Partner Spotlight: McCorkle Funeral Home

In the United States, we’re built up of many amazing communities that vary in size – big cities, metropolitan areas, little towns, villages, and plenty more in between.

While these variations in size can impact case volume and several other factors for funeral homes and cremation centers, one thing (generally) remains a constant goal for everyone in the death care space: to provide the best quality of service possible to every family when honoring their loved ones.

For Brian McCorkle, the owner and funeral director of McCorkle Funeral Home (located in rural Illinois), families are at the core of everything that his team does.

Get to know Brian, learn what makes him one of the best in the business, and read how Gather positively impacted the lives of his employees and his families.

The Amazing Story of Brian McCorkle

Whenever he’s asked about why he first got started in the funeral home business, Brian McCorkle humbly provides people with the same answer: it chooses you.

That statement stands true for Brian too – while growing up, his parents owned McCorkle Funeral Home. The original location, originally opened in 1857, is still standing tall in Durand, Illinois.

He eventually graduated from Southern Illinois University with a degree in mortuary science and also earned a business degree from Eastern Illinois Unversity. With the new skillsets that he developed, Brian eventually purchased the funeral home from his parents and inherited the business. 

Flash forward to today. Winnebago County, located in North Central Illinois, is peppered with many rural towns and villages. McCorkle Funeral Home now owns 4 different locations that provide services for these rural towns:

• Durand, IL
• Pecatonica, IL
• Rockton, IL

Brian approaches everything in life with a purpose, and he aims to do whatever he can to provide the best experience possible for his families and his team. He’s a true leader.

He eventually stumbled upon Gather when researching new software programs for his funeral home, and the rest is history.

What His Funeral Home Needed

While his funeral home always strives to provide the best services possible, Brian was searching to find solutions to simplify case management and live streaming, as well as find a partner that could help him build a new and improved funeral home website.

With Brian’s old funeral management software, any corrections or misspellings would require his team to pinpoint every error in the system and update every single entry. His team experienced plenty of double-entry and wasted time.

Brian also aimed to create a digital showroom where he could showcase pictures of merchandise options (urns, caskets, vaults, registry books, and more) to families. His old funeral management program didn’t offer this capability and it was ultimately too complex for what his team needed.

He wanted to explore other options that provided a more interactive, streamlined experience for both his families and his team.

The result? A discovery call with Gather, and eventually an important investment.

How Gather Has Impacted Business

Gather empowers McCorkle Funeral Home and provides Brian’s team with stronger margins, better savings, and happier families.

McCorkle Funeral Home Saves 4 Hours Per Case

Since Brian and his funeral home switched to Gather’s case management platform, he’s been able to reduce the tedious employee time spent on paperwork.

In particular, there are a few tools within Gather that McCorkle Funeral Home utilizes, in particular, to be successful, and in Brian’s words, plan funeral arrangements with families in as little as 12 minutes. 

• Task Dashboard: this is where Brian and his staff easily created a task list system that they can follow and check on for each case
• Case Notes: the funeral home staff adds digital notes to every case in Gather that are much easier to find in comparison to paper-written notes
• Case Management From Any Device: Brian’s team gets more time back because they have the knowledge and training to manage cases from their phones and easily identify arrangement tasks that still need to be completed
• Remember Page Photos: McCorkle Funeral Home takes the photos that a family can upload to their loved one’s Remember Page, download those photos, and use them to build a memorial video

McCorkle Funeral Home Increased Merchandise Sales

In addition to saving more time with Gather, McCorkle Funeral Home has noted an increase in merchandise sales. How? Let’s break it down.

Brian built his entire digital showroom within Gather – over 70 caskets and 150 urns – to present to families. As a result, his team is able to show up to meetings and make arrangements with families on the spot.

But back to the more exciting part – they’ve also been able to increase sales from having a digital showroom. 

Since creating a digital showroom, McCorkle Funeral Home has increased the quality of caskets that have been sold. Their new tool has allowed families to select higher-end registry books. As McCorkle recalls, more of that is happening now than what has happened in the previous 7 to 8 years.

How Gather Has Impacted Families

Let’s flashback to earlier in this story – McCorkle Funeral Home truly cares about families, and it shows. Families can digitally collaborate with the funeral home staff through Gather’s platform.

Brian appreciates this capability, saying that “the ease of use for the consumer is tremendous. It takes away the fear of coming to the funeral home.” Through Gather, McCorkle Funeral Home gives families more freedom to:

• Help plan arrangements from the peace of their home
• Customize their loved one’s Remember Page
• Finalize decisions before they even meet for the arrangement conference
• Be more involved in the entire planning process

Simplify Your Workflow With Gather

Brian McCorkle is 100% accurate with this: your families deserve your best every day. But, you and your team also deserve the best. With Gather, you can finally accomplish both at once.

Invest in a modern case management platform that grows with you. Get unlimited support at no extra cost, and receive consistent platform updates that enhance the experience for everyone.

Get a quick demo with our team today and see what new heights your funeral home can reach with Gather.