(Today’s guest post is by Arjun Dutt, Business Intelligence Solutions. This is the first post in a new weekly series, called Measuring Up.)

It’s the start of a new quarter and for many companies, that means it’s time to gear up for quarterly business reviews. As is common in these reviews, there is a large emphasis on metrics – be it measuring efficiency, supplier performance or cost savings – that are often defined with VMS and MSP providers as Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Each quarter, your partners report back to you, highlighting how those SLAs have been reached.

A large majority of VMS and MSP buyers have come to the realization that metrics around SLAs only serve as indicators of basic program health; they fall short on offering any value outside of designating a pass/fail grade. After these reviews, program sponsors are still left to wonder: how do we leverage our data to improve programs?

Regardless of a program’s size or maturity, companies overlook a few important data points that could lead to program improvement. These three examples include such metrics and how customers benefited from taking a closer look.

1. Hiring manager decision-making. The most common measure of efficiency is “time-to-fill”, or cycle time – but companies don’t often look beyond the overall number. One customer recently indicated that hiring managers were unhappy with the high cycle time and wanted suppliers to submit candidates faster. After a review of their data over the past six months, we determined that the supplier response time only accounted for 8-10 percent of the total cycle time, leaving 85 percent of the entire process in the hands of the hiring managers to review candidates, conduct interviews and make decisions. As a result, the customer worked with us to make the review and hiring process easier and more efficient. This led directly to an improvement in another program metric – hiring manager satisfaction.

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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 for temporary work in or around Raleigh, NC? You’re in luck! The area has the highest expected temp job growth through 2014. Check out the other 19 on the list. (The Hiring Site)

Tuesday: Allegis Group Services and HCI Research recently joined forces on a new study. First, check out AGS’ take on the changing workforce today in this new blog post (study available at the end). (Allegis Group Services)

Wednesday: In this press release, one staffing firm discusses how the state of the economy has caused more and more older workers to take on temporary positions. (Digital Journal)

Wednesday: Talk about analytics. Google uses independent hiring committees and 40-50 pages of information for every candidate to make their hiring decisions. Learn how this affects the hiring manager process. (CWS 3.0)

Wednesday: Analyst Chris Dwyer presents his second post in a series on best practices for managing the contingent workforce. In this post he focuses on strategies to leverage program data. (CPO Rising)

Have a great weekend, everyone!

A few weeks ago, we talked about how hiring managers adopt programs more easily when they have a technology to guide them through processes. Because they have a multitude of other projects and responsibilities on their plates, they don’t want to be burdened with a VMS that doesn’t guide them through tasks such as creating job requisitions and approving timesheets. So once the application is implemented, it’s important to get feedback about the program consistently – whether it’s good or bad – to ensure you’re not missing the opportunity to make improvements to your program or provide additional training.

One easy way to solicit feedback is through a survey. The survey can include questions about users’ familiarity with particular features and functionality in the application as well as questions about their satisfaction with program support. After a few months of use, hiring managers will undoubtedly have their fair share of opinions. Providing a survey proactively proves you are invested in improving the program and that user input drives program success and enhancements.

Surveys can help you discover pain points, challenges and (hopefully) successes achieved by the VMS and the program thus far. It’s not unusual to conduct these sorts of surveys annually, but conducting them on a quarterly basis would be ideal in terms of keeping the “feedback loop” open with hiring managers. These surveys can serve as progress reports that can help re-shape a failing program or bolster a successful one.

We’ve included some tips for creating a survey that can help improve hiring manager satisfaction and maximize results:

• Know the Scope: To evaluate survey responses, you’ll want an understanding of the type of user in the program. Ask hiring managers to provide the number of contingent workers currently on assignment under their management and where they’re located. You’ll also want to know how long the hiring manager has been with the company– a user who has only used the application once will have much different answers than one who has used it for years.

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Over the past few weeks, Matt Kreh, Andrew Thiermann and Greg Fenton of the Fieldglass Professional Services team co-authored a series on From the Field called “Bridging the Gap” focusing the relationships between different stakeholders within a contingent program. The four-part series appeared every Wednesday over the past month, but in case you missed any of the posts, here’s a recap of what each of our bloggers discussed:

• Matt’s first post, How Collaboration Between the Program Office and Hiring Managers Breeds Success, discussed three key contributors to a successful program: continued teamwork between the hiring manager and the program office; simplifying program objectives; and creating a feedback loop. Regardless of the program structure, keeping these three ideas at the forefront can ensure a program has continued success.

• In the second post in the series, How C-Suite Leadership Sets the Tone for VMS Deployments, Andrew discussed the importance of designing a deployment strategy for a contingent workforce program that is tightly aligned with corporate goals. Program managers should create objectives based on the overarching company goals to secure C-suite support. He then provided a few customer examples of how different strategic approaches affect how a contingent workforce program is rolled out.

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Last week, Fieldglass co-hosted a webinar titled, “Contingent Workforce Programme Evolution: Growing Your Programme for Future Success,” with our very own Mikael Lindmark, vice president of EMEA, Lutz Peichert, vice president and principal analyst for Forrester Research and Gareth Druce, professional services director for Reed Elsevier. In case you missed it, you can download the webinar here but here are some of the key takeaways from last week’s session.

