Services — Finalist
Since her days working in the auditing department at Ford Motor Co., Michele Honomichl, co-founder and CEO of Celergo, has never stopped thinking about how to take the extra step to better serve customers.
After managing the creation of Ford’s best-in-class expatriate administration system, she was inspired to develop the concept further and left the company to return to school and cultivate a global expatriate management services business.
Honomichl soon co-founded GPSLink, which offered a unique, virtual relocation management model and software for expatriate administration. However, the software failed to gain traction with the prospects she was targeting. With her wheels spinning, Honomichl’s customer-centric thinking soon prompted her to seek answers from the marketplace. She went back to her prospects for GPSLink to ask questions and learn more about their pain points. What Honomichl uncovered turned out to be a game changer.
A trend she found through these conversations was the need for local payroll systems for employees in foreign locations. Recognizing a chance to meet this need, she and her partner decided to switch gears. For more than a year, they worked without compensation or funding to develop Celergo, a new business with the same target customers as GPSLink, but focused on global payroll services. By shifting to meet an underserved market in expatriate administration, the business thrived.
Honomichl’s continued focus on customer needs has helped her bring Celergo’s consolidated approach to global payroll for expatriate administration to more than 110 countries. For the past three years, Celergo has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing businesses in the U.S. by Inc. magazine.
How to reach: Celergo, www.celergo.com
