Peter Ord, Founder and CEO of GuideCX, says he created his startup because he saw a great need for better communication during business-to-business client onboarding, which presented the perfect opportunity for a technology innovator such as himself to come in and simplify the process.
His solution is software that provides a seamless onboarding process that is just as easy to understand and track progress as it would be to track a shipping order through Amazon.
“We live in a world where Amazon tells me where my package is, but when I buy software [or services] from a business, oftentimes we're sent a spreadsheet and it overwhelms [us as] customers,” Ord says. “So, my goal is to bring the B2C [business-to-consumer] experience of keeping customers on the same page, to business-to-business relationships.”
He does this by offering a fully guided customer experience that can be white labeled to appear with his clients’ branding. It offers dashboards with graphics that are easy to follow along and understand, providing transparency throughout the process and making it easier for all parties to stay on task and well informed.
But before he could help businesses service other businesses, Ord had to hire a team that could help him bring his vision to life and his business to profitability.
“GuideCX is a software company. That means we need people to build our product, we need people to design and think of cool ideas, we need people to sell our product, and then you need someone that does facilities (which is still me),” he says. “When I hired my first three or four employees, the first thing that kept me up at night was, ‘Oh, shoot; I don't have insurance.’ I quickly understood that this is not just a nice-to-have, this is a need-to-have, and that's when I [sought] out G&A Partners.”
Ord says G&A was able to take HR, benefits, and payroll off his plate and “that took a huge stress off my shoulders.” He partnered with G&A in 2019, when he only had six employees. By February 2022, he had grown enough to have 85 employees.
“We use G&A for our benefits—[G&A’s] employees [host] annual meetings with our employees, explaining the benefits packages,” he says. “We also use G&A for payroll. Being able to automate that payroll and not have to worry about those payments going out in a timely manner—that matters a lot. We also use G&A for new-hire onboarding. Each employee gets a new-hire packet. They sign our employee handbook and they're off to the races.”
The GuideCX office is in a Utah tech center called Silicon Slopes—the state’s version of Silicon Valley—which is booming with new and relocating tech companies. Competition for tech talent in Silicon Slopes is fierce.
“[G&A Partners] helps us understand what kind of benefits we should be offering our employees,” Ord says. “Ninety percent of being successful in a startup is hiring the right team and attracting the right talent. Understanding how to do that from a compensation perspective [and] from a benefits perspective is critical to our ongoing growth.”
G&A Partners has freed up Ord’s time to grow his business and compete successfully for top talent by taking the guesswork out of his back office.
“How have they helped me? They've helped me by not having to worry about any of that,” he says.
