Staffing Technology

22: VCG's Pointwing to scale to 10k users

VCG recently announced their upcoming Pointwing release, which I personally find quite interesting. They are in the process of rebuilding their front and back office application from top to bottom. The new version, called Pointwing, has been built on .NET, will include HR-XML SIDES compliant APIs and has a newly designed UI. 

What more could a staffing company want? But wait...

Larger staffing companies have tended to consider custom software due to scalability or customization needs. Pat McCall VCG sales and marketing VP explains, "Our current plans are to have the initial release of Pointwing certified to scale to a minimum of 3000 users (600 concurrent), assuming a 5:1 ratio for conversion to total number of users supported.  Our second release in the 4^th quarter of this year would be certified to scale out to 10000 users (2000 concurrent)."  Clearly, VCG is going after the large and very large staffing players. 

And I see why. There is definitely a need for off-the-shelf software options since so few staffing software vendors have proven their ability to scale.  I really like VCG's decision to certify their scalability rather than just state they are scalable. That adds credibility in my mind.

In addition, VCG is publishing an impressive customer list:

• Ablest Inc.
• Accountants Inc. & Acsys Inc. (divisions of Vedior NV)
• Analysts International Corp.
• CBS Personnel Holdings Inc
• COMFORCE Corp.
• CoreStaff Services Inc.
• Coworx Staffing Services
• Eastridge Group of Staffing Companies
• Global Employment Solutions Inc.
• Hobart West Group Inc.
• Roth Staffing Companies Inc.
• Smith Hanley, LLC (a division of Ventiv Health)
• Select Personnel Services
• The Nelson Family of Companies
• Todays Staffing (a division of CDI Corp.)

Just for the record, The Code Works does not have any business development relationship with VCG. I really just think it's great to see an off-the-shelf product make a serious run to provide both front and back office to the largest staffing companies.

20: Miami Staffing Exec Forum

I had the pleasure of attending Staffing Industry Analyst's Executive Forum in Miami this week.  The conference is always very impressive especially because the leadership from so many staffing firms attend and the keynotes and panels are excellent.

Because of my interest in staffing software I am always trying to get a better understanding of two items from the speakers: 

1. Is the market growing?
2. How do staffing executives view and value technology (e.g. growth enabler, differentiator, cost reducer, just part of doing business)?

1. Is the market growing?
Barry Asin, staffing industry analyst extraordinaire, told us that the industry is approaching $130b and it sounded like growth was expected to slow or flatten in 2007.  A more interesting concept was that temp penetration in the US is 1.9% (2 out of every 100 workers is a temp) and that a number of other countries have much higher temp penetration, as high as 4%. So market expansion is how things might really take off for staffing.  An interesting theme around how market expansion may be enabled is by "decoupling healthcare from employment," explained Barry Asin.  Carl Camden of Kelly Services has been talking about this concept. 

2. How do staffing executives view and value technology?
One of the key business environment trends driving the staffing industry is technology, according to Asin (phew).  He didn?t elaborate much, but I?ll take what I can get.

I facilitated a round table on the topic of implementing staffing technology and a number of interesting tidbits came up:

• What front office (FO) application should I use?
• Should I use an integrated FO/BO package or best-of-breed FO and BO?
• What FO packages are extensible so that I don?t have to build my own system to get the one or two features that differentiate my business or enable my process?
• What powerful tools and technologies are used by the larger firms but available for smaller staffing firms?
• Key topics included executive-level dashboards and reporting, contact management/Outlook integration, document scanning/imaging and data entry, effective FO/BO integration, online timesheet, web portals, enabling overseas recruiting, building talent communities, data conversion, etc.

Thanks to all who participated in my session, I always enjoy hearing about your projects.

I think that technology is one of the great ways for staffing companies to facilitate growth and service their customers and candidates well.  Figuring out which technology to use and implementing new software and tools is hard work, but technology can create opportunities to improve profit margins by decreasing operating costs. You probably all know that you need to implement technology to manage the cost of growth and ensure that it is an enabler, not a constraint, to your company's expansion.

19: Google Jobs

Just when is that "Jobs" link going to make its way to the Google menu?

As Peter Smith says, "What is job hunting, It's job searching. Who's great at search? Google.?"  Love his post "Google to Crush Monster, HotJobs, Craiglist, etc.?" Peter says it's just a matter of time, but suspects the job search market is still smaller than the other markets Google is chasing. 

