• The development and launch of the industry’s first iPhone app, allowing contractors to enter and manage their time quickly and with greater convenience.
• The launch of the U.S. IQNdex – a new information resource featuring data, insights and analysis about U.S. temporary labor rates and trends.
• IQNtelligence – an improved approach to business intelligence and reporting, allowing clients to better manage all types of services spending and all types of non-employee workers, globally.

“We are proud to be recognized for our leading-edge technology in services e-procurement and vendor management solutions,” said John F. Martin, chief executive officer of emerging markets and CTO of IQNavigator. “This Best in Biz award further validates our success in delivering a superior SaaS solution to clients looking to more intelligently manage billions of dollars in extended workforce and services spend.”

Winners of Best in Biz Awards 2011 were determined by scores from a panel of high-caliber judges from top-tier business and technology publications, as well as analyst firms, including: Accounting Today, AllBusiness.com, ECT News Network, eWeek Channel Insider, Financial Times, Fox News, Hartford Business Journal, Insight Media, Kelsey Group, King Features Syndicate, Lab Reviews, Network World, PC Magazine, Portfolio, Puget Sound Business Journal, Tech.Blorge, Tech-Gaming, Techtalk and Wired. The 20 judges on this year’s panel boast more than 470 years of combined experience and have written for a combined total of more than 180 consumer, business, financial, trade and technology publications nationwide. The companies that won gold, silver and bronze awards in this year’s program represent the best in American business.

For a full list of gold, silver and bronze winners in Best in Biz Awards 2011, visit: http://www.bestinbizawards.com/2011-winners.

About IQNavigator
IQNavigator software and managed services provide companies with comprehensive visibility into and control over the way they source services and utilize their extensive non-employee workforce. For more than a decade, IQNavigator has been the leader in providing technology solutions for managing companies’ contingent labor and other services around the globe, including project-based consultants, contractors and other temporary workers. Clients use IQNavigator’s VMS software to more intelligently manage billions of dollars in extended workforce spend every year, resulting in dramatically lower costs, mitigation of legal and financial risks and more strategic use of non-employee labor to achieve key business objectives. For more information about IQNavigator and how its industry-leading offerings such as IQNtelligence are helping many of the world’s most respected companies, visit www.IQNavigator.com.

About Best in Biz Awards
Best in Biz Awards recognizes top companies, teams, executives and products for their business success as judged by established members of the press and industry analysts. Best in Biz Awards honors are conferred in two programs covering the U.S. and EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), respectively. Any organization from any industry in the awards program’s region boasting demonstrated success can enter any of the more than 40 company, department or team, executive and product categories. Entries for Best in Biz Awards 2012 EMEA are currently being accepted from all companies based in or operating in Europe, Middle East or Africa, with an early entry deadline of Nov 30, 2011. For more information about the submission process and categories in both the U.S. and EMEA programs, please visit: http://www.bestinbizawards.com.

The roundtable topic was “Challenges and Successes in Managing Contingent/Temporary Labor”, and seemed to be one of the most popular topics, probably due to the inherent challenges in this services spend category. Here are the top challenges and successes that came from the roundtable of procurement professionals:

Top Challenges

1. Achieving visibility: How many contingent/temporary workers, where they are, what they’re doing, and tracking all the required compliance-related data.
2. Managing ramp-up and ramp-downs in demand: Having a fast & effective process (balancing speed vs. quality), contracting optimally (contracting for services or people?)
3. Measuring and Managing the process: Gathering metrics across the enterprise (all locations), achieving consistent contract terms with suppliers, getting consistently good rates.
4. Determining the best owner: HR, Procurement, or both?
5. Improving results for end-users: Overcoming long fill times, little reporting, and complaints from end-users.

Top Successes

1. Centralizing buying and rationalizing the supply base: Streamlined management, gained visibility into consistent metrics, and negotiated better rates.
2. Utilizing standard contracts: After a “rush-effort” to quickly bring on thousands of workers in a cleanup effort, went back and revamped all supplier agreements over six months, and gained savings from consistent expense-reimbursement policies.
3. Negotiating contracts for service levels: Addressed issues of fill-times and end-user satisfaction, and gained onsite support from top-tier suppliers.
4. Co-ownership by HR and Procurement for program: With leadership support, gained ability to impose a new process and vendor marketplace.
5. Negotiating rate ranges by different methods depending on the type of work: Negotiate markup, bill rate, and/or pay rates.

One common thread in the conversation was the need (fortunately filled by VMS/Services Procurement solutions) for a new system of record that provided visibility and control into a revamped process for managing the various types of contingent labor, anywhere around the world.

We release an in-depth report on IQNdex findings every quarter over at IQNtelligence.com; now, to add to that, we plan to release a monthly data sheet that will give insight into each month’s change. You can download a copy of December’s US IQNdex Data Sheet here (it covers November’s trends).

