DENVER – February 28, 2013 – Today, IQNavigator is announcing two new executive appointments and the creation of a new Industry Solutions team. Industry veteran David Cooper has been appointed Senior Vice President of Industry Solutions and Layne Nelson will join IQNavigator as Vice President of Product Advancement.

These new executive hires are the latest in a series of organizational changes made by IQNavigator to continue its focus on helping clients strategically manage their non-employee workforce by streamlining their contingent workforce programs and providing best practice guidance to prospects and clients. The addition of these professionals also emphasizes the company’s continued prioritization on two of its core values- Innovation and Client Focus.

“The launch of the Industry Solutions center of excellence at IQNavigator formalizes the breadth and depth of proven industry experience we have in-house and provides unparalleled best practice guidance for our Global 2000 clients,” said Lou Andreozzi, CEO and president of IQNavigator. “I am pleased with our recent additions to the IQNavigator leadership team and looking forward to the influx of fresh and innovative strategies augmenting our commitment to deliver the best VMS in the industry – period.”

Best Practice Guidance through Industry Expertise – IQNavigator’s newly formed industry solutions center of excellence provides best practice in the areas of procurement, implementation, category management and services procurement. Reporting to Kieran Brady, an IQNavigator co-founder and the EVP of Market Strategies, David and his team offer proven, real-world experience for prospects and clients who are looking for guidance on when, how and why to expand their contingent workforce programs into global regions, new categories of contingent spend or capture SOW/project spend. This elite team of five experts bring over 70 years of procurement and Vendor Management System (VMS) experience, having managed over $12 billion in spend across their careers and implemented over 250 VMS deployments worth $7 billion.

David Cooper has a 20 year background in the vendor management and staffing services industry with extensive expertise in business intelligence, human capital business process solutions and operations, and expansion into new markets. Most recently, Dave was Senior Vice President at Icon Information Consultants, with previous leadership roles at other vendor management providers including responsibility for sales, partnerships and consulting divisions.

Product Superiority through Innovation – Maintaining IQNavigator as the leader in innovation and product superiority will be Layne Nelson’s number one objective. He is supported by a team of skilled development technologists with over 120 years of tenured, pure-IQNavigator experience and extensive SaaS backgrounds. Layne reports to SaaS industry veteran, Graden Gerig, EVP of Professional Services and Engineering (see Graden’s recent hire announcement HERE).

Layne has over 18 years of experience delivering complex application solutions for global enterprise clients. He has been a Solution Architect and Senior Managing Consultant at IBM and Managing Consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers where he has led business transformations through innovative application platform design, process redesign and delivery leadership.
With over 12 years as the innovative leader in the Vendor Management System (VMS) industry, IQNavigator has experienced explosive growth in its employee ranks, adding over 300 employees since 2010. The company expansions support persistent investment in R&D (30% annually) and double digit growth rate from new and expanding global Fortune 2000 clients.

About IQNavigator
IQNavigator is the proven leader in services procurement solutions, helping global enterprises better manage all types of procured services and their non-employee workforces around the world. With over 5.2 million users from over 125 countries worldwide accessing the IQNavigator platform, IQN is localized in 40 countries and 15 languages. As the only Vendor Management System (VMS) with true mobile capabilities, IQNavigator consistently ranks as the best functionality in SOW in independent surveys. IQNavigator’s cloud-based VMS software processes tens of billions of dollars in yearly services spend, enabling clients to intelligently manage and optimize the cost-effectiveness, compliance, visibility and efficiency of complex services procurement and contingent workforce programs. For more information about IQNavigator and how its industry-leading offerings are helping many of the world’s most respected companies, visit www.IQNavigator.com.

# # #

Stephanie Burnham
Senior Vice President, Worldwide Marketing
sburnham@iqnavigator.com
310-403-4710

The frequency these questions are asked made it easy for me to decide what topic I wanted to cover for this first entry in a new series on implementation related topics.

So, what system integrations should be built and how much effort does it take?

A well-rounded suite of integrations between your HRIS and ERP systems and your VMS will help ensure a successful program by allowing you to focus on your strategic goals (such as supplier consolidation) and tactical execution (e.g. getting each contractor at the best combination of price and skills) by eliminating time consuming manual data entry and the inaccuracies and errors that it causes. That said, building out those integrations is costly and time consuming, may not be possible given IT’s other priorities, and – as a result – may delay achieving the goals that led you to implement a VMS in the first place!

