future edition—and maybe even win some swag of your own.

Thank you for being part of the GracoRoberts family and for everything you do to drive our success. Together, we are making great strides and know the best is yet to come!