SimpleVMS

Transforming Workforce Management with Innovative Solutions

An international organization has grown to become a large provider for the automotive industry and is now expanding to other markets. A key factor in their success has been the heavy use of a contingent workforce, which makes up over 50% of their more than 2,000 employees. However, managing such a scalable yet complex workforce came with its challenges, prompting the company to seek the right Vendor Management System (VMS) to help them control their staffing program.

Rapid Growth Fueled by Cutting-Edge Technology

Given the company’s rapid success, it’s no surprise they have been ranked on the INC 5000 Fastest-Growing Private Companies List for five consecutive years. The company attributes much of this growth to its innovative use of technology. While competitors typically offer spreadsheet reports that don’t provide comprehensive information, the company uses advanced technology to conduct root cause analysis and other dynamic reporting, enabling customers to quickly identify and solve potential manufacturing issues.

However, another major factor driving the company’s growth is its considerable dependence on a highly adaptable temporary workforce to manage fluctuations in business and to cover regions where it doesn’t have a physical presence. Interestingly, more than 50% of their over 2,000 employees are temporary, and a substantial portion of their full-time staff began as temp-to-direct hires.

The Challenge: When One of Your Greatest Strengths Is Also Your
Biggest Obstacle to Success

The company faced a unique business challenge. While their flexible staffing approach has been instrumental to their success, it also presented a significant obstacle. Managing a workforce of this scale involved partnering with thousands of agency branches from hundreds of staffing agencies, and there was no easy way to have complete oversight or control over the cost.

Initially, the company relied on a full agency management team, including a director, manager, and seven to eight additional employees, to work directly with the staffing agencies and manage their contracts. They attempted to use Excel spreadsheets for analysis, but this approach fell short of managing costs accurately and consistently led to data entry errors. These inaccuracies caused conflicts with agencies over invoices, straining relationships with vendor partners and damaging both sides. In addition, it took several full-time, dedicated employees just to manage this process.

The situation worsened during the pandemic, forcing the company to reduce its workforce. It became clear that they needed a way to not only survive during this challenging time but to thrive when it was over. As the company grew, managing more staffing vendors and workers would have required expanding the already overwhelmed agency management team, leading to increased overhead costs that impacted the company’s bottom line. It was clear that they couldn’t sustain this growth without finding a better way to manage these costs and processes.

The company realized that the same strategy they used to differentiate their services to customers could solve their internal challenges. Leveraging technology, specifically a Vendor Management System (VMS), would streamline their processes, provide better data analysis, and reduce the stress and tension caused by manual errors and inefficiencies. While many companies pull back on technology spending during times of uncertainty, the company recognized that investing in technology was the only way to survive and flourish. Thus, the agency management team was tasked with finding the right VMS to meet their needs.

Not all VMSs are Created Equal: Lessons Learned and a Fresh Start

Naturally, the company began its VMS journey by partnering with one of the largest VMS providers on the market, assuming that the vendor’s size and success would ensure their platform could meet the company’s requirements. They quickly contracted with this company without consulting their own technology teams, who would later become integral in ensuring the VMS met their specific needs. Unfortunately, this turned out to be one of the shortcomings of the program rollout.

From the start, their architect was highly dissatisfied. The VMS solution was overly complicated and difficult to work with, offering no customization to address their business’s unique requirements. Despite working directly with the provider’s developer, the company could not achieve its needed functionality. This back-and-forth continued for six months, during which the vendor consistently overpromised and underdelivered. When they decided to end the project, they had spent considerable money with this vendor and had to fight to get their investment back.

After several months and various attempts to make the system work, the architect ultimately gave up and even considered building a custom system from scratch. However, they soon realized that creating a platform capable of meeting their needs was not a feasible solution. They simply didn’t have the time, money, or resources to independently develop such a robust VMS platform. And that’s when one of their staffing agencies, eager to improve the situation for their largest client, proposed a better solution: SimpleVMS.