Case Study

CareCredit

CareCredit, a subsidiary of Synchrony Bank, provides financing for a variety of healthcare treatments and procedures. CareCredit is accepted at over 175,000 providers nationwide for LASIK and vision care, cosmetic and dermatology procedures, dentistry, veterinary care, hearing care and other specialties.

Challenge

When GE Capital Retail Bank changed its name to Synchrony Bank, CareCredit needed to distribute new applications, forms and marketing materials to more than 175,000 U.S. healthcare provider offices. And electing to send materials in two rounds, they had to do it twice: more than 350,000 kits in total.

Sheer volume aside, the project was further complicated by the need for specialization: each service provider had to receive materials and forms specific to their specialty, and in some cases, their state. Additionally, offices in certain locales required forms in both English and Spanish.

Lastly, production and shipping logistics had to function within tight guardrails, for two reasons: 1) to minimize shipping and distribution costs, and 2) to manage and distribute call volume at the CareCredit support center once healthcare providers began receiving their kits. Distribution would to be governed by a strict production and shipping schedule that included specific dates for shipping each kit version and the use of multiple shipping methods.

Solution

All Points was chosen to handle the kitting and distribution for this massive undertaking.

In the first phase of the project All Points employees shrink-wrapped individual applications in packs of 25. Including English and Spanish versions, total applications numbered nearly 22 million. Shrink-wrapping began one month prior to the start of the kitting phase – just in order to amass enough on-hand inventory to meet immediate kitting requirements. Shrink-wrapping applications continued throughout the kitting phase and was completed in tandem with the overall project.

In advance of kitting, All Points sourced a special box. Designed to fit kit contents securely, the box maximized packing efficiency, thereby minimizing shipping costs.

Once kitting got commenced, it was scheduled strictly, and with good reason. CareCredit specified versions and version quantities for each day’s roughly 10,000 kits produced; doing so enabled them to plan for and anticipate daily call volume in their customer care call center.

Kitting itself involved collating ten CareCredit items, including application packs, a program agreement, disclosure forms, orientation, operating and welcome guides, selection slips, a marketing piece, and an introductory letter. There were thirteen different kit versions, each of which required a different set of documents. Once packed, each kit received CareCredit and FedEx labels.

But All Points didn’t just hand things over to FedEx. Instead, to reduce the cost of shipping 350,000 packages via FedEx, All Points coordinated and arranged “zone skipping” truck shipments: trailers were loaded using a distribution schedule that accounted for kit type priorities and delivery times to specific regions of the country. To further enhance shipping efficiency, kit shipments not large enough to fully occupy a truck were first staged, and then combined with other kit shipments so as to make full use of shipping space. Tetris, eat your heart out!

Impact

The CareCredit project management team was able to rely on All Points for the packaging of applications, sourcing shipping boxes, printing box labels, complex kitting of multiple components, and the logistics of distribution. Every piece was produced and shipped on schedule, and all without a single error.