Chad Sowash also had a recent post on the topic.

Click here to see Google Base Beta for Jobs, which was launched in November of 2005. Looks like Google still needs a lot of help with the UI.  Will they get serious about giving Google Jobs a decent candidate experience? What is Google's timeline in this area?

You might also wonder if candidates will shift where they search for jobs from job boards and posting aggregators to a web search engine.  I think they absolutely would utilize Google Jobs if the search results were presented well.

So how would Google Jobs impact job boards? Active job seekers will expect to announce their availability and to be found on job boards for a long while.  CollegeRecruiter.com said bring it to Google in 2005 in this post.  CNN weighs the potential for a Google buyout of Monster here.

So how would Google Jobs impact Indeed, Simply Hired, Job Central and anyone else out there doing job aggregation?  I guess it means they should continue the hurry up to develop more magnetic candidate user experiences so they end up being acquired or are able to maintain some sort of market share.

In the meantime, while this all gets worked out, I assume staffing companies are submitting all job postings to all of these job search destinations.

16: Continual & informal vendor reference checking

Here at The Code Works we are always trying to improve ourselves and improve our methodologies.  I've been conducting reference checks on behalf of one of our clients this week and it dawned on me that it might be a good idea to check out what other folks have to say about the process.  I did a little research (links below) and found some commentary on the topic, but realized that my issue is more around the fact that I get less value out of the formal reference checking process than I expect I'll get going in.

My feeling is that you absolutely have to reference check before finalizing a software selection, but that reference checking is a pretty ungratifying process.  I could do reference checks until the cows come home, but what real difference do they make that far down the vendor selection process? 

In the 15-30 minutes that you have to conduct the reference check you can only really find out a handful of things.  I always finish the conversation with a few good ideas on how to improve the implementation process or training plan, but no real surprises. 

Don't get me wrong, I'll always do them. I think it is a useful task and I do like to meet new people. It's just that I go into the reference checking process expecting that the person on the other end of the phone is going to tell me something I don't already know or that they will make me feel much better about my recommendation, and that's not exactly what happens.

Personally, I think it's much more useful to be informally checking vendor references all the time.   If you have a vertical focus, say staffing technology, then it is conceivable to learn a bit more about the market each and every day.  There are hundreds of vendors that target the staffing industry and I couldn't possibly know everything about them all, but I am certainly going to try.

Links:

• Customer reference questions by Adam Kalsey
  

• The Truth about Customer References by CIO Magazine

15: Select technology to enable your business process?

It almost seems like a cliche, but I hear this business frustration often: "technology should be a business enabler, not the other way around." In my opinion this is an ideal, not reality (and I'm a business person, btw). First, companies have to understand their processes before they can evaluate whether software is an enabler or not. Secondly, all processes are not equal only some are differentiating and core to your business.

I've been involved in process reengineering for about 15 years now and I am always surprised by how few companies have any sort of business process actually documented. Most don't even have their core business process on 'paper'. The majority of my experience is within the large enterprise environment and they are no exception. My brain thinks in terms of business process and I love to document, so you can see why this may be especially frustrating for me. It is definitely more difficult to evaluate the business fit of software when there is little clarity around what the business process is, let alone how it varies across geographies, service offerings, etc.

If companies do happen to have processes documented, they frequently have not determined which aspects of the process are truly differentiating and non-negotiable.  Clearly, it is mission critical to select software that enables differentiating processes or process steps. It is also important to identify, and consider modifying, non-differentiating processes.

The benefit of selecting off-the-shelf software is that it is cheaper than building custom software. We all know that we need to buy, not build, whenever possible.  The Code Works is in the business of helping our clients select off-the-shelf software whenever possible. If, and only if, the needed functionality doesn't exist, we'll gladly build it for you. 

My point is this -- to get the benefits of buying software you'll want to bend your business process as long as bending it doesn't negatively impact your business. My experience tells me that processes are often pretty flexible. If you change your processes when it makes financial and business sense (and avoid customization or custom build costs) you will maximize the value of the business, even though the business process may change.

