Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/316485
[ 11 ] MAY 2014 | www.hrotoday.com contingent labor. Recently, VMS has expanded to become more of an enterprise-value play. "VMS allows processes that are very specific to contingent labor to be connected to other HR processes," explains Matt Rivera, director of customer solutions at Yoh, a Philadelphia- based MSP provider. "In some cases, the VMS can even be a good bridge to other systems like the ERP (enterprise resource planning) system." Integration is the buzzword right now, and for good reason. "VMS gives you visibility into the entire MSP experience," Rivera explains. "A hiring manager, for example, can use a VMS to order SOW people or independent contractors, get what they need, and then have the MSP manage them through the assignment via the VMS tracking tool, until they are eventually off-boarded." Used properly, a VMS can provide vital business intelligence into talent performance and pay, helping to drive better decisions around labor choices. "A sophisticated VMS leverages data analytics to shed light on total workforce costs, whether this talent is built or borrowed," says McAteer. "Once you use analytics to bring visibility into the talent you're borrowing, you can see if this aligns with internal hiring goals and where this may be off. This then creates conversations about which labor type might be the most cost effective and strategic." Ardent Partners has measured the value of VMS to enhance decision-making. "Our research ties both MSP and VMS solutions to performance improvements in contingent workforce management programs," says Dwyer. "For instance, we've cited both `increased cost savings' and `better spend under management' improvements." SOW-ing Tomorrow's Seeds Today All this sounds almost too good to be true. But no one would deny that the forces of globalization, new technologies like mobility and the cloud, the blistering pace of business on the world stage, and the continuing compulsion to create extremely lean and efficient operations have conspired over time to alter the workforce, perhaps permanently. A case in point is the explosive growth in SOW. The title of a December 2013 survey by Staffing Industry Analysts, a global adviser on the contingent workforce, says it all— SOW: It's Here, There and Everywhere. Forty-seven percent of staffing firms derived revenue from SOW in 2013, the report states. VMS provider Fieldglass, Inc., seems to affirm the study's findings, reporting that its customer adoption rate for SOW grew 80 percent in 2013. "More and more SOW is a definite trend," Rivera agrees. "What we're doing and a lot of our competitors are doing is helping clients make better decisions in this area. It used to be that SOW was an unknown spend or got lost in the project cost. No longer is this the case, with our clients wanting to be able to make better decisions about how to engage this non-employee population." Superior Group also has increased the level of services provided to organizations seeking SOW skillsets. "The MSP needs to be the single point of entry for all things related to the total workforce, and that includes SOW," says McAteer. "It's increasingly up to us to recruit SOW non-employees, onboard them, ensure they are classified with the right insurance, sign the NDAs and non-competes, and attend to all other compliance-related aspects." Echoing her comments is McCall at Randstad Sourceright, who calls SOW "the major trend in the space right now," one that has emerged "very quickly." She adds, "We're no different than many of our competitors with regard to SOW growing faster than any other category of revenue. If you look at our clients' staff augmentation and temporary labor and compare this to their overall SOW spend, it is at least one times this spend in all of them and two to five times, on average." Certainly, this is the situation at Orbital Sciences, which has invested in SOW non-employees since 2007. "We were ahead of the curve, but in no way could have done what we did without a partner like Superior," Mashakas says. "They're the mechanism by which we make all this happen—the invoicing, the billing, remittances, insurance and payments. All of this comes through Superior." She adds, "Thanks to them, there are no misunderstandings or issues regarding this form of co-employment from a compliance standpoint. To have a partner that manages all of this seamlessly helps us achieve our ambitions." In Orbital's case, those ambitions are literally sky-high. Contingent Labor Russ Banham can be reached at www.russbanham.com