Cartus Wins Three Gold and Four Silver Connecticut Quality Improvement Award Innovation Prizes

DANBURY, Conn., June 26, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Cartus Corporation, a leading provider of global relocation services, has earned three gold and four silver 2014 Connecticut Quality Improvement Award (CQIA) Innovation Prizes for seven separate projects that represented the work of 56 Cartus employees.

"This year, CQIA celebrates its 27th anniversary as America's first state award that uses the Innovation sections of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award," said Sheila Carmine, founder and executive director of the CQIA organization. "For more than a quarter century, CQIA has been in the forefront of advancing innovative programs that improve quality, performance, and marketplace competitiveness. It is inspiring to see how many organizations in manufacturing, service, education, and healthcare, both large and small, are driven by innovation to set new standards of excellence."        

Since it began participating in the CQIA program 18 years ago, Cartus has been honored with 14 gold and 276 silver prizes. The prizes were conferred this year at the CQIA's 27th Annual Conference on Quality and Innovation, held in Portland, CT.

"Attending the CQIA event represented a unique opportunity to meet our fellow innovators from a very diverse roster of organizations," said Patricia Small, Cartus vice president of global learning & development. "The level of innovation in our state is breathtaking! We are very proud to be part of such a talented and motivated group."

The Gold Award-winning Cartus innovations this year are described below: 

• Customer Finance AP Control Team's submission is titled, "The Desire to Change Leads to Impactful Results." It explains that when additional global banking capabilities were instituted, the group's daily reconciliation duties increased nearly threefold; this created an opportunity for the team to evaluate their processes and explore opportunities to develop more streamlined efficiencies. They identified four areas in which they could replace and/or upgrade existing processes to handle the changes more effectively, which has resulted in a timesaving of 10 hours daily and related annual savings.
• Cartus and HRToolbox partnered to bring Cartus' clients a new way to get high-level international cost projections via the International Quick Cost Projection Tool. This Web-based, self-service tool allows clients to create a projection of international assignment costs—based on industry standard long-term and permanent international assignment policies—by simply entering the employee's assignment demographics (salary, family size, home/host country, and length of assignment). The low-cost tool requires minimal data entry, supports 70-plus countries, and produces results in 2 to 3 minutes. It allows clients to run multiple scenarios before they request a more detailed cost projection tailored to their policy.
• Improvements to recurring payments were an opportunity for Customer Finance and IT to brainstorm an innovative process that fit the needs of clients and customers. In a nutshell, it eliminates the bottlenecks caused by manual processes; is designed to accommodate client-specific needs; and works with the current system, thereby eliminating the need to re-enter existing information. Since its implementation, this system has increased productivity 45% over the same quarter last year and has resulted in a 60% drop in rework previously caused by manual entries.

Additionally, the Silver Award-winning initiatives also represented a variety of innovations by other groups within Cartus.

About Cartus
Cartus provides trusted guidance to organizations of all types and sizes that require global relocation solutions. Cartus serves half of the Fortune 50. We provide service in more than 165 countries, applying our more than half century of experience to help our clients with their mobility, outsourcing, consulting, and language and intercultural training needs. Cartus is part of Realogy Holdings Corp. RLGY, a global leader in real estate franchising and provider of real estate brokerage, relocation and settlement services. To find out how our greater experience, reach, and hands-on guidance can help your company, visit www.cartus.com; read our blog at www.cartusblog.com; or click www.realogy.com for more information.  

Contact: Alison Sedney at 203.205.3739
Email: alison.sedney@cartus.com

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SOURCE Cartus Corporation