So how can you solve this paradox?

• Select a VMS provider that will work with you to build integrations in such a way that client-side investment (in time and resources) is minimized. There are many ways we do this but it starts with having a library of well over 500 integrations to leverage so that we can reuse files and formats that you may already produce.
• Work with that provider to determine which integrations to pursue first – what are the must haves based on your unique needs and what can be deferred until such time that resources are available?
• Ensure that the VMS has multiple ways (such as easy-to-use file uploads) to get data into the system until the deferred integrations come on-line and will provide behind the scenes support to you.

By selecting the right provider and carefully answering the questions above you’ll be able to have your cake and eat it too. IQN is glad to talk in more detail about this topic and can gladly share our recommendations on how to create the integration roadmap that solves your unique challenges.

1. Direct pay that the underlying talent or resource takes home – also known as the pay rate portion of the bill rate; and
2. The services from the staffing firm that contribute to the free-flowing nature of the contingent labor markets – the compensatory taxes, staffing firm operating expenses and profit, collectively referred to as the markup portion of the bill rate.

How do companies manage these two different and sometimes competing aspects of contingent labor spend at the same time? How can you ensure the right balance between quality and competitive pricing for both? These are very real business problems for managers of contingent labor spend.

The Collared Rate Card Structure
One example of how to solve this common problem is to institute a collared rate card. Collared is an informal procurement term used to represent a pricing strategy consisting of both a ceiling and a floor (i.e. like an options collar). The concept is most analogous to another pricing strategy some refer to as pay range plus markup. There are two rules that make up the collared rate card:

1. Set a market-appropriate, standard NTE (not to exceed) rate card to establish a rate ceiling; and
2. Set a market-appropriate margin cap with the staffing firm (i.e. limit the spread between bill rate and the talent’s take home pay rate).

These two rules are easy to implement and are readily acceptable by staffing firms who want to earn the company’s business*, but they must be market-driven to be effective and sustainable. If companies do a good job strategically sourcing their contingent labor suppliers in this way, then they will realize an actual bill rate that falls in a narrow range between the standard NTE rate ceiling and the pay rate floor (plus compensatory burden). This is the collar effect.

It’s a Transparency Play
Mid and large size companies benefit greatly from a best-in-class VMS (like IQNavigator!) that can operationalize this kind of collared rate card into the contingent workflow automation. Critically, this includes providing full transparency to all bill rate or markup exceptions so the buyer, the approvers and Procurement are all aware of the exception prior to final approval. Whether companies are managing collared rates at the transaction level or by periodic book of business, IQNavigator provides complete compliance reporting, by vendor, by skillset, by geography, etc. I recommend monitoring collared rates by periodic book of business because it allows staffing firms to manage tradeoffs on the client’s behalf. For instance, take a lower markup on a highly competitive skillset, then make up for it on a separate placement that is well below the NTE bill rate.

By design the client with a collared rate card in place will see exactly where fluctuations in bill rates are coming from:

• Changes to pay rate impact the talent or resource, and
• Changes to markup should only be the result of staffing firm economics, typically driven by
• Compensatory tax rate changes, or
• Staffing firm operational issues or efficiencies, or
• Staffing firm profit margins.

The collared rate card is successful because of its logical approach to managing the real, underlying component drivers of bill rate fluctuations – direct pay, staffing firm operations and staffing firm profits.

* The two rate card requirements above should be strengthened by an audit clause in the master services agreement(s) with the staffing firms. This clause allows companies to conduct audits to ensure placements (and submissions!) are in compliance with the rate card rules.

So it is that this inaugural blog post of Sourcing Talk is focused on the sourcing of financial audit or attestation services. Sourcing Talk is a new IQNavigator topical blog post series for managers and stakeholders of services spend that focuses on sourcing strategies and insights.

Unassailable Sourcing Process
The sourcing process that is followed to select (or even renew) a public accounting firm to conduct required financial audits is critically important to the legitimacy and credibility of the selection. As such companies should approach the sourcing process with unassailability as the objective.

• This is especially true for publicly-traded corporations that depend so heavily on the external audit report to meet regulatory compliance requirements and that give all investors transparency (ok, limited transparency) to the soundness of the corporation’s financial statements and internal controls.
• Unassailable sourcing practices are arguably more important for non-public entities (i.e. privately held companies, hedge/mutual funds, pensions, etc). Because the final audit report is not always made public for these private firms like they are for public firms, the qualifications and reputation of the CPA or public accounting firm selected carries potentially even more weight.

