Welcome to the weekly news roundup! Below are the top stories we’ve read or shared this week affecting our industry.

Monday: Are you in the customer service profession? How about engineering? Both of these careers are in high demand in 2013. Read through the rest of the list for your best shot at scoring a new gig. (Adecco Blog)

Tuesday: Industry analysts weigh in on this article on how to manage the contingent workforce. Learn the basic principles of how a VMS works and the typical benefits that can be achieved. (Workforce.com)

Wednesday: We all have heard the news. The workforce is shifting from full-time employment to temporary work. A new study just predicted how much of America’s workforce will be freelance by 2020. Click through to find out. (Quartz)

Today: Organizations have been singing the praises of cloud technology for years. The benefits – like cost savings, scalability and reliability – are proven. Learn about the positive impact of cloud technology adoption within the staffing industry. (The Staffing Stream)

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Today’s guest post is by Matt Kreh, Fieldglass Professional Services. Matt is our first blogger in a new series called “Bridging the Gap” where we’ll explore the various relationships within a contingent workforce program.)

In my six years here at Fieldglass, I have had the benefit of working with many different customers and have seen a variety of different program structures. Across the board, a program’s success usually comes down to three key things: collaboration between the hiring manager and the program office; remembering KISS principles (we’ll talk about what that means later); and seeking to understand rather than seeking to be understood.

Collaboration Between the Hiring Manager and PMO

The interaction between the hiring manager, the VMS and the program office (PMO) usually falls in a spectrum between two extremes – a completely independent “self –service” model and a much more dependent, “guided” approach.  For example, when a new position is required, do hiring managers create their own job posting in the VMS? Or do they call the PMO, conduct a detailed intake session and the PMO creates the job posting for them? (more…)

Welcome to the weekly news roundup! Below are the top stories we’ve read or shared this week affecting our industry.

Tuesday: Two new studies are proving the move to and benefits of cloud technology. A recent CDW survey found that 50+% of organizations are adopting cloud. And, another study by Rackspace Hosting shows the majority are recognizing cost savings and increased profits. (CIO)

Wednesday: Searching for an overview of the shift towards a flexible, non-employee workforce? Look no further. (M Squared Consulting)

Wednesday: Three must-haves for VMS adoption – buy-in, process clarity and usability. Read about how Staffing Industry Analysts say each can affect your contingent workforce program’s success. (CWS 3.0)

Wednesday: There are several keys to ensuring independent workers are classified correctly. Check out this article for three tips. (Wall Street Journal)

Did we miss anything? Let us know in comments. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Welcome to the weekly news roundup! Below are the top stories we’ve read or shared this week affecting our industry.

Tuesday: Did you attend Staffing Industry Analysts Executive Forum last week? If not, no worries. The firm compiled the top tweets from the event. Read through to quickly catch up on the latest news and trends. (SIA)

Tuesday: Barry Asin makes 18 predictions for the staffing industry in 2018. Among them, the industry will be worth $160 billion, and, at #11, “Maturing VMS, MSP and RPO models morph into the next big thing.” (SIA)

Thursday: Are you a tractor-trailer truck driver? Or, better yet, a “team assembler”? Check out the most in-demand temp jobs right now. (SIA)

Friday: The Jobs Report is out, and the news is good. This past month the U.S. had one of the largest job gains in the past 12 months and the lowest unemployment level since December 2008. (Adecco)

Did we miss anything? Let us know in comments. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Recently Fieldglass announced that our Director of Implementation Chuck Baren was a first-time honoree by Supply & Demand Chain Executive’s “Pro To Know” awards. Chuck has been an integral part of the Fieldglass team for more than a decade, and the award couldn’t have gone to anyone more deserving. Congrats, Chuck!

Q1. You’ve been with Fieldglass for a looong time. Can you tell us why you chose to work for the company back in 2001, as well as share why you continue to put your talents to use here today?

My career aspirations are the same now as they were 12 years ago when I joined Fieldglass – to do work that I enjoy with people who were fun to work with. I was lucky that I enjoyed the kind of work I was good at, and that I found a place like Fieldglass that gives top performers opportunities to do work that they might not be asked to do elsewhere. We did not yet have any customers when I joined the company, but we had “contracts on the table” and were confident that we’d begin implementation work for our first customer soon. Thankfully, we were right. My initial role at Fieldglass was to develop a training plan for our users. I evaluated online collaboration tools like WebEx, wrote our first User Guides (the predecessor to our online Help menu), wrote the training scripts and trained our first users. I began implementation activities like we define them today with our second customer that same summer, and have been working in implementation ever since. I was doing good work and given ever-increasing responsibilities as Fieldglass grew. Now all these years later, I lead a very successful department and still enjoy coming to work every day.

