March 29, 2012 |
I spoke on a panel at the SIA Executive Forum earlier this month on “The Future of VMS”, and the moderator (Tony Gregoire of SIA) did a great job engaging an audience of staffing-company executives, about their questions and perspective.
The common denominator of the discussion was that supplier engagement is the critical piece to a successful contingent workforce program – their motivation and performance in proactively finding the best candidates for your organization’s requisitions. About half of the questions and “wish-list” items from the staffing executives revolved around the program structure (which is determined by the client and/or MSP), rather than the VMS software functionality.
On the software side, one key discussion topic was system integrations to staffing-company front-office and back-office systems to make their operations faster and more efficient. Other VMS advances the panel mentioned included mobile user interfaces and more performance metrics automatically provided to suppliers.
Staffing-company motivation and performance drives the ultimate performance of the overall program, so keep the supplier perspective top-of-mind when designing the program structure and process, and configuring the VMS software’s functionality and workflows.
March 26, 2012 |
The topic of SaaS architecture is gaining increasing attention, and that is a very good thing. Enterprise buyers need to be aware the underlying architecture can have a huge impact on their long-term SaaS ownership experience, even when the screens from two SaaS vendors show the same functionality.
In business terms, the underlying SaaS architecture helps determine the long-term solution value in many ways by asking questions such as:
- Data Flexibility – Can client-defined fields be added? Can they be put anywhere on the screens? Are they reportable? Can they be acted on by business logic such as process workflows?
- Process flexibility – Can processes and screens be fully configured to adapt to the enterprise’s vernacular and workflows?
- Reporting – Are all data elements reportable? Is reporting real-time? Is reporting available 24×7? How fast is typical access to reporting?
- Ease of integration – How many off-the-shelf integrations are there? More importantly in an enterprise context, how quickly can the software be integrated with the on-premise ERP/HRIS backbones with enterprise-specific configurations?
- Performance and Scalability – How fast are the typical screens? As the SaaS solution’s data and user volumes grow, how will it perform and scale?
- Longevity – How long will the current architecture last without requiring rewrites or re-architecture – 5 years and 10x data/user volumes? 10 years and 100x the volumes? How efficiently can the provider adopt new UI technologies for mobile and future unknown access methods?
- R&D Efficiency – How much R&D effort does the SaaS provider put into functionality vs. architecture layers?
The last point is one of the long-term benefits of true SaaS over on-premises software – almost all R&D for a SaaS provider should be targeted at new functionality on the SaaS provider’s single optimized technology stack, rather than (for on-premises software) having to port across many underlying technologies, having to support and maintain the software on all permutations, and maintaining dozens of old versions of installed software on a mixture of technology stacks. The more R&D a SaaS provider puts into a proprietary database or programming tools – or if they eventually have to rewrite a component of their solution – the less they have for future free functionality.
With on-premises software, you get exactly the features in the current release that you install. With true SaaS software, you also get all the future features that the SaaS provider creates (with free automatic upgrades), so the SaaS provider’s going-forward product roadmap, R&D investment level and efficiency, and the underlying architecture should be key considerations in the decision process when selecting a SaaS solution.
March 1, 2012 |
If you haven’t already you may want to check out today’s Spend Matters blog post about IQNavigator’s strong growth in 2011 (referenced in this press release).
Here’s an excerpt from their post – head on over to Spend Matters to read the full story:
“For implementation, IQN completed 50 individual deployments in 2011 and “10 additional go-lives in January of this year.” Revenue was up 21%. For those curious about implementations as a proxy for revenue growth: within the VMS space, they are almost always a leading indicator of where a vendor will fall on a revenue growth trajectory 12-18 months following go-live, at least in the aggregate (individually, some deployments result in expected and growing contingent and now, SOW and project-based spend under management, while others flounder for various — and nearly always internal — challenges). Hence, we expect 2012 revenue growth percentages to be even higher…”
January 31, 2012 |
Several recent government reports show that the U.S. economy ended 2011 on a modest note of encouragement. In its release on the December employment situation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the rate of unemployment declining from 9.1% in August to 8.5% in December.i While the overall improvement is small, the trend was consistent over four months. This raises hope that U.S. economic activity is finally creating new jobs at a rate that will slowly reduce persistent high unemployment.
The Department of Commerce report on the Gross Domestic Product in the fourth quarter of 2011 is similarly a source of cautious optimism.ii While the full year level of economic growth was a weak 1.7%, the picture brightened throughout the 2011:
Signals of economic improvement may be consistent, but they have yet to gather the strength and momentum to impact overall temporary labor bill rates. The Master IQNdex (download now!) tells the story: aggregate temp labor prices were steady in the second half of 2011. The net change over this period was less than half a percent.
If economic expansion continues in 2012 and the ranks of the unemployed shrinks, there will likely be upward pressure on temporary labor bill rates as the pool of readily available workers grows smaller. The modest improvements in growth and unemployment so far, however, have yet to impact rates beyond a few high skill roles in technology and finance.
Visit IQNtelligence.com today to get the full IQNdex Report!
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i. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012)
ii. (U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis)
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2012, January 6). Bureau of Labor Statistics News Releases. Retrieved January 29, 2012, from U.S. Department of Labor – Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis. (2012, January 27). Economics & Statistics Administration – Newsroom. Retrieved January 29, 2012, from U.S. Department of Commerce: http://www.esa.doc.gov/sites/default/files/ei/documents/2012/January/grossdomesticproductfourthquarterandannual2011.pdf
January 20, 2012 |
For as long as many of us can remember, we’ve all heard it said – “The devil is in the details…” But there’s a reason this saying has such staying power – I continually see evidence of its truth. It’s a common statistic that the majority of IT projects aren’t accomplished on time or within budget and many marketing claims (and let’s face it… politicians too!) sound scarily similar. It’s very often the DETAILS (“you wanted how many integrations?”) that can be the reason projects falter and claims fail to deliver.
However, a careful analysis of the facts and data behind the broad statements often yields a different perspective. That’s why the latest report from SIA on comparing the capabilities of VMS and MSP providers is a refreshingly deep-dive analysis providing enterprises with a comprehensive view of who really leads the market in capabilities that matter (integrations, reporting, etc) – and who is most experienced. Perhaps needless to say, we were pleased to receive high marks.
Find out more in our press release or visit this link for more information on SIA’s recent report.
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