Go Solutions Case Study
- Headquarters: Lansing, MI
- Acquisition Date: November 2020
- Vertical Market: Special Education
- Visit Company Website
Background
Since 1994, Go Solutions has worked with K-12 school districts across the United States to streamline special education student data and expand their Medicaid billing efforts. Their national expertise has provided customers with customized solutions for special education service tracking, software integration, Medicaid consultation and reimbursement services. Go Solutions’ customers include 170+ K-12 school districts in the US.
Go Solutions in based in Lansing, Michigan, and has a close-knit team of 12 employees. The company has leadership in Indiana and Georgia and strong presence in Arizona and Wisconsin. Upon acquisition in November 2020, the President and Legal Counsel of Go Solutions left the business to pursue new opportunities. Go Solutions continues to operate under the Go Solutions brand with leadership from Chris Gutierrez, Business Unit Leader at Volaris.
We sat down with Mindy Benzler, who has been an employee of Go Solutions for 20 years, to learn about the acquisition from her perspective. Benzler started at Go Solutions as a data entry specialist after college and has since held roles in various departments including account management, billing, and customer service. Most recently, she was the Operations Manager of Go Solutions where she managed operations for all programs. Since joining Volaris Group, Benzler has taken a new role as Operations Manager of all businesses within the Education portfolio.
In this interview, Benzler highlights the growth of Go Solutions and the post-acquisition experience at Volaris Group.
Immediate Impact
The Go solutions team initially had some doubts about being acquired by a larger organization, but quickly realized the benefits of having support in key business areas.
When we were first acquired, we were frightened of losing control over some areas of the business. But those were also areas that we didn't understand, or we didn't have the expertise. Having those areas highlighted to where we could meaningfully contribute, but it wasn't our primary focus anymore, allowed us to enjoy our jobs even more.
For Benzler personally, it was exciting to spend more time working in product management. She shares that supporting the company and customers through new products is what she enjoys most about her role.
Pre-acquisition, the Go Solutions leadership team reported directly to the previous owner. Business decisions were made with the expertise of this team, but they lacked outside resources or connections to collaborate with. Upon acquisition, Benzler recognized the immediate impact of having access to a large team of resources in various departments. She says, “Once we joined Volaris, we gained access to exceptional resources in areas we were lacking. We have started to grow faster than I ever thought possible.”
The support from Volaris in areas such as HR, Sales, and Marketing has allowed Go Solutions to focus on the areas where they are experts. Benzler shares, “Volaris has allowed me to focus on areas that made me passionate about this business in the first place, remembering happiness I haven’t felt in a long time.” In addition to focusing on her Operations role, Benzler has enjoyed learning from other leaders within Volaris Group who she can share ideas and information with. She has already participated in many brainstorming sessions with new colleagues and is excited to bring some new ideas and initiatives to the Go Solutions customer base.
Post-Acquisition Success
Volaris Group supports growth for newly acquired businesses is by sharing the importance of the benchmarks and metrics that show why each person’s role is important in an organization. Because of this, Volaris hosts Volaris 101, an intensive training designed to transparently share key benchmarking metrics used across all Volaris businesses. The Go Solutions team attended this training upon acquisition and found value in looking at how the business is working through a new lens.
Joining Volaris Group also opened up many new opportunities for the staff at Go Solutions. The team was able to promote four employees into management positions, who will now have access to resources and leadership events. As for Benzler, she has been able to take on a new role supporting other businesses who join the Education portfolio via acquisition. In her role as Operations Manager, she shares that she learned the most form dissecting finances in different ways in utilizing different formulas to analyze the data and grow from it.
Realistically, the opportunities that this opened up for us since the acquisition are endless. We all have a path for growth, which is really unlimited at this point.
Despite joining Volaris less than a year ago, Go Solutions is already seeing the potential for long-term growth and success for the future of the business. This is, in large part, due to the emphasis Volaris places on organic growth. We work with leadership on strategies to promote organic growth for newly acquired businesses and provide the tools and resources to achieve growth goals. With support from Volaris Group, Go Solutions already has many plans to drive organic growth through initiatives that will be available to customers. Benzler shares, “We’ve always had close relationships with our customers, so being able to bring new ideas and products to them has been very exciting.”
Since the acquisition, Mindy and the team have been working closely with Volaris Group to continue providing innovative software solutions to customers. With access to resources, best practices, and a global network, they are looking forward to long-term growth for Go Solutions.