The Alcatel North America Mobility and Purchasing Teams combined to create the Relocation Alignment Team, with the purpose of going through a rigorous evaluation process to develop a new Relocation Policy for Alcatel North America. The outcome of this innovative "One Company" approach and the policies that resulted from it culminated in an award - The Alcatel Cup.

The reason for the evaluation process was to establish a "One Company" approach on issues such as relocation service providers, consistent relocation benefits for employees relocating to the U.S. and Canada, managing, tracking and leveraging costs within Alcatel, administration processes, and offer a solution for Cross-Border relocations - permanent moves between the U.S. and Canada.

A PERFECT PARTNERSHIP
This comprehensive process resulted in the selection of a mobility partner. "We wanted to partner with a company that offered operational excellence, broad capability, financial discipline and cultural compatibility to effectively manage our people deployment requirements on a global basis," said Kathryn Dawson, Manager Mobility, Alcatel. As a result of the selection process, Alcatel announced the appointment of Crown Relocations as the domestic and international services partner for Alcatel North America.

After generating the blue print for their "One Company" strategy, the Relocation Alignment Team asked Crown to help fine tune the policy. "The team from Crown made excellent policy recommendations, which reflected our desire to develop policies that would provide consistent benefits and services for our employees from North America and Canada," remarked Kathryn Dawson. Implementation was collaborative and made so much easier as the Alcatel Team was quick to make decisions based on Crown's recommendations.

Crown and Alcatel also worked together to create a customized online tool that allowed the Alcatel team to gather details on costs, the number of transferees from each business unit, exceptions tracked and what policy the employee is using. Employees can also use the tool for collecting "everyday" information on matters such as cultural norms and weather of the destination city.

"Crown has been helpful on a multitude of fronts," said Kathryn Dawson. "They coordinate all activities with outside vendors, provide cost breakdowns and analysis, which we can give to our managers, and supply us with a survey our transferees fill out regarding how well the move went. So far the reviews have been positive. The bottom line is that Crown helps us to be more cost effective and efficient while still offering our employees excellent relocation services and benefits under the 'One Company' effort."

A TEAM REWARDED
The Alcatel Cup recognizes teams in North America that drive Alcatel toward their Quality Vision - to be viewed by their customers as THE BEST provider of products, services and solutions. "Our team works with the finance department, human resource professionals and whoever else needs help managing a relocation," said Kathryn Dawson. "They are our customers and we try to provide them with the proper information on costs and policies and procedures so they have the answers when employees and management have questions." The Crown Team was also thrilled that the Alcatel team won and to hear that the team was recognized within Alcatel and that they received such a prestigious quality award.

A WINNING RELATIONSHIP
"We are excited about continuing our relationship with Crown," commented Kathryn Dawson. "It is truly a partnership. We trust and rely on one another to get the job done and go the distance for our customers."

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