Audit Scope Misconceptions
Just because the lead auditor has been awarded the corporate audit does not automatically mean they also have to, or are the best option to, do the subsidiary and external audits of a company, such as company-owned investments, subsidiaries, partnerships, etc.

• Often these subsidiary and external audits fall outside the mandatory scope of the corporate audit – for instance, due to level of ownership interests or materiality – yet are included in scope of the contract / engagement with the lead auditor unnecessarily. For a small to mid-size company this may be appropriate and most cost effective or practical. However, for large corporations where the corporate audit can cost several million dollars and the subsidiary and external audits can cost even more, just the opposite may be true.
• Big audit firms compete fiercely for corporate audit awards from big corporations, not solely for the revenue and reputation that accompanies the win, but because of the ancillary scope that is typically added on beneath the radar of competition. Because the selection decision is necessarily focused on the regulatory requirements of the corporate audit scope, the cost and quality details of the subsidiary and external audits often do not weigh heavily in the final decision. Big public accounting firms know this and price the subsidiary and external audits accordingly.
• Subsidiary and external audits can be competitively bid to obtain better, more competitive pricing and to seek more experienced audit resources for sometimes niche or specialized business entities or operations – for instance, SAS 70 audits, foreign entities, trusts, foundations, etc. The incumbent or lead corporate auditor should certainly be invited to bid as well.
  • Alternatively, the scope of the subsidiary and external audits could figure more heavily into the corporate audit selection process, if for no other reason than to leverage competitive pressures for appropriately skilled resources and better pricing.

Managing the Audit Engagement
The challenges of managing an audit engagement are no different from the challenges of managing many other complex SOW engagements. Companies should consider utilizing a VMS (vendor management system) with best-in-class SOW functionality and features (like IQNavigator!) to mirror the complex terms of the corporate audit agreement – also the terms of subsidiary or external audit scopes of work – and fully operationalize the audit engagement. Doing so will not only bring financial disciplines to a big, high risk and complex engagement, but will create much greater visibility to the spend and better position the company for audit term extensions, renewals and strategic sourcing.

While we can’t share details, what struck me was the alignment of Workday’s vision and IQNavigator’s: To allow global enterprises to manage and optimize their entire workforce – both employees and the full spectrum of non–employees.

For example, IQNavigator’s unique VMS workflows for blue-collar workers are used by many manufacturing, retail and distribution clients. Additionally, many clients take advantage of being able to manage consultants and other SOW/project-based workers, whether billable or non-billable.

Also, real-time makes all the difference – when managing a global program, having all-real-time reporting around the clock provides the operational and threshold information needed to get the most benefit from the program in every timezone.

Human resources executives are increasingly interested in gaining visibility and risk control over their entire workforce, and finally the software tools now exist to enable them to do so!

February 11, 2013 – Today, IQNavigator announced the appointment of Graden Gerig as the new Executive Vice President of Professional Services and Engineering. In his new role, Graden will lead IQNavigator’s delivery of industry-leading technology that help clients better manage the growing sector of non-employee workers and procured services.

IQNavigator provides VMS solutions to many of the world’s best-known businesses across all industries, including retail, oil and gas, high tech manufacturing and financial services. Recent trends are requiring successful firms to more quickly react to economic and market pressures. Deep visibility and easy automation of the contingent workforce is a critical lever in the cost analysis equation. Firms with a strong contingent workforce program have the unique ability to quickly and easily adjust staffing resources to ramp up for market movements or ramp down to quickly impact financial results.

Graden’s experience with enterprise consulting, systems integration and SasS solutions brings proven expertise to support IQNavigator’s ongoing corporate initiatives to support the complex requirements of large global clients better than any other VMS provider. A seasoned expert with implementations, Graden’s proven success of global process enablement across multiple enterprise systems aligns perfectly with IQNavigator’s services procurement ecosystem that includes thousands of service partners, software partners, content partners and suppliers.

“At IQNavigator, we are hyper-focused on our clients’ success,” said Lou Andreozzi, CEO and president of IQNavigator, “and hiring an executive such as Graden with such an impressive record of SaaS integrations and implementations only strengthens our ability to streamline the delivery of the leading VMS solution for the world’s largest contingent workforce programs.”

