Businesses of all sizes and across most industries use staffing firms to shortlist job candidates and match the most qualified individuals with open positions. Operating in a $218 billion industry, staffing companies help clients reduce the amount of time and resources spent on recruitment, onboard new hires faster and access specialized, temporary and contract talent.
With competition for top talent fierce right now, and a national labor shortage still in full swing, staffing companies have to pull out all of the stops when matching candidates with companies. Most want to stay ahead of the technology curve and leverage new solutions, yet their existing legacy application tracking systems (ATS) can hold them back from achieving those goals.
Without a robust, cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, for example, growing staffing firms have very limited visibility into profitability as it relates to specific consultants and/or placements. This lack of visibility can negatively impact a company’s bottom line in an industry where specific markup percentages apply to scenarios where the firm sources, interviews and then provides a client with three potential job candidates for an open position.
“The staffing company has to be able to track that markup percentage,” says Drew Preiner, VP of Sales at Vursor, a NetSuite Alliance Partner. “For hourly employees, the company also has to track the hours worked on an ongoing basis and take a markup on each hour worked. Being able to report on these different measures is a key component for every single staffing company.”
Creating Staffing Synergy
As companies grow—and as they place more and more candidates across dozens or even hundreds of different companies—these requirements can be extremely difficult to manage using disparate point solutions and spreadsheets.
Staffing firms also need tools for managing their various departments, including staffing, placement and/or managed services divisions.
“The need to distinctly and clearly articulate how profitable each revenue line or revenue stream is for their business is another reason many of them begin exploring options like NetSuite,” says Preiner.
The NetSuite-ATS Connection
Most staffing firms are already using ATS platforms, not all of which integrate with outside applications. JobDiva and Bullhorn, for example, generally have to be used in conjunction with a general ledger application and myriad other solutions to run an end-to-end operation. The more “disconnected” systems that get added to this ecosystem, the more manual work is required to transfer data back and forth across those platforms.
Too many disparate systems also create data gaps and inhibit good visibility across the organization. And the larger a staffing company grows, the more clients it adds and the larger number of candidates it works with, the more cumbersome and time-consuming those systems become.
Solving these problems is a challenge, especially if a company wants to continue using their existing ATS like Bullhorn or JobDiva. This is where Vursor and NetSuite come in. By providing seamless integrations between the ERP and ATS platforms, Vursor helps staffing companies streamline operations right from publishing a job through to placement. Automate candidate tracking, onboarding, time management, and effortlessly broadcast live job openings across various job boards in just a few clicks all from a single, unified platform.
A Partner with Deep Industry Expertise
Vursor combines a robust integration strategy with years of implementation expertise in the staffing industry to create the process and workflows needed for a single, unified business management system. The company also helps staffing firms select the right NetSuite modules for their individual needs and reporting requirements.
For example, if a staffing firm wants profitability reporting by a consultant, Vursor knows which NetSuite modules support that goal. If a staffing company is evaluating NetSuite’s financial management suite and wants reports on profitability by resource and/or hours worked, the SuiteProjects add-on will fit either or both of those requirements perfectly.
Once in place and integrated, NetSuite and ATS platforms help staffing companies operate more efficiently, effectively and profitably. On average, Vursor’s clients have whittled the monthly close process down to just 3-5 days, versus a previous 15+ days.
“With everything integrated on a single platform, the staffing company’s entire order-to-cash process flows seamlessly into NetSuite,” says Devon Aubert, Vursor’s Director of Consulting Services. “Then, the month-end close process just becomes a checklist that the finance team uses to close the books. It results in a lot more automation and much less data entry.”
Conquering Staffing Chaos
Strong job growth in North America has created high demand for firms that can effectively match candidates with employers. This environment presents both opportunities and challenges for staffing firms, many of which are tied to their legacy systems and ready for a change.
Where most companies have ATS and/or customer relationship management (CRM) software in place, they lack a unified ERP that can tie these core systems together and then integrate directly with their accounting systems. By integrating JobDiva, Bullhorn or another ATS with NetSuite, growing staffing firms get streamlined processes that help reduce hiring costs, enhance decision-making and improve resource allocation—all of which have significant positive impacts on the bottom line.