Here’s a sneak peek of the highlights:

• Year-over-year comparisons show rates trending higher in all regions and all job sectors in 2011 versus 2010. The Professional-Managerial job sector is up 10 percent, largely due to rate increases for accounting and finance assignments. Regionally, the Northeast and South are up over 7 points
• In the four U.S. geographic regions, only the South showed a significant uplift in rates. This continues a year-long trend; the South index value has risen seven points since the start of the year. The November increase in the South was led by jobs in finance.
• Technical-IT job sector rates were flat in November. The rate increase shown in October was not sustained. IT roles focused on design and planning, such as Software Architect, were the exception and showed modest rate increases.

For the full story download the data sheet and subscribe to receive monthly US IQNdex updates.

Also, feel free to leave thoughts and questions as comments to this post and we’ll do our best to engage with you.

DENVER, December 6, 2011– IQNavigator Inc., the leading services procurement solution provider for the Global 2000, today announced significant additional investment to drive international growth, including the appointment of a new VP-level hire in EMEA, the expansion of IQNavigator’s EMEA Support Centre staff, and a launch event in China in January. The company will also expand its IQNdex into the United Kingdom, providing additional insight into market trends that are not available from any other organisations or government agencies.

IQNavigator was recently rated as the most-global services procurement vendor by Staffing Industry Analyst’s “2011 VMS and MSP Supplier Competitive Landscape,” both in total number of multi-national programs and in global program growth over the past year. The IQNavigator software is localised in almost 50 countries including Poland, Qatar, South Africa, China and Japan, with several new countries added each quarter, and is available in 11 languages.

As part of its international growth, IQNavigator is increasing its investment and coverage in EMEA and the Asia-Pacific region, including these initiatives:

• Jon Holden has joined IQNavigator as EMEA Vice President of Sales. Based in London, Jon is a veteran of many fast-growing technology companies in the HRO, RPO and MSP markets. Jon has led sales and business development efforts in the Human Capital Management space for over 14 years. In this new role, Jon will lead business development efforts that drive IQNavigator’s continued international growth, and he will work closely with EMEA customers to identify their needs and support successful implementations. He can be reached at jholden@iqnavigator.com.
• IQNavigator is quickly growing its EMEA Service Centre. In 2011, IQNavigator has trebled its employee base in Europe to 15 personnel, and has plans to continue growing quickly in Europe in 2012. IQNavigator’s first EMEA-based Client Advisory Council is also planned for October 2012 in Amsterdam.
• IQNavigator’s China launch event will be held in Shanghai on January 12, 2012. IQNavigator’s strategic partner The Judge Group is hosting a launch event with IQNavigator at the Four Seasons in Shanghai on January 12, 2012. Find out more information and RSVP at http://success.iqnavigator.com/judgechina.
• The IQNdex has been extended to the United Kingdom. IQNdex is a monthly price index of temporary bill rates for a geography and job sector, and the initial UK IQNdex is for Office Workers, made up of the job sectors Technical/IT, Clerical/Admin and Professional/Managerial. The UK Office IQNdex, which uses January 2009 as a baseline, provides actionable intelligence about billing trends based on trends over the past three years, and is now available to clients.

“Global enterprises require worldwide control over their services spending and their non-employee workforces for compliance, cost control and visibility,” said John F. Martin, chief executive officer of emerging markets for IQNavigator. “IQNavigator’s worldwide market leadership and increasing investments in globalisation together ensure that global clients will be best served by the IQNavigator solution around the world.”

About IQNavigator
IQNavigator software and managed services provide companies with powerful insight into and control over the way they source services and utilise their extensive non-employee workforce. For more than a decade, IQNavigator has been the leader in providing technology solutions for managing companies’ contingent labour and other services around the globe, including project-based consultants, contractors and other temporary workers. Clients use IQNavigator’s VMS software to more intelligently manage billions of dollars in extended workforce spend every year, resulting in dramatically lower costs, mitigation of legal and financial risks and more strategic use of non-employee labour to achieve key business objectives. For more information about IQNavigator and how its industry-leading offerings such as IQNtelligence are helping many of the world’s most respected companies, visit www.IQNavigator.com.

###

Media Contact:
Stephanie Burnham
VP, Marketing
sburnham@iqnavigator.com
303-714-9213

Apparently, Twitter can be VERY good – and not just for business. I love the “global-ness” of the IQNavigator team – we are growing almost daily with clients and employees from around the world. However, we still have a soft-spot for our Colorado heritage here at headquarters and every holiday season our company lends a helping hand to a local charity that is close to our hearts. This year Jill Shadwell, our Executive Director of IQNavigator’s Implementation Center of Excellence, introduced us to the Denver Rescue Mission’s Champa House.

The Champa House is a two-story building with nine apartments where single women and their children can live to escape the cycle of poverty and homelessness. Once a vacant and broken down building, the Champa House was renovated and then donated to the Denver Rescue Mission in December 1988 with the specific purpose of converting it to a women’s facility. Former Colorado First Lady Bea Romer inaugurated the program in June 1990.