Graden brings over 20 years’ experience to IQNavigator in developing solutions and delivering global services to Fortune 500 companies and has held various SaaS engineering, implementation, consulting and management roles at SuccessFactors, IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

About IQNavigator
IQNavigator is the proven leader in services procurement solutions, helping global enterprises better manage all types of procured services and their external workforces around the world. IQNavigator’s cloud-based VMS software processes tens of billions of dollars in yearly services spend, enabling clients to intelligently manage and optimize the cost-effectiveness, compliance, visibility and efficiency of complex services procurement and contingent workforce programs. For more than a decade, IQNavigator has been the leader in providing innovative technology solutions for managing companies’ procured services including statement of work and project-based consultants, contractors, temporary workers and other contingent workers. 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.

# # #

Press contact:

Stephanie Burnham
Senior Vice President, Marketing
sburnham@iqnavigator.com
310-403-4710

Employment Statistics Mechanics
There are a lot of moving parts in the January report and some of the underlying detail encourages a cautious optimism. To appreciate why, a brief exploration of the BLS report methodology is required. The BLS uses two surveys to estimate employment levels. The Establishment Survey (aka CES) collects information from representative employers. The Household Survey (CPS) interviews families about their work situation. Census data provides the baseline against which ratios, such as the unemployment rate, are calculated. Many of those foundational numbers were revised or given a new baseline in January 2013.

The baseline employment figure was re-set based on Unemployment Insurance data through March 2012. Total non-farm employment in that month was 422,000 higher than originally assumed. This change led to revision of subsequent months, mostly upward. For example, 150,000 more new jobs were created in 4Q 2012 than originally reported. Similarly, the US Census released an updated population estimate that showed the year end 2012 workforce 136,000 larger than previously thought. This change affected January 2013, but the BLS does not restate earlier employment statistics based on changes in population estimates.

The conclusion from all these changes is that the job market was stronger in 2012 than originally reported. Also, the January 2013 upward blip in the unemployment rate by 0.1% is best ignored in light of the changes to working population baseline.

Already being deep in the statistical swamp, two other details are worth noting. While the broadest measure of unemployment (U-6) has been unchanged at 14.4% for months, over the past year there have been declines in the ‘marginally attached’ and ‘discouraged worker’ components of that number by 366,000 and 255,000, respectively. While the total number of unemployed has been resistant to shrinkage, the people behind those numbers have been moving into categories closer to re-entering the workforce. As job prospects improve, potential workers are taking steps that reflect in the statistics as being more engaged in job-seeking behaviors.

January Highlights
The job categories noted as expanding were construction, healthcare and wholesale. Among categories that figure prominently in temp assignments, manufacturing was flat and transportation/warehousing were down. The public sector again shrank, but at -9,000 the pace of decline is slowing. Temporary agency employment was down, which is typical for January. The temp employment growth over the past year was robust.

As noted above, overall employment estimates were revised upward in January. The same was true for the routine revisions of temporary agency employment levels.

News Coverage
Despite the upward tick in the unemployment rate and the modest number of net new jobs created, early news coverage has been generally favorable, the WSJ being the exception. The markets have also responded by moving upward.

Interested in more employment rate information?
Download IQNavigator’s 2012 IQNdex Retrospective today!

BLS
NYT
Reuters
WSJ

As just one example, security certifications such as the SSAE 16 SOC 2 and 3 represent the most stringent international security standards in software – and IQN was the first and is the only VMS to have passed these audits and achieved these certifications. VMS systems process tens of billions of dollars annually – shouldn’t they be held to stringent financial and security requirements as well?

Check out our recent press release to see what else we added to the “Must Have” list for a truly enterprise VMS.

07 February 2013 – Denver, Colorado: IQNavigator, the leading provider of services procurement and external workforce solutions to Global 2000 companies, attained several significant industry ‘firsts’ in 2012, continuing to affirm the company’s stronghold as the global leader in the Vendor Management System (VMS) markets. Beyond accomplishing the largest single-phase implementation in industry history, the company’s achievements demonstrate why the world’s best known firms continue to seek out IQNavigator for the management of their contingent workforce and procured services programs.

