Staffing Technology

46: 2011: The Year of Social Recruiting

2010-08-21T12:28:07-07:00

We do a lot of technology strategy work with our clients. While I know a ton has been going on with social and professional networking over the past many years, we have been recommending that our staffing clients experiment with social media. Remember the My Space craze? Case and point - things were too new, too dynamic and the recruiting ROI too risky and unproven....that is, until now.

With the shift in the economy being felt, talent on the move (or getting ready to move) and the rapid adoption of social media by the masses - it is time for staffing companies to move out of social media experimentation mode and spring into action. While the ROI of social recruiting might not be massive, it has been demonstrated.

Of course, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are at the core. I really appreciated this quote in a recent Deloitte inspired article "Social media provides a platform for interaction and building relationships between employers and potential employees, which if done correctly could distinguish a company from its competitors." Here at The Code Works, we're always looking for ways to help our staffing companies leverage technology to accentuate their differentiators and I see this opportunity for staffing firms.

It's August 20th, so you have time to complete these key steps before 2011.

Figure out how you clients and candidates use social media today - where do they hang out online? how do they use mobile devices? Which networks do they use and why?
Review your market and operational differentiators and determine how social media can help you be more successful
With point #1 and 2 in mind, develop your social media goals and objectives for both candidates and clients (1-2 year view)
Develop your road map (your plan) which lays out the steps your staffing organization will need to take to achieve those goals

In October I will be moderating a panel discussion on social media at ASA's Staffing World. We have a phenomenal panel and presentation planned - panelists from small, medium and large firms will share what they do today, their high-level social media strategy and set the bar for what you need to be doing around social media. I hope to see you there.

45: Provade receives additional $3m to total $23m

2010-08-04T09:54:31-07:00

The Business Journal reports that VMS provider Provade has taken $3m in additional funding, "with the latest funding, total venture investment in the company now exceeds $23 million."

Provade has always been one of the most interesting VMS to me for a number of reasons:

PeopleSoft relationships and history - Provade founder and CEO Edward Jackson has a successful track record selling companies to PeopleSoft (Skillsvillage), seems that they have good connections with the software giant
Focus on services procurement, not just temp labor spend - from where I sit, it seems that Provade was an early adopter of services procurement and aims to support a broad set of labor categories via its VMS
Ability to integrate directly to the ERP of its large, hiring company clients - Because it is PeopleSoft based, Provdae is uniquely positioned to integrate back into their client's ERP. This is really powerful because Provade clients that use PeopleSoft/Oracle based ATSs can avoid duplicate data entry or job requisitions and candidates, not to mention delays in broadcasting orders to suppliers
Ability to connect software across the human capital supply chain - even deeper links are possible, ideally the hiring company's ATS it integrated with their production planning ERP so that human capital needs are communicated via the ATS/VMS in a real-time way
Ability to partner with a variety of large staffing firms

In their press release, Provade explains that the funding is for “This next round of funding should significantly enable Provade’s expansion as a leading VMS provider. According to Provade President and CEO Edward Jackson. “We are increasing the size and frequency of deployments with new customers and program expansions into additional spend categories and geographies,” Jackson said. “As the only enterprise-class VMS in the market, we deliver global capabilities, coPublishmplete integrations, and world-class analytics for nearly 50 companies.”

Provade was founded in 2004, about 5 years after market leaders Fieldglass and IQNavigator. Even with the late start, they have stayed focus, added experienced personnel and grown market share. While I don't quite understand why they need a cash injection at this point in their evolution, the fact is that they have taken on about 1/2 as much VC-funding as Fieldglass and IQ. Definitely a VMS firm to continue to watch attentively, I'll be interested to see what they do with the cash.

44: I-9 policies still in the dark ages

2010-07-27T11:18:49-07:00

I-9s cause staffing firms headaches on many levels. Storing I-9s so that they can be retrieved efficiently has been an issue for so long that many firms switched to scanning them a long-time back. As usual, I-9 legislation is painfully slow to advance.

