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In most cases, time is the enemy of staffing firms. There’s never enough time to do everything you need to do. Actually, there’s usually not enough time to do half the things you need to do. And this is probably truest for staffing firms that use vendor management systems (VMS), a notoriously low-margin, time-consuming business.
So, what’s your best weapon against time? Timekeeping, of course. An automated timekeeping solution is the best way to increase margins, drive revenue, and improve productivity for your firm. Here’s why.
It’s what the most successful staffing firms are doing
There’s a pervasive myth that VMS business isn’t profitable—which is exactly what your competitors want you to think. There’s no denying that VMS business has low margins, but automation is crucial for closing that gap. More than half of the largest staffing firms drive at least a quarter of their revenue through VMS.
If your goal is to be more profitable, it doesn’t hurt to look at what the most successful firms are doing. And in the case of VMS, they’re using an automated timekeeping solution.
Automation eliminates manual work
One of the reasons VMS has a bad reputation is the amount of manual work it requires. As a whole, the industry still takes a mostly manual approach to VMS: three out of five recruitment agencies still submit candidates into their VMS manually. This is despite the findings that firms that automate all of the steps of their VMS business report higher fill rates and more success in general.
Processing VMS time is one of the most challenging and time-consuming steps of using a VMS, and thus one of the most important to automate. An automated VMS time solution eliminates all the manual steps of time capture. It automates the retrieval of data out of the VMS, the matching of people and assignments with your front office, the flow back to payroll, and much more.
While there’s no way for VMS business to run itself, a good automated timekeeping solution can take most of the most frustrating work out of your hands. It can retrieve the files, process all the clean data, and identify any exceptions that need attention. And when you get to the office, you only have to review the exceptions flagged, instead of weeding through a ton of information.
You’ll better understand your VMS business
We’ve established that VMS drives a lot of revenue for large firms, so surely these businesses have a firm grasp on the intricacies of their business, right? Actually, no. Two out of five enterprise firms aren’t tracking even the most basic metrics about their VMS business, like average gross margin and number of reqs per month.
But 360-degree visibility is a huge part of understanding—and improving—your performance, and a VMS timekeeping solution goes a long way towards improving your visibility. It allows you to view of all timesheets across your whole business, and proactively reconcile rates and overtime. Cash reconciliation can be a big challenge, so it’s important to be able to review this data regularly. This way you can spot an issue and fix it prior to payment.
Capturing time more efficiently allows you to capture time back in your day, and use it to improve your business. If maximizing VMS profitability is a top priority for your business in 2019, using a timekeeping solution is a great place to start.
Learn more about VMS Time, Bullhorn’s automated timekeeping solution.
