Goodwill Austin Grows Its Revenue $4M and Improves the Lives of Over 1,000 Operators With On-Demand Labor

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“Veryable has been a great partner in our distribution centers which has allowed us to flex our labor to meet changing business needs.  They've been easy to work with and provided excellent customer service and actionable data analytics around labor usage during peak seasons.”

-Senior Director, Supply Chain

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Background

Goodwill Central Texas, based in Austin, began their partnership with Veryable in 2021 during the pandemic to help manage and reduce costs associated with donations storage and through-put.  Goodwill Central Texas recognized they had an opportunity to not only reduce monthly storage costs but to also capture additional revenue from donated goods, but they needed a flexible, short-term solution to increase their production and manage their donation flow.

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Without an innovative labor solution like Veryable to help them process more donations during this time than their traditional labor model would allow, their monthly costs would have continued and they would have missed the additional revenue of getting those donations through the sales floor.

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On-demand labor was an instrumental operational tool that they used to help them clear out their backlog, reduce their expenses, and capture additional revenue.

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Challenges

Goodwill Central Texas was experiencing volatility in their donations volume and unpredictability in the labor market during the pandemic, which created critical operational bottlenecks and labor challenges.

These challenges led to delays in processing donated goods, which meant a missed revenue opportunity.  Labor shortages led to overtime and negatively impacted their full and part-time workforce.  This resulted in decreased revenue and productivity and excess spend on recruiting and hiring.

For Goodwill to increase capacity, speed up donation processing and clear out its various operational bottlenecks, they needed a tool that would deliver instant access to flexible, “on-demand” labor.

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The Veryable Solution

Veryable’s digital marketplace for on-demand labor provides Goodwill with greater access, speed, and selectivity. The marketplace delivers a flexible labor solution that instantly connects Goodwill with thousands of locally pooled, “on-demand” workers to flex up and down at zero cost to scale.

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Goodwill’s “on-demand” labor is designed to be short cycle (daily or weekly increments) and plugged in and out of operations the moment donation demand shifts, enabling a real-time approach to output. As soon as Goodwill posts the work, it is pushed out to the broader marketplace for Operators (6,400 in Austin) to see on their app and then bid on the work.

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Application

Goodwill realized that their retail operations will always have fluctuating donation demand, oftentimes unpredictable, so deploying only a fixed workforce to respond to their variable needs no longer made sense... ...nor did more OT or over staffing. Instead, they used Veryable to flex labor capacity up and down at a moments’ notice and zero cost to scale; meaning, Goodwill only pays for the labor they use. This also meant Goodwill would never be capacity constrained again!

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Goodwill blended Veryable’s on-demand concept into their existing labor model as a complementary, flexible extension designed to peacefully co-exist with their full-time workforce. In order to assist in the pandemic-driven donations volatility and labor unpredictability, Veryable represented over 50% of Goodwill’s distribution center workforce. Today, Veryable represents about 25% of that same workforce.

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The main work areas and type of work include:

• Retail: backroom associates, material handling, loading/unloading
• Outlets: material handling, bailing, loading/unloading
• Project Based: after hours work (ex. trailer unload, clear out backroom)
• Transportation: "driver helpers", loading/unloading
• Production: hanging clothes, tagging retail items, pricing merchandise

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Operator Feature: Fred S.

• Had his first gig at Goodwill Central Texas in July 2021
• Has completed 454 Ops for Goodwill, and 603 in total
• Warehousing tasks: 401
• Administrative Tasks: 53
• Has worked at 10 other businesses
• Has upskilled in both assembly work and warehousing work
• 4.5/5 star rating

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Results

• Additional revenue: $4M
• Additional labor hours: 100k
• Additional work opportunities: 24.5k
• Money in the pockets of workers: $1.5M
• Reduced monthly storage expenses by $80k

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