OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — What began as a pandemic-related staffing shortage has blossomed into a partnership between a military spouse staffing agency and the Delaware Nation.
When Delaware Nation Investments acquired Idaho Falls, Idaho-based customer-service call center Channel Blend in February 2020, the tribal enterprise quickly encountered a staffing shortage as COVID-19 spread.
That led Channel Blend in October 2020 to seek help from Triple Impact, a Killeen, Texas-based military spouse staffing agency. The two organizations detailed their partnership earlier this month.
“We’re a USA-based, tribally-owned company that employs military spouses, which is just a beautiful story,” DNI CEO and President Paula Brown told Tribal Business News.
Under the formalized partnership agreement, Triple Impact provides remote staff for Channel Blend’s call center, training new employees in just two to four days, Brown said.
For Channel Blend, accessing trained employees who stay for the long term comes as a benefit in an industry with traditionally high turnover, said Triple Impact Executive Vice President David Sawicki.
“Call centers probably have some of the worst turnover in any industry,” Sawicki said. “It’s very difficult to deliver a quality product when you’re retraining people. That’s what really grabbed my attention about this program: The retention level is much better. That’s a tremendous benefit.”
DNI CEO and President Paula BrownBrown said the Channel Blend acquisition and the eventual partnership with Triple Impact was part of a diversification strategy for Oklahoma-based Delaware Nation. Channel Blend is one of two companies under the DNI umbrella. The other, DNI Emerging Technologies, specializes in federal information technology contracts.
The need for seeking new revenue streams became apparent during the onset of COVID-19, which forced casino shutdowns across the country.
“The casinos got hit hard in Oklahoma with the COVID and just other external factors,” DNI’s Brown said. “The economic development we bring to the tribe helped sustain them through those rough months.”
Establishing consistent staffing for Channel Blend would by extension cement the company’s goal of providing stable, necessary revenue to complement casino revenues for the foreseeable future, Brown said.
“We feel like we’re vital to the Nation,” Brown said. “We feel like we’re creating a legacy. There will be a revenue to support tribal needs going forward.”
‘It’s really fitting’
Triple Impact and DNI’s partnership sprang from a long-lasting friendship between Triple Impact founder and President Bob Olds and DNI Chairman Frank Keechi, who were classmates at West Point Academy.
The two had conversations after DNI invested in Channel Blend around the potential to go after work together given the two firms’ alignment, said Triple Impact CEO Craig Mento.
“We started to support Channel Blend,” he said.
Triple Impact works with the Military Spouse Employment Partnership to find opportunities for the spouses of active military service members. Olds, who helped to found the MSEP in 2010, approached the idea as a way to improve income and retain service members past their initial training.
The goal was to find a way to double the income of service members by employing their spouses in low-stress, similarly-paying jobs, Mento said.
That mentality eventually gave rise to Triple Impact, which in turn focused its efforts on finding military spouses remote call center work.
Mento said it was “fitting” that a company launched to support military spouses would end up working alongside a tribal enterprise.
“One of the largest singular groups of personnel in the armed forces are Native Americans,” Mento said. “The kinship of Native Americans with the U.S. Army has been very strong since World War I. (Delaware Nation) resonated extraordinarily well with what we’re all about, so it was kind of serendipitous for us all to come together.”
Moreover, partnering with Delaware Nation Investments could lead to better opportunities for federal contracts.
Given the company’s 8(a) certification from the U.S. Small Business Administration, Delaware Nation Investments has access to contracts they could subcontract Triple Impact.
“The other part we looked at is the Delaware Nation has a lot of different sub-companies, and a lot of them have to do with government contracting for I.T. and I.T. support, so as an 8(a), they’re actually a highly respected support organization in terms of I.T. efforts,” Mento said, noting the access to “tens of millions of dollars” in potential federal contracts.
Brown agreed, identifying the potential for the partnership between Triple Impact and DNI to grow beyond simply staffing Channel Blend.
“DNI is very strong with federal contracting, and that’s something we’ll explore with them,” Brown said. “They really helped us, and it’s just become a great partnership, and we’re looking forward to seeing what we could do with them.”
