Today we’d like to introduce you to Rhonda Marcucci.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
After beginning my career in public accounting as a CPA in 1984, I joined the finance group of a large national trade association based in Chicago, where I soon moved into strategic planning. This change led to my involvement in start-up work, building new business units within an existing company, and the opportunity to be on the ground floor (as CFO) in the formation of a Chicago-based viatical settlement company (purchases life insurance policies and pay the premiums, collecting the death benefits when the insured dies).
In 1997, Des Moines-based Kirke-Van Orsdel, Inc. hired me as Director of Corporate Development Projects to research, evaluate and formulate business plans for a variety of new ventures, including some related to employee benefits. This was my first significant exposure to insurance benefit programs. Shortly thereafter, the company was purchased and became part of Marsh, a division of Marsh and McClennan Companies, which took me deeper into the benefits administration outsourcing market. As Senior Vice President, I started a unit that identified and implemented business plans for line extensions.
Marsh had given me a solid grounding in the employee benefits field, setting a course for my future, and in 2005 I left in search of new opportunities. During my time there, the internet really came into its own for commerce, and businesses were looking for ways to automate employee benefit insurance transactions. Right after I left Marsh the calls started to come in from people needing advice in this area where I’d developed a lot of expertise. And for a couple years I provided it — as a one-person consulting shop — which wasn’t part of the initial plan. I didn’t start my consulting business; it started me.
Then, my husband unexpectedly passed away and I needed to have some long-term stability. I began interviewing for jobs, but quickly realized I was going to be much happier building my own company than I would be working for someone else. In 2005, I formed Gruppo Marcucci, a small HR benefits outsourcing consulting company, working with just two other consultants as independent contractors whom I knew through my Marsh connections. The market was in its infancy but growing quickly due to increasing regulatory compliance and the need for automation.
Returning to Chicago in 2009 and ready to focus on really growing the business, I brought in my partner Ed Barry, who I had worked with in previous ventures. I began to hire consultants and create an employment relationship. I also added marketing support to build a website, produce white papers, get published in industry journals, etc. — all to help establish Gruppo Marcucci as a leader in the HR and benefits technology and outsourcing industry, serving small- to mid-market employers.
Over the past seven years we continued to grow Gruppo Marcucci — employing 10-12 consultants plus administrative and marketing support staff. In 2017, we took the next big step in expanding our company by selling it to Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., where we are now the HR & Benefits Technology Practice within the benefits and human resources consulting division. There were several factors that convinced us to join Gallagher, a U.S.-based global insurance brokerage and risk management services firm headquartered at in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. Two of the key reasons are the consistently strong and productive 10-year business relationship we shared, and the other is company’s local Chicago roots. Established in Chicago in 1927 by its namesake, the company has steadily grown to become the fourth largest insurance broker in the world.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It wasn’t always a smooth road, but early on I set two rules for my company that have served me very well.
The first rule was to be self-funded. Once we had employees, we had to create a lot of discipline around the financials due to our obligations as an employer. We invested every dime we made back into the business. This made it hard to grow…or at least to grow very fast.
The second rule was “no a**holes.” After 20 years of working in numerous settings with lots of people, I vowed that I would be selective about who I worked with, who I did work for, and who worked for us. Just as with self-funding, this limited our growth as we carefully choose our clients and hired only people who fit into our culture and shared our values. We could have hired “warm bodies” just so we could take on more work, but that wasn’t how we want to grow.
The greatest challenge we faced was also related to scaling the business, and that is the difficulty in transferring industry knowledge. This is still a young industry, so there’s not big pool of talent out there. And it’s a complex industry. It’s not a simple (or fast) thing to bring in people — even people with strong, fundamental consulting skills — and train them on the specifics of the industry.
In 2016 my partner and I determined that the only way to seriously grow the business would be to sell the company. We’d had offers over the years, but wanted to remain true to our commitment to rule #2, and work with people who shared our values.
There was only one company that met our criteria and that was Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., which had been a client of ours for many years. On January 1, 2017, we sold Gruppo Marcucci to Gallagher and now serve as their HR and Benefits Technology Practice within the benefits and human resources consulting division — supporting their vast network of benefit advisers around the world. In this role, we advocate that HR technology is benefit advisers new line of coverage.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Gruppo Marcucci, Gallagher’s HR and Benefits Technology Practice within the benefits and human resources consulting division, provides outsourcing intelligence and consulting to the full range of stakeholders in the benefits and HR technology industry. Through comprehensive industry research and thought leadership, we deliver unique value to clients by synthesizing data into actionable information. We’re great at the big picture, but we also will stick around to implement strategy, working side-by-side with clients to make sure our solutions deliver the envisioned success.
In addition to helping clients navigate traditional benefits and HR technology issues, we actively monitor the market for potential disruptions — advising clients on solutions before disruptions become problems and to identify opportunities for product development and growth or market investment.
Our in-depth understanding of the technology service provider market (we maintain intelligence on 600+ service providers) coupled with years of experience sourcing and implementing solutions is key to our clients achieving full operational success. We focus on employer groups with 2 to 25,000+ employees (helping employers with HR strategy and helping them buy, implement and optimize HR technology). But employers are just one of the stakeholders we serve. We also work with multi-employer trusts, benefit broker/consultants, outsourcing technology providers, insurance carriers and the investment community.
We are most proud of our standing in the industry as transparent experts who do the right thing. We never accept fees for product placement or endorsement — freeing us to assess a company’s services and identify solutions based on objectives, management philosophy and budget. Our reputation is such that for many of the stakeholder groups we serve, people come to us, ready to do business.
We are unique in that we work with all stakeholders, as well as cooperating with competitors. While much of the work we do for employers and benefit advisers is through Gallagher, we maintain a pool of clients that we serve under the Gruppo Marcucci brand. Some of these clients are direct competitors to Gallagher. Our parent company values the industry insight and thought leadership we bring to the table by servicing other industry stakeholder groups. And a reputation for doing the right thing has allowed us to maintain most of our pre-Gallagher clients, including some direct Gallagher competitors.
In working with benefit advisers, we see our role as raising the bar for the industry.
There is no shortage of work out there. So, by helping to make everyone who works in the industry better, we improve our own position.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
The HR and benefits technology industry is still growing and evolving. I believe that more and more benefit broker/consultants will expand their business to include HR technology, and that the industry will significantly change its distribution strategies to include benefit broker/consultants.
I expect that employers will increasingly deploy more HR technology to support their human capital strategies. HR departments will become more strategic through the use of more and better tools. The heads of HR who are not yet at the C-suite table need to be, and we advise HR departments on how to get there by driving the CEO’s human capital agenda.
Look for a significant amount of productive lift through the use of artificial intelligence (bots) and data analytics in the HR technology sphere. Human capital management is ripe to take advantage of technologies that help support administration (benefits enrollment, time tracking, etc.), compliance (government reporting, PPACA, COBRA), and strategy (employee engagement, recruiting/retention, etc.).
Contact Info:
- Address: 300 S. Riverside Plaza, Suite 1500
Chicago, IL 60606 - Website: https://www.gruppomarcucci-usa.com/
- Phone: 312-690-2690
- Email: Rhonda_Marcucci@ajg.com
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/GruppoMarcucci
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