Noteworthy industry ‘firsts’ for 2012 included:

• Awards: CODIE Award for the Best Supply Chain Management Solution
• Expansion: First VMS provider to launch operations in China. In partnership with The Judge Group
• Implementation: Accomplished largest single-phase implementation in industry history. Over $1.5 billion on-boarded over one weekend
• Mobile Apps: Android app and beta version of iPad dashboard app (only in industry)
• Certifications:
• HR-XML – demonstrated streamlined implementation methodologies and best-practices
• SSAE 16 Type II SOC 2 and SOC 3 – most stringent international standards of security processes

“In 2011 we predicted 2012 would be a great year for our global clients providing even more innovative solutions and substantially investing in international markets,” said Lou Andreozzi, president and CEO of IQNavigator. “We achieved what we set out to do and much more. But IQNavigator is not stopping here. We are looking well into 2013, which is already showing to be an extraordinary year that will further our international expansions, partnerships and technological innovations and continue to set IQNavigator apart as the global leader in VMS solutions.”

About IQNavigator
IQNavigator is the proven leader in services procurement solutions, helping global enterprises better manage all types of procured services and their non-employee workforces around the world. IQNavigator’s cloud-based VMS software processes tens of billions of dollars in yearly services spend, enabling clients to intelligently manage and optimize the cost-effectiveness, compliance, visibility and efficiency of complex services procurement and contingent workforce programs. For more than a decade, IQNavigator has been the leader in providing innovative technology solutions for managing companies’ procured services including statement of work and project-based consultants, contractors, temporary workers and other contingent workers. 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.

# # #

Press contact:

IQNavigator, Inc.:
Stephanie Burnham
Senior Vice President, Marketing
sburnham@iqnavigator.com
+1-303-714-9213

January 22, 2013 – 2012 was a year of change in the U.S. economy and employment, and that change was reflected in the segment of the U.S. labor market comprised of temporary and contingent workers such as freelancers, contract-based workers, temps, staffing company workers and other non-employee workers. Those trends are the focus of a new IQNdex report that analyzes full-year trends for 2012, providing insights about the fast-growing segment of the U.S. labor force made up of temporary workers.

“Temporary workers are a leading indicator for where the economy is heading because U.S. companies increasingly rely on this type of labor to ramp up their growth plans,” said John F. Martin, CEO of International Markets and Chief Product Officer. “IQNdex provides invaluable information for anyone who wants to understand trends in the labor market, including company executives, economists, HR professionals and managers responsible for services procurement.”

Key insights in the 2012 U.S. IQNdex Retrospective include the following:

• During 2012, billing rates for temporary workers and contingent employees rose 2.7 points overall, outpacing inflation, as unemployment in the U.S. fell 0.7 percent, from 8.5 to 7.8 percent.
• This upward pressure on bill rates for temporary workers indicates rising demand for and/or dwindling supply of temporary workers as general employment rebounds.
• The steady rise in IQNdex in 2012, combined with decreasing unemployment, suggests that improving employment prospects will continue to drive up temporary labor rates in 2013.

Following are additional trends identified in the 2012 U.S. IQNdex Retrospective report, focusing on four major job sectors:

• The IQNdex for the Tech-IT sector rose 5.1 percent in 2012; increases were concentrated in design, development and business-facing roles, while rates for operational and support titles were flat.
• The Professional-Managerial job sector also experienced 2012 hourly rate increases that exceeded the pace of inflation, concentrated in titles requiring higher levels of education.
• Light Industrial rates were up a modest 0.7 percent in 2012, despite a continuing recovery in the manufacturing sector.
• Hourly bill rates for Office-Clerical fell 2.1 percent for the year. Together with Light Industrial, the decline in Office-Clerical rates illustrates that roles typically requiring a college degree increasingly command higher rates, while those needing less education are not receiving rate increases.

Table 1 – IQNdex by Job Sector:

The 2012 U.S. IQNdex Retrospective has in-depth details about the findings outlined above as well as other findings related to geographic areas of the United States and specific metro markets. To read the full report for free, please visit http://www.iqntelligence.com.

About IQNavigator
IQNavigator is the proven leader in services procurement solutions, helping global enterprises better manage all types of procured services and their external workforces around the world. IQNavigator’s cloud-based VMS software processes tens of billions of dollars in yearly services spend, enabling clients to intelligently manage and optimize the cost-effectiveness, compliance, visibility and efficiency of complex services procurement and contingent workforce programs. For more than a decade, IQNavigator has been the leader in providing innovative technology solutions for managing companies’ procured services including statement of work and project-based consultants, contractors, temporary workers and other contingent workers. 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.

###

Stephanie Burnham
Senior Vice President, Marketing
sburnham@iqnavigator.com
310-403-4710