8: Qualifying software as "enterprise-class"

In my last post I mentioned that I am working on a software selection project for one of our largest clients.  The type of software that I'm looking for is a new niche for me and I've been surprised by what I'm finding.   When we manage and lead the vendor selection process for our clients, we are generally searching for enterprise-class software and I've found myself (lately) looking at software that is clearly not enterprise-class.   

Which begs the question: "What classifies software as enterprise-class?"  After a quick Google search, I realize that they term enterprise-class software is a highly overused marketing term.  It has been important for me to find a way to communicate to our big business buyers, who are quite interested in the dazzling functionality offered by these non-enterprise-class software packages, what they might be missing out on.

Enterprise class software...

• Targets a specific and sizable market.and solves a specific set of business problems
• Supports best practice business process
• Has a user experience that has been designed by an expert and is extensively and regularly user tested
• Can be configured to support nearly any business process variation
• Can be customized, if necessary
• Has a product roadmap that will be delivered over a number of minor (~3/year) and major (~1/12-18 months) releases
• Has a documented software architecture and set of APIs
• Is built by a dedicated software development team that is headed-up by an expereienced enterprise architect
• Is delivered by the vendor in a variety of ways, e.g. hosted, licensed
• Has been performance tested and is currently in production and used by more people that your planned implementation
• Has undergone a formal QA process executed by an experienced QA team
• Is implemented by trainined rollout teams that use a documented and detailed methodology
• Comes with detailed user and admin training documentation (online and offline) and is supported in all the languages and time zones you require

That's a long enough list for now, though please feel free to add more bullets as comments.

In the vendor selection process, I rely on the deep technical expertise of my colleagues to complete the technical due diligence process. Check out this related post by fellow Code Worker, Pete McKinstry.

7: Definitions for SaaS, ASP/Hosted, App Management BPO

Jim Holincheck of Gartner recently posted defintions for various software delivery models: SaaS, ASP/Hosted, Application Management, BPO, etc.

I've been shoping for enterprise software for one of our clients and found myself explaining these models when trying to get information about what the vendors offer. I wanted to share this link with you since it packages up these definitions in one handy page.

6: Robotemps

Don't you just love Japan?

Ubiko has recently been placed as a temp worker that will sell mobile phones for $400+/hour, according to MIT Technology Review. Ubiko's manufacturer turned staffing agency has also made longer-term placements for a few of Ubiko's compadres - they are now permanently employed as hospital receptionists.

Check out Tmsuk's other receptionist robots here.

Other commentary:  Robotster, Gizmodo, Born Rich.

4: Most of staffing doesn't care about technology

True story -- most of staffing and HR doesn't care about technology. Might not be surprising to you, but I just learned this at an NCHRA conference that I recently attended.  I don't mean to put myself and what I do (software) at the center of the universe...but...I guess I didn't really get "it" until I attended my local HR conference the other day in San Francisco. 

In fact, I learned that vast numbers of staffing and HR professionals don't even want to talk about technology (blasphemy!). They don't consider implementing new technology a good idea. Further, they don't necessarily see that software could be tied to enabling their business goals. I think it's sad that so many users feel that technology is something that happens to them and creates more problems than it solves.

Personally, I see so much opportunity for staffing companies to grow revenues and profits by identifying strategic technology projects and implementing them well.

3: FO search engines: room for improvement

This core function is implemented on staffing company web sites and more importantly, in their most mission-critical application, their front office (FO) system. When I look at the FO apps out there, I see that many of them depend on very weak search technology, e.g. Oracle's out-of-the-box full-text search product.  Worse yet, I haven't heard many of the vendors talk about upgrading. 

By not utilizing the latest technology, staffing companies are losing out on great technologies like conceptual search, bi-directional matching, faceted navigation, optimizing results by searching both structured and unstructured data, etc.

There are a lot of folks out there in the search technology business whose whole aim in life is to improve the quality and usability of enterprise search.  It does seem that the staffing industry could benefit from applying more of that R&D to finding better candidates even faster. 

For more information on search and match you can check out an article I wrote that was published in SI Review in 2005: Search Matters.

The adjacent market of the Applicant Tracking Systems which offers software very similar to FO but markets to Matching candidates to positions and positions to candidates is core to the staffing and recruiting industry.  I've never run into anyone who disagreed with me on that one. 

Recruiting organizations is completely different in the sense that nearly all the ATS players have embedded leading edge search technology.