Today, the ASA summarized the latest I-9 ruling,"U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement published a final rule last week that permits employers to complete, sign, scan, and store the Form I-9 electronically. The final rule, which makes minor changes to a rule that was first promulgated in 2006, will take effect Aug. 22. It applies to U.S. employers and to "entities that recruit or refer persons for employment for a fee" for agricultural employers. Among other provisions, the rule states that employers must complete the Form I-9 within three business (not calendar) days of the date the employee is hired. Employers may use paper, electronic systems, or a combination of paper and electronic systems. Further, employers may change electronic storage systems as long as the systems meet the performance standards set forth in the rule. Employers must retain audit trails when the I-9 form is created, completed, updated, modified, altered, or corrected, but not each time a Form I-9 is viewed electronically. Moreover, employers may provide or transmit a confirmation of an I-9 transaction but are not required to do so unless the employee requests a copy. The rule only applies to the storage of the I-9 form, not its content. For more information, visit uscis.gov."

I suppose the plus is that staffing firms no longer need to keep the original paper form. On the other hand, they will need to review their imaging systems to make sure that they comply with the new ruling. I’m happy to see that some progress is being made, but it would be great to see bigger improvements this century.

43: Staffing Technology in 2020: Code Work's Predictions

2010-03-31T22:24:00-07:00

Barry Asin made some interesting forecasts in his keynote presentation at the 2010 Exec Forum around technology. Staffing technology is the center of my professional universe and the keynote left me wanting more detail around the next decade in staffing technology. As an analyst of the staffing space, my forecast is a combination of business needs peppered with few of my wishes.

By 2020...

We will have staffing applications that are easy to learn and use, visually appealing and easy to configure
We will have fewer front office vendors and more best-of-breed back office vendors
We will have Salesforce.com-like client relationship management functionality
The back office will be paperless
Onboarding will be paperless
No more "swivel chair integrations" between internal systems, with client systems (e.g. VMS) or with third-party technology enabled services (e.g. background checking firms, skill testing firms)
Our industry will have embraced management by metrics; real-time measurements and reporting will drive sales and recruiting performance
We will have mastered our ability to leverage inexpensive technology to proactively market to and manage our candidates with the result of greater candidate loyalty
Our mobile devices and VoIP interfaces will be seamlessly integrated with our staffing systems, they will be easy to use with compelling functionality that allows us to capture high quality data closer to the interaction not requiring we get back to our desk
We will have cheaper tools to help quickly and accurately identify the best candidates within our database, and beyond
Candidate availability will be up-to-date in our system
Front and back office technology will elegantly support a variety of staffing business models

42: 46% to increase tech spend in 2010

2010-03-30T19:23:26-07:00

My favorite presentation at Staffing Industry Analyst's Executive Forum each year is Barry Asin's kick-off keynote describing the state of the staffing industry. While soaking up his review of what's just happened to us all and his analysis of what's about to hit us, I'm intently listening for how technology might come into play.

Barry shared 2010 SIA Staffing Survey data which showed 46% of those surveyed plan on increasing their technology budgets in 2010. Technology ranked 3rd on the list of priorities, after hiring more sales and recruiting staff. For those of us who are closest to staffing technology, it truly is news to have technology rank so high. Technology reduces operating costs, while allowing companies to scale through automation rather than adding headcount. Now that the temp market is improving, it seems that nearly half of the firms surveyed are ready to invest in technology though they maybe pressed to implement new technologies at the same time business is booming.

Barry also called out that VMS adoption hit 63% in 2009 and is forecasted that, "VMS/MSP adoption among large clients [will reach] saturation" by 2020. By saturation, he meant that VMS adoption could reach "nearly 100%" for the largest hiring companies and noted that VMS will begin to penetrate: smaller firms (floor will move down from $20m to $2m in annual hiring company spend), all types of staffing segments (e.g. light industrial) and all types of staffing engagements (e.g. SOW). He also noted that he expects to see more VMS consolidation.

Barry's 2020 projections were quite interesting. Of course, the best part was where he said the size of the staffing industry would double in the next 10 years - we all like that. He called out that "the next waves of technology innovation [will help] staffing change from "providing people" to "getting work done." He also referenced last year's Exec Forum when one of the keynotes highlighted that wise investments in technology could help staffing firms better defend and grow market share while increasing barriers to entry.