Q2. The magazine recognized you specifically for your VMS implementation vision and strategies. What is about the implementation design process that you enjoy?

I am naturally a structured thinker and a disciplined worker – two instincts that fit well with project work. And I enjoy observing a well-run project turn into a successful program launch. It is rewarding to see the project management principles that we talk about at Fieldglass everyday work as designed, resulting in a great program that is easy to support – from our partners’ perspective, not just our own.  Our business analysts, project managers and account managers all play a different but important role on projects. I get a lot of satisfaction knowing that I have had a lot of influence over how those roles have evolved to fit the needs of our partners and customers, as well as our own, in an environment that seems to change from year to year. (more…)

(This post is also available on The Staffing Stream.)

Searching for any software solution involves research, commitment and patience before you even engage with potential providers. You’ve done your homework beforehand and you’ve winnowed down a list of vendors to participate in the Request for Proposal (RFP) process.

The RFP exercise can also be arduous. One of the most common mistakes companies make “is not conducting a thorough gap analysis to the current program and utilizing it to clearly articulate the desired future state before releasing requirements to the market,” according to Staffing Industry Analysts.

Because it’s the beginning of a potentially long-term relationship with an organization, you want to leave no stone unturned and address every aspect of how the program operates. But how do you know the right questions to ask?

With a complicated technology solution like a Vendor Management System, the process can be even more difficult when multiple stakeholders and business objectives are involved.

Think of the RFP process like an overly thorough first date – you want to know exactly what you’re getting yourself into before taking the next step. We’ve compiled an abbreviated list of the Essential Questions to Include in a Vendor Management System RFP to help start the process. (more…)

Welcome to the weekly news roundup! Below are the top stories we’ve read or shared this week affecting our industry.

Monday: Are you looking to go the freelance route? We’ve hit the mother lode of reasons to do so here, judging by the results of a recent survey. This blog post also lists 3 positives and 3 negatives associated with this career choice. (Emergent)

Monday: Congrats to our CEO Jai Shekhawat on the announcement of his induction into the Chicago Area Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame! (UIC)

Wednesday: VMS as matchmaker? In the latest survey, 25% of buyers were introduced to their suppliers via their VMS provider. (CWS 3.0)

Today: While this isn’t exactly workforce “news”, we’d like to wish a happy 8^th anniversary to the Illinois Technology Association today. We’re proud to be a partner to them in our home state, and congratulate the ITA team on their role in enhancing Chicago’s technology community. (ITA)

Have a great weekend, everyone!

In case you weren’t able to join us for last week’s SOW – A Global Trend webinar co-hosted with Staffing Industry Analysts, we dove into the state of SOW management in Europe. Below, we’ve recapped the three main takeaways from the conversation.

Not all service categories are built equal. Arun Srinivasan, vice president of marketing and strategy for Fieldglass, talked about the broad spectrum of categories within SOW services management — including the “usual suspects” such as IT and financial services, but also other categories such as legal and print. He noted that a variety of factors contribute to how these categories can be successfully managed such as the current state of management, footprint, the degree of decentralization, underlying economics for that category and the nature of the buyer-to-vendor relationship within each. Understanding the nuances of how these categories are managed differently is essential to a successful program. (more…)

(Today’s guest post is by Arjun Dutt, Business Intelligence Solutions. This is the fourth post in a series called “Back to the Basics” on reporting.)

In previous posts, I’ve talked about the importance of asking the right questions, identifying which reports will provide the answers and understanding your audience. In today’s post, Part 4 in the series, I want to help you use the right tools for the right reports.

Most BI software has a wide range of tools available, depending on both the degree of analysis you need as well as the maturity of the audience that intends to consume them. Here are some of the more common ones. (more…)

(Today’s guest post is by Arjun Dutt, Business Intelligence Solutions. This is the third post in a series called “Back to the Basics” on reporting.)

In previous posts, I’ve talked about the importance of asking the right questions and identifying which reports will provide the answers. In today’s “Part 3” of this series, we will help you identify the users who will consume your reports and analytics.

Often times it can be unclear exactly who within the organization needs the metrics and data that your program is producing on a regular basis. This confusion leads to the easy mistake of investing too much time in an entire suite of reports that may not be valuable to the right users.

In counseling our customers, we have found a good rule of thumb is to focus on four main report consumers. Any good reporting strategy will account for the following audiences: (more…)