Managed Solution for Staffing Industry
Part 1
by Anil Bhatia
Staffing Industry Challenges and Technology Solutions
Today, most frequently cited challenges in The fact that Recruiters can interact and Matching process: The Front end
the Staffing industry are: actionize with candidates directly if any systems should have a very effective
• Customer Retention, Growing Revenue step of the on-boarding process is not matching process as that is the key to
and Improving Resource Utilization meeting customer expectations brings winning the order. The system should
customer visibility to the process and be able to separate Resumes from
• Supply Shortage and Applicant /
shows the accountability of the staffing structured data and also be available
Candidate Loyalty
company which is very important to to account for a weightage to assign
• High Staff Turnover retaining a customer. to the same. The Candidate Scorecard
• Increasing Recruiter Productivity should be able to provide how best the
Maximizing on the resource utilization Candidate matches the order criteria
• High Operation Costs
helps in preventing any loss of revenue. viz; partially, fully or no match with
Below are some key areas within each of The Staffing Solution should provide least amount of manual intervention.
the above mentioned challenges where the system capability to look at holiday
Technology can help an important role to calendar, candidate leaves and allocate Single repository of Resource Pool &
work on them. him to a future dated assignment. Search Engine effectiveness: The Front
end system should have access to the
• Customer Retention, Growing Revenue It should also have the capability talent pool (subcontractors, applicants
and Improving Resource Utilization: to reactive closed assignments as etc...) that is stored in a single central
Staffing companies’ revenue follows assignments get extended thereby repository such as a HR data base.
Pareto’s law. 20% of the Accounts minimizing data redundancy by creating The system should have third party
account for 80% of the business. new assignments each time. integration for Resume parsing. During
A company works with multiple staffing the matching process the recruiter
The companies have to focus on not only
companies for an order and the staffing is grappling with a huge database
meeting but exceeding Service Levels
company who saves the order first with of Resumes and the system should
Agreements as they service their accounts
the right match wins the order. Below facilitate retrieval of resumes in chunks
and focus on growing revenue from the
are some of the features in PeopleSoft (say of 100 in a database of 1000
existing accounts.
Staffing Front Office Solution that are resumes) for effective screening of
Here are some of the key areas where effective in winning the order. resumes.
technology can be an enabler to growing
Resource Search In this case as the In Oracle’s, PeopleSoft product, this
revenue in top accounts and other
Sales recruiter initiates the search, resume chunking is facilitated with
accounts as well:
Front office systems should have the integration with 3rd party search
The key to retaining a customer in the capability to automatically populate engine named Verity that helps
Staffing industry is not just winning the defaults from the order which saves structured retrieval of resumes.
order but fulfilling the Job order. Once the time and avoids data entry.
order is won, the customer needs a status
of the Job order on an ongoing basis. The
Job order on-boarding process is typically
customer defined and negotiated by the About the Author
customer as the order is won. Anil Bhatia has over 14+ years of management consulting
experience and lead large global ERP programs in areas of
The Recruiting Funnel is one such tool Finance , HCM and Manufacturing. He is a Senior Practice
available in PeopleSoft Front Office which Engagement Manager with Infosys in the Oracle economy
brings visibility into the talent acquisition for Services vertical in North America and has been with
process and highlights the status of 1
Infosys for the last 1 years .Anil is Certified in Production
candidates at an order workflow level and Inventory Management has published papers in forums
and also status of each candidate at the like OAUG, Erpassist.com etc...
detailed level.
PAGE42 From UK Oracle User Group
Verticalisation Support: The Front
Office system needs to be verticalised
by industry to not only capture
order criteria accurately but also to
understand sourcing and filling trends
by industry. The system should have
the capability in terms of tools to
customize the fields on a page to
incorporate new fields relevant to a
particular industry.
The verticalisation also helps to
understand the talent acquisition trends
and challenges in an industry during the
sourcing process. This would further
help Staffing company to focus on the
right industries where they can leverage
their strengths to source right profiles
and win orders in a market where Staffing
companies are looking out to diversify
and expand into new verticals.
For example: The verticalisation can
clearly identify a trend of mid-manager
and director population waning in It is important that the Staffing Solution Applications like Applicant Portal, using
manufacturing and utilities industries works on creating an Excellence in recruiting web, collateral etc.. to position the
based on sourcing requests to fill these metrics and is able to report the important organization will create an excellence in
kinds of profiles on a recurring basis measure in recruiting which is the “Quality the employment brand with experimental
across customers in a particular industry. of Hire”. Analytics platforms such as OBIEE Gen X and Gen Y applicants who will
can help in creating such metrics and then find it difficult to leave these Staffing
• Supply Shortage and Applicant / other metrics in determining the turnover companies.
Candidate Loyalty: Today staffing rates of various groups of employees such
agencies are competing for the same as males and females, with different age • High Staff Turnover: The Staffing
talent to fill the open order for the same groups, ethnicity, region, performance and industry is seeing significant attrition
customer. pay scales to provide useful insight into the and technology can play a key role by
various reasons candidates keep switching including features in the Front office
To understand the applicant loyalty; it is design that eliminate the need for internal
companies.
necessary to understand the impact of knowledge transfer as someone leaves the
demographic change in US workforce. The Staffing Solution should be able company.