41: VMS Buzz

2010-02-28T15:40:19-08:00

VMS systems have been around for over a decade now and while most staffing companies have been working with them for that long, it seems that the number of hiring companies adopting them and the volume of orders and transactions over them are dramatically accelerating. We frequently talk with staffing firms, even small ones, who receive 50+% of their orders from VMS. Staffing Industry Analysts ' predicts that 81 percent of large companies will be using a VMS solution by 2011.

in the last few months, there certainly has been a great deal of news on vendor management systems (VMS).

Leading VMS, Fieldglass, announces that they have passed the 100 client mark in their tenth year, with 33 new clients being added in 2009.

IQNavigator's founding CEO, John Raeder, left and was replaced. Jason Busch, spend matters blogger posts that expects this to signal IQ is poised to break the $100m revenue barrier.

I summarized some of these headlines in a Human Capital Supply Chains post about Authoria's acquisition of Peopleclick in January 2010. Peopleclick acquired VMS itiliti in 2002 to extend their ATS offering and had made some recent improvements to their VMS, namely integrating BusinessObjects.

Beeline was recently picked up by Adecco as part of their acquisition of MPS. Beeline had done such a great job at acquiring VMS market share and was acknowledged as a vendor neutral solution before the acquisition, even though they were owned by MPS. This Workforce Management article explains that Beeline was an important driver behind Adecco's acquisition, which makes one wonder about Adecco's plans for Beeline.

Symbio Solutions filed for bankruptcy and Broadlane picked up their assets, according to Staffing Industry Analysts article. Jason Lander of Shiftwise and Staffing Robot blogger covers the story here.

Eight years ago, when I was writing my first piece on VMS, I had to spend hours hunting for even the smallest crumb of information on VMS; today, VMS is quite the buzz.

40: 3 Most Common Mistakes with Staffing Software Selection

2010-02-28T12:27:00-08:00

Earlier this week I presented "Staffing Software Selection Best Practices" where I shared some of our lessons learned and the standard methodology that we use when we facilitate selections for our staffing clients. Email me if you would like a copy of the presentation.
I'd like to highlight one of the webinar participant questions. Sylvia asks, "What are the three most common mistakes in software selection?" I'll answer the question a little differently than I did on the webinar, but the main ideas are the same:

Making a decision too quickly and not taking the time to evaluate how well each software option meets the firm's critical business needs. I sometimes see staffing firms be dazzled by price or a compelling sales person and jump in to a decision after just a few hours! Selecting core software such as a front or back office solutions generally requires 2 to 4 months; maybe 1 month for a very small firm and hopefully no longer than 6 months. It's important that you really understand how the software enables your core process and business differentiators.

Focusing too heavily on new and shiny features rather that the most important, core features of a solution. An example might be showing interest in one vendor's Twitter integration - it might be nice and all, but is a small extra and should not weigh into the decision in any way.

Spending too long analyzing each and every functional gap in the options you are considering before starting negotiations with your top one or two finalists. It's been my experience in staffing software selections that the decisions are not made on the details, they are made on how well the software meets the core business process. While I think it's good to know what key gaps to expect so you can accurately plan implementation (and there will be some gaps), you don't want to slow the momentum of your decision in analysis paralysis.

As I mentioned on the webinar, feel free to contact me with additional questions.

39: A call to front office vendors: onboarding automation please

2010-01-29T22:17:45-08:00

Hiring companies are pushing more and more administrative functions to their staffing suppliers. Staffing companies have between one and two dozen forms for new hires to complete. Just figuring out which federal, state, local, client-specific, position-specific and staffing company forms need to be completed for each new temporary employee is a major feat. Strict client compliance requirements and looming government audits mean that staffing companies need to implement effective processes for managing this immense amount of paperwork. Automation is the natural soltuion for exactly this type of uniform, high transaction process.

Many corporate HR oriented applicant tracking systems come with onboarding workflow, forms tracking and management and e-signature capabilities. However, onboarding solutions are not readily available fromcommercial front or back office vendors, even though the pain of managing onboarding paperwork is industry-wide. Because front and back office staffing solutions have not provided robust solutions fast enough, staffing firms are starting to find innovative ways to automate these painfully manual processes. It's unfortunate that staffing firms are having to work hard toadd additional technology in order to automate onboarding. In 2010, we hope to see more onboarding and compliance functionality integrated with, or built into, leading front office solutions.

Check back for our upcoming article on onboarding automation in ASA's Staffing Success magazine.