The webinar was an opportunity for Peichert to share some Forrester insights into the European services procurement market, the challenges currently facing customers and the benefits of VMS use. With this in mind, Druce then offered Reed Elsevier’s perspective on these insights and shared his company’s experience in expanding a contingent workforce program globally. Some common themes emerged between Forrester’s analysis and Reed Elsevier’s experience: Read More »

Fieldglass has been selected as a finalist in two categories for the 2013 Illinois Technology Association (ITA) CityLIGHTS Awards. Fieldglass has been named a finalist for the Lighthouse Award while Jai Shekhawat is a finalist for the CEO of the Year award for the second consecutive year. We’re proud to be finalists again in these categories but now we need your help to bring home the awards on May 9.

You can vote on the ITA voting page here using a valid corporate email address. Winners are chosen based on a composite score – 50 percent judges’ votes and 50 percent community voting – so you have a good chance of giving Fieldglass and Jai the win.

If Fieldglass wins the Lighthouse Award, we’ll be in good company. Previous winners include Chicago technology staples Groupon, GrubHub.com and Redbox. According to the ITA, the Lighthouse award is “presented to the growth-stage company, which through innovation in products, services or business approach, has grown to become a serious competitor in the marketplace.” Fieldglass joins fellow finalists Centro, Corptax, kCura and Silkroad.

Along with Jai, Hank Adams of Sportvision, Jeff Hyman of Retrofit, Michael Small of Gogo and Douglass Waggoner of Echo Global Logistics have been nominated in the CEO of the Year category. Each year the award is “presented to the company CEO who has led successful company growth through leadership, ability to attract and retain talented resources, financial accomplishments and strategy for continued company growth.”

We’re excited to be finalists for these awards but even more excited that your vote is so important in the final tally. Voting is now open and ends on April 22 at 5 pm. You can only vote once but we encourage you to share this news and ITA’s voting site with fellow Fieldglass fans.

VOTE NOW!

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

Tuesday: Robert Half International and BMO Capital Markets comment on the current demand for temporary workers. (Investor’s Business Daily)

Wednesday: Are you really getting enough out of your quarterly business reviews? Learn about some components of strategic QBRs. (CWS 3.0)

Thursday: Are you a new freelancer and unsure of how much your going rate should be? Check out this complete guide for establishing and negotiating your client rates. (Lifehacker)

Today: Several Silicon Valley technology companies are pushing to make the immigration process easier in order to access talented foreign workers. (The Globe and Mail)

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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

In my earlier blog post, I talked about collaboration between the hiring manager and the PMO and stressed the importance of creating a “feedback loop” so users have a way to share their experiences with the program on a consistent basis. In the same way it’s imperative to a program’s success for everyday users to communicate with the PMO, it’s equally imperative to have the same sort of open dialogue with suppliers.

As the PMO, take a step back and evaluate the relationship between you and the suppliers, who are usually bucketed into one of four groups:

• Under the Radar – This category can actually be one of two scenarios: either there is very little communication between the PMO and the supplier, or there is not a lot of activity coming from the supplier at all. In other words, the supplier doesn’t submit many candidates or makes up a small portion of overall program spend. Read More »

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

Monday: This article celebrates the good news in the job market. Among the details, 40% of employers plan to hire temporary and contract workers this year, according to a forecast by CareerBuilder. (USA Today)

Wednesday: Thinking of taking a new temporary job, with the possibility to be hired on full-time? This article outlines some great reasons why a temp-to-perm position can be great for your career. (Huffington Post)

Thursday: All independent contractors must excel as project managers to be successful. Here are seven strategies to help run a successful project from beginning to end. (MBO Partners)

Today: Ardent Partners’ analyst Chris Dwyer shares some points to consider when looking to drive additional value from your contingent workforce. Check out his thoughts on whether analytics are worth it and the importance of supplier management. (CPO Rising)

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Program sponsors seeking allies for a contingent workforce program can face an uphill battle. In particular, it’s difficult to convince hiring managers to adopt not only new processes, but a technology they’re not convinced will make their lives easier. Because consumer applications do a good job of tailoring the experience to each user, people expect the same experience in business applications such as a VMS.

The hurdle for program sponsors is convincing hiring managers that a VMS solution can actually help them bring on a worker or SOW-based project more easily and quickly. One way to get over that hurdle is to make a good first impression, as SIA recently noted in a recent blog post. The post explained, “The engagement process needs to be easy, fluid, but most of all, it needs to work.”

Implementing a VMS that provides a guided experience the second users log in can further aid the engagement process. Presenting them with a familiar user interface (UI) and providing direction on next steps can ease the transition from manual to automated processes and, ultimately, greater program adoption.

Our new eBook, How Program Sponsors Can Achieve Adoption: Guiding the Hiring Manager Experience, walks through some of the typical questions hiring managers have about using VMS technology. Read More »