The aging of Baby Boomers (42-61 to capture the Performance feedback
years old); new values in Gen X (26-41 of candidates on assignments and Features in PeopleSoft product such as
years old) and Gen Y (7-25 years old) plot a Candidate Pay and Performance enforcing Customer Master Rates on
workforce and a reduction in technology Relationship by customer. Staffing orders and assignments can help not only
skills in the US have led to demographic companies should track top performer eliminate need for internal knowledge
supply shortage. From an aging turnover trends. transfer but also minimize data entry
perspective, if we hold the working age and create a process discipline, thereby
constant, the total supply of workers is The Analytics Recruiting Metric should be preventing any margin loss due to
decreasing and there is an an expected able to score recruiting sources, recruiters incorrect discounting.
reduction in the size of working age and other processes so that recruiting
function operates like an efficient “sales ‘ It is important to track changes in orders
population across the world which ranges
function and goes after the best possible and assignments and have visibility on the
from 20 to 50 percent and this gets
candidates in most efficient and effective replacements made on an assignment.
compounded in US by losing skills
ways. This will not only help drive metrics
Given the shortage in supply, it is reporting but provide transparency in
important to secure your high performing It is important to understanding the Agent Incentive compensation which is a
candidates on successive assignments and changing values of the Gen X and Gen Y key to retaining the recruiters.
(the working age population pool from
keep their utilization is high.
where most candidates will be sourced) • Increasing Recruiter Productivity: This
Staffing Companies adopting Self Service is closely related to the aforementioned
OracleScene Issue 42 PAGE43
high turnover challenge for Staffing in PeopleSoft especially for Staffing d. Top Performer Turnover Trends
industry. industry) that provide a single view on e. Distribution of Expenses by
the Pay and Bill side of the Back office by: customer
The key to retaining a Sales recruiter is
to provide him with a system that can Automating the Middle Office Layer (from Oracle’s OBIEE platform (with tools such
increase his productivity and allow him Contracting to Pay Bill Processes) as Answers, Delivers and Dashboards)
to close orders faster, thereby increasing – This includes components like provides the necessary Analytics
Agent incentive compensation. Contracts, Project Costing, Time and capability on the ERP installed base
Labor (for time capture), Billing and to deliver and track metrics reporting.
During the annual rate changes, the Payroll. The system automatically Please see Application Layer: Analytics
recruiter shouldn’t face downtime for creates projects and contracts for Layer section described in the Managed
rates being updated on selected orders every order and assignment created. It Solution for Staffing Industry section
and assignments. Instead there should provides rapid entry for populating the below.
be a mass rate change facility to identify Time data. Pay Bill integrates with Time
impacted assignments for necessary and Labor product for time validation, Seamless Integrations to Back Office:
changes. with Time and Labor to utilize Payroll By implementing the Pay Bill module
processing, and Contracts and costing as described previously, it would be
This should further undergo validation to
for billing. important to design the Front Office
ensure that master contract rate limits are
integration to it so that the orders and
not violated. Process Automation: This can be assignments can flow in Back Office.
Staffing industry recruiters spend a lot of achieved by implementing the Self
Service and Portal Layer on the Bill It is also important to consider the back
time in correspondence with customers
and Pay side. Please see Application office integration with VMS data.
and internal employees. Email templates
can automate this process and save a Layer: Self Service and Portal Layer
Following Open Integration Framework
lot of time especially in crucial moments section described in the Managed
supporting a wide range of different
when a match is found and candidate is Solution for Staffing Industry section
integration styles can be considered;
being proposed to the customer. below.
point-to-point, batch file integration,
Power of Analytics - Focusing on the application messaging, Web services,
PeopleSoft solution helps to capture all
right Metrics to control costs: It is API-based integration, and component
the matching criteria on the page such
necessary to report and track the interface integrations., SOA based
as Qualification, Availability, and Resume
right metrics for your back office to integration etc..
Factor etc... and send the candidate
Scorecard to the customer on the click of control costs. It is necessary that a
Implementing the Back Office: It is
a button. user friendly Analytics engine sits
important to set up business rules that
on your Back office installed base
reduce collection efforts such as past due
• High Operation Costs: Staffing to provide you the ad-hoc reporting
accounts, customers reaching their credit
companies are making 3-5% EBITDA and capability that will help you identify
limit etc. as modules such as AP, AR and
run a very high operations cost. The key and track the right Metrics for
GL are implemented in the BO.
component of the costs for a Staffing controlling the BO costs.
industry after paying their Temps is the Also, important is the experience the
operation costs. DSO, Billing timeliness, Accuracy are
SI brings in ensuring compliance with
some sample metrics on the Bill side that
accounting guidelines as these modules
Back office costs are the key to reducing will be the key to measure and track your
are implemented.
the operation costs and streamlining the Back office efficiency. It is also important
back office is the foundation to efficiently to track and report metrics that are an
managing the back office functions which important driver of client satisfaction
include billing the customers and paying levels. Part 2 of this article continues in the next
the suppliers. edition of Oracle Scene
On the pay and bill side here are some
Streamlining the back office is possible key trends that you can track through
through simplification and standardization Analytics:
of the process and/ or process a. Headcount Trend for a Year by
automation thus facilitating straight- month
through processing (STP).
b. Billing Details by Geography
The key to simplifying the process is to c. Candidate Pay and Performance
implement modules like Pay Bill (created relationship
PAGE44 From UK Oracle User Group