Pharmaceutical Company Gains Visibility into the Contingent Workforce Working Across Dispersed Geographical Locations
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Pharmaceutical Company Gains Visibility into the Contingent Workforce Working Across Dispersed Geographical Locations

Client Profile: A mid-sized pharmaceutical company based in the northeastern United States

Challenge

In early 2019, our client chose Simplify VMS to provide visibility and process standardization for their contingent labor management program in the U.S. Prior to onboarding Simplify VMS, the client’s HR and procurement teams experienced several challenges with managing their contingent workforce, including:

  • They didn’t have a full view of non-employees working for their organization; where they were located, which staffing supplier they were from, or which compliance procedures were followed (if any) to onboard them)

  • They didn’t have one centralized process to manage their contingent workforce, creating a significant burden around onboarding and offboarding of non-employee talent

  • They didn’t have visibility into their talent suppliers’ pricing and markups; supplier base opacity often resulted in higher costs to onboard contingent labor resources, reducing the program’s return on investment

  • The didn’t have an existing vendor management system (VMS) setup and so organizational alignment modifications were required.

Through a competitive RFP bid process and an MSP partner’s recommendation, the client decided to go with Simplify VMS for it’s “no walls” configuration capabilities and overall ease of use.

“Simplify VMS helped us achieve efficiency and consistency through our non-employee workforce onboarding and offboarding processes, ensuring compliance across all locations and program suppliers. Plus by utilizing the technology, our hiring managers are now spending 75% less time on manual processes.” 

Solution

By onboarding Simplify VMS, the client was able to centralize their contingent workforce management processes and data stream into one channel. This dramatically opened up the executive stakeholders’ control and visibility into the talent acquisition process, providing access to information related to their contingent workforce (cost of hire, average contractor tenure, and supplier performance) through extensive workforce statistical data, metrics, and financial reporting, as well as real-time access to status and approvals. In terms of compliance, by utilizing SimplifyVMS, the client now knew which non- employees had access to particular facilities and which were compliant with organizational policies and government regulations.

A key feature of the implementation was integration with the client’s workforce time and attendance system, including