Families live at the Champa House for one to two years as the women go through a self-sufficiency program to learn a variety of life skills including budgeting, nutrition, parenting, relational issues, and job readiness. In addition, Champa House offers an innovative financial incentive program. Upon graduating from the program, each woman has accumulated a savings account that she will use to become self-sufficient. For kids, Champa House offers a structured childcare program, tutoring, children and family therapy, and a mentoring program. All of these services work together to provide a safe, educational and nurturing environment in which the children can learn and grow.

Jill has been volunteering with the Champa House for years so we quickly embraced the cause to offer our support. Several team members here at IQNavigator have adopted families for the holidays and will donate wrapped presents in time for Christmas. Here in the marketing department, we are kicking off a first at IQNavigator with our first-ever (and hopefully not the last!) social media giving program.

Starting today, Monday, Nov. 21, IQNavigator will donate $1 for every new follower to the @IQNavigator Twitter account throughout the holidays until January 3, 2012. If you are on Twitter please follow our account and tweet this message:

By following @IQNavigator $1 will be donated to the @DenverRescue Mission’s Champa House to support single mothers and their children

We look forward to growing our advocacy for Colorado-based charities that are meaningful to IQNavigator employees and we hope you’ll help us spread our efforts by simply following us @IQNavigator and tweeting our message!

With thanks,
Steph

SM – And a big issue, in Europe at least, is the Agency Worker’s Directive which came into force last month. After 12 weeks employment, a contractor has the right to the same employment terms as a permanent member of staff. Does Martin see organisations making big changes – or instance, are they restricting assignments to 12 weeks?

JM – “Not really that specifically. Organisations are getting more interested though in tracking and recording staff, which is obviously likely to drive more growth in the market for VMS platforms. Getting visibility, having a system of record for the contingent workforce and a defendable position will be important…”

Read the rest of the post over at Spend Matters UK/Europe

You may also be interested in reading Tim Woodall’s take on the matter: Agency Worker Regulation (AWR) in the UK contingent workspace.

Why China? Not only is it the world’s 2nd largest and fastest growing economy, China is actively positioning to shift its economy towards services and rely less on manufacturing (See McKinsey’s take here). This means that businesses in China need help with how they source, buy, and manage services. Together, Judge China and IQN will be able to help Chinese firms tackle managing talent and services in an entirely new way. We think the market in China is ready for a world-class solution – again, quoting McKinsey, 48% of Chinese companies surveyed said “talent was their key barrier to global expansion.”

Help is on the way…

Read more in our press release.

DENVER, November 8, 2011 – IQNavigator, the leading services procurement solution provider for the Global 2000, and The Judge Group, a top five privately held Professional Services firm in the U.S., have established a cooperative partnership in China to help China-based companies better manage how they procure services, including their contingent and project-based labor force.

The Judge Group’s Chinese business unit, Judge China, together with IQNavigator, will launch this new Vendor Management System (VMS) and Managed Services solution, named “Judge China Powered by IQN”, during a January 12, 2012 event in Shanghai at the Four Seasons Hotel. Industry professionals interested in joining the launch event can request an invitation, gather additional information and register online at http://success.iqnavigator.com/judgechina.

“IQNavigator has consistently led the industry in global VMS deployments for Global 2000 enterprises around the world,” stated John F. Martin, chief executive officer of Emerging Markets at IQNavigator. “Our entry into China is well-timed with our partnership with Judge China and the recent localization and translation of our software for China. We are extremely excited about entering the world’s second largest and fastest-growing economy, and we look forward to serving our global clients and Judge China’s clients in this exciting country.”

“China is extremely important to The Judge Group’s global expansion strategy. We are very proud that our business in China, Judge China, is quickly becoming a leader in providing talent and business solutions for many of the world’s largest multinational corporations (MNCs) and China’s best run corporations,” stated Martin E. Judge, Jr., CEO and founder of The Judge Group.

“During our January 12, 2012 launch of Judge China Powered by IQN at the Four Seasons Hotel in Shanghai, we will be introducing a ‘game changer’ for Chinese companies managing their contingent and project-based labor force,” said Gary Morris, president of The Judge Group and Judge China.

About IQNavigator
IQNavigator provides software and services that help the world’s best companies manage their extended workforce and procured services in a smarter way — putting the emphasis on “IQ” by giving companies powerful insight into and control over the way they source services and utilize their extensive non-employee workforce. For more than a decade, IQNavigator has been an innovator and leader in providing the software solutions and managed services that address issues inherent with services procurement and extended workforce management, turning those challenges into opportunities for companies to become more nimble, reduce risk and save millions of dollars. For more information about IQNavigator and how its industry-leading offerings such as IQNtelligence are helping many of the world’s most respected companies, visit www.IQNavigator.com.

About The Judge Group
As a leading professional services firm for over 41 years, The Judge Group was established in 1970 by Martin E. Judge, Jr. and provides Technology Consulting, Enterprise-Wide Staffing and Corporate Training services. Our solutions are successfully delivered through an annual workforce of 4,500 professionals and a network of locations across the United States, Canada and Asia.

# # #

Stephanie Burnham
Vice President, Marketing
sburnham@iqnavigator.com
303-714-9213

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