Business organizations typically think of procurement solutions as a means to achieve the ultimate in cost savings. To a large extent, this is a reasonable assumption and most anyone working in procurement at the enterprise level has firsthand experience driving savings through supply chain management programs. However, services procurement solutions are normally an outlier to this practice. It is now generally accepted that quality is a metric equally as import as cost when gauging the success of a contingent workforce management program. Poor quality candidates provided by a Managed Services Program (MSP) erode the cost savings yielded by the efficiency improvements delivered through the automation and outsourcing of this business process. Simply put, little money is saved through streamlining processes to deliver human capital if the delivered product is predominantly comprised of poor quality resources. In fact, the time and money wasted rectifying poor contingent worker decisions can actually cause projects to soar over budget while falling behind planned project schedules. Recently, human resources professionals have begun to vocalize their frustration with the status quo. Volt Consulting, in listening to the voice of the customer, has moved itself ahead of the proverbial curve in delivering quality control mechanisms that bring HR and procurement departments together to achieve a common goal.
Volt Consulting research into the relative importance of quality to MSP users mirrors that performed by vendor agnostic organizations such as the American Staffing Association, Aberdeen and Staffing.org. All indicators point toward a growing sense, especially among HR professionals, that inconsistent quality of candidates is a leading driver behind diminishing returns on investment from human capital acquisition solutions.
What has Volt Consulting been doing to address this challenge?
Our clients and serious followers of human capital industry trends realize that our solution has historically emphasized expertise as the key driver responsible for optimizing the output of automation applications. While newer entrants into our nascent field have focused on technology to the point of abstraction, Volt Consulting has quietly continued to invest in securing a team of the best and brightest minds in the fields of human resources, business intelligence, and data management. This is a part of the culture that we inherited, being an offspring of one of the world’s foremost information sciences corporations. Our strategy was founded on the idea that most vendor management system (VMS) applications merely provide an organized, centralized and streamlined means for standardizing the intricate processes involved in sourcing and managing contingent labor. The real value proposition, as we have proven it to be, stems from having experts – in all applicable disciplines – that specialize in the interpretation of the data used to optimize the analytics output. Through these efforts, ProcureStaff has proven beyond any doubt that there truly is a significant difference between just quickly filling requisitions, and quickly filling requisitions with the most qualified candidates in the marketplace.
Through a proven and critically acclaimed human capital BI program, Volt Consulting has been providing organizations with accurate, detailed, data-driven intelligence and metrics on the relative effectiveness of staffing suppliers. This kind of analysis enables an organization to see which suppliers consistently fill requisitions with quality candidates and which suppliers struggle. Such visibility into quality metrics enables the MSP to weed out poor performing suppliers and either replaces them outright (in the most egregious cases) or provides mentoring to help struggling suppliers improve their candidate’s performance levels. The savings in terms of lost time, avoided retraining, and other negative consequences of poor quality are often as significant as those yielded through process efficiency enhancements. It has become much clearer in the last couple of years that there is greatly reduced net value in saving costs through process improvements if these savings are offset by less-than high quality workers and the costs incurred from reduced output and high turnover.
In conclusion, I encourage you to review our latest white paper, “Cost is King, but Quality is the Power Behind the Throne,” which offers pertinent, up to the minute research that underscores the surging interest in quality improvements as well as a detailed explanation of Volt Consulting MSP’s successful process for ensuring quality candidates.
Sincerely,
Larry D. Kaylor