Camping World is America's largest retailer of RVs and related products and services. With over 170 locations and 12,000 employees across the country, they continue to lead and innovate the outdoor lifestyle industry. Read on to discover their commitment to innovation across the board, ranging from their products to their HCM processes.
As I look at how we continue to innovate in the future, it really is that partnership with ADP that helps us put things on the board.
Daniel Varela,
Vice president of payroll, benefits and compliance
Camping World
Challenges
- Managing tedious, paper-based HR and payroll processes
- Wanting to elevate their HCM systems to match their company’s commitment and reputation for innovation
How ADP helped
- With an automated, integrated system and self-service capabilities, ADP helped Camping World minimize their manual, paper-based processes and become more efficient and tech forward.
The evolution of camping
Barry: The biggest misconception people have about Camping World is that when most people think about camping, they think about tents and sitting around the fire – which is wonderful – but that’s camping from previous decades. What we've tried to do is really enhance that camping experience, whether you're walking into a Camping World to buy an RV or walking into one of our other brands like Gander Outdoors or Gander RV to purchase kayaks and paddle boards or hunting and fishing equipment. We provide our customers with the total outdoors experience – beyond the old-fashioned ‘put up a tent and sit around the fire.’
Plus, the Camping World product has really developed over many years. We’ve partnered with a company called Lordstown Motors in Detroit to develop the first electronic RV and the first electronic RV generator. From there, we plan to make any of our fossil-fueled products to be electronic, whether it's a golf cart, buggy or scooter.
Daniel: Regarding our spirit of innovation, I'm going to have to give our CEO, Marcus Lemonis, real props here because he inspires us to latch onto the innovation to make our lives better, our customers’ lives better and our employees’ lives better. It emulates from the top down as we see the initiatives that he shares with us. For instance, we just introduced a new line in our business called Electric World where we're bringing fully electronic, carbonless equipment to the camping lifestyle. We're helping design and develop those products, too.
My favorite part of the job is looking at where we've come from to where we're going, bringing the latest and greatest technology to people to improve their lives or give them better, more timely information when they need it. We're an entrepreneurial company, and we're always looking to change, improve and be trailblazers in any area that we enter.
The need for HCM technology
Daniel: When I joined the organization, we were very paper intense. A new employee’s first experience when they walked through the door was to review and fill out 70 pages of paper. Then we had to go through all that paper, shuffle it around and protect its privacy. With our name being Camping World, we are about nature and the outdoors, and you look at the initiatives in the world to become less carbon, less emissions and less of a footprint, it really makes sense for us as an organization to contribute to those efforts by going digital.
Barry: ADP has helped us greatly over the last few years. When I first joined Camping World, we didn't have an applicant tracking system or manager self-service, everything was based on paper. We challenged ADP to help us make that process digital, and easy for the managers and employees to follow. We looked at our process from the very beginning – when a candidate is thinking about applying to us – all the way through retirement. And we've made that process completely digital in the last two years.
Innovating processes
Daniel: I was brought in to Camping World to consolidate and bring efficiencies to processes and reduce overall waste within the payroll and benefits space. One of the key things we had to do in order to change our systems was to get buy-in and explain the processes to the key decision makers within the business who are not payroll professionals, but run operations that lead our business sales and growth. So, we had to make a case for leveraging technology to be disruptive to improve our processes, give our employees a better experience and give us timely information so we could use it as quickly as possible.
Barry: For us, innovation has been a journey over these last three years. I sat down with Marcus, our CEO, and we spent nearly the entire day talking through people processes.
- How can we make our managers more productive?
- How can we make our employees happier?
- How can we allow them to be able to do their job, make more money, put more food on the table for their families?
And that day really has built this process over the last three years. The most important aspect of it is building an infrastructure where we listen to our employees.
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