38: All work and no play: software selection sandboxes

2010-01-07T11:29:26-08:00

Here at The Code Works, we facilitate a number of staffing software selections for our staffing company clients.
Throughout our marketing and sales process, we explain our software selection methodology to prospective clients.

In the spirit of one of our core company values, continuous improvement, we are always working to make the selection process more efficient while maintaining a high level of quality. To us, a quality selection process means that the selected software:

Will enable the staffing company's business goals and business strategy

Accentuates and/or does not detract from the company's competitive and operational differentiators

Is aligned with the IT strategy, considers the other applications in the staffing firm's architecture and can fit into the IT environment

In addition to we need to understand meaningful gaps so that we can determine where business process will change or customization will occur. We have found that most company's do not like financial, functional, performance or implementation planning surprises. So, the selection process needs to be thorough enough so that these "gotchas" can be identified.
In October 2008 I presented a number of Code Works' best practices for software selection at ASA's Staffing World conference. One of our recommendations was that staffing firm's forget about a sending out a request for proposal (RFP) and focus on scripted demos instead. Our rationale driving the recommendation was that:
a) RFPs list requirements and vendor's make check marks but there is much room for interpretation
b) Software enables business process - so requirements need to be connected and not just listed
c) Seeing is believing - in addition to demonstrating functionality, scripted demos show how efficiently and elegantly a software enables a requirement
Staffing firm's have really appreciated the scripted demos. While vendor's tend to appreciate why customer's want them (i.e. apples to apples software comparison), sales people find the prep time requirements to be too much which is aggravating (they are used to quick decisions) and dramatically increases their cost of sales, which is then reflected in pricing or profit impacts.
We have had a great deal of success working with vendor's to set-up sandbox environments for selection purposes and then working through key business processes with selection stakeholders. I really enjoyed reading Jim Holincheck's post on this topic and it is my hope that The Code Works will find ways to make this process more efficient for staffing firm's and vendor's in 2010.

37: Buy not Build

2009-11-24T15:54:25-08:00

We here at The Code Works love custom software as much as we love commercial packages. We see the strengths and weaknesses on both sides in the buy versus build discussion. Really, we do. But because of the high cost and risk associated with custom application development and the availability of good commercial packages for staffing firms, It is our view that there must be a compelling reason for a staffing firm to decide to build rather than buy.
At the end of the day our clients tell us that they are in the staffing, not software, business. Many, many staffing firms have learned this lesson the hard way. Nearly every large public staffing firm has an embarrassing annual report or two outlining massive write-offs related to a failed software development or major customization project. Many staffing firms have learned the hard way that they do not have the software product development discipline nor the software development capability to successfully complete and manage custom dev projects.
While our off-the-shelf staffing software options may not be perfect, they have improved over the last several years. Software vendors are releasing new functionality routinely. While custom systems can be extended to include new functionality too, we see that commercial packages are integrating with more and more technology-enabled services (e.g. background checking, payroll service providers, VMS integration, social and professional networks). We believe that it will be harder and harder for custom staffing systems to keep up with the partnerships and integrations that off-the-shelf vendors offer.
There is clearly a trend for staffing firms to buy rather than build software. Manpower selected Bond Adapt for all staffing segments across all branches worldwide. Kelly Services selected Bullhorn for their professional and technical staffing segments in the US. When large and complex organizations (who would've been best positioned to benefit from the economies of scale of a custom system move away from their own custom apps toward off-the-shelf solutions, it becomes even more evident that off-the-shelf staffing solutions must be seriously considered - if they can do it - you probably can too.
Custom systems can be tightly tied to business process and this can be appealing. Technology can be a key enabler of a staffing firm's differentiators. Sometimes, the differentiator can be configured or customized into the off-the-shelf system. Sometimes, not. It is our recommendation that staffing firms be very clear about the importance and necessity of the functionality that drives the decision to build rather than buy staffing software. Be sure it's differentiating - be sure off-the-shelf systems can't handle it - be sure you can't risk leaking the intellectual property with the outside world.
Do everything you can to talk yourself out of building that custom application before you make the leap because once you commit to building it you are definitely a pig not a chicken, and it is going to be incredibly difficult for you and your organization to make the move to an off-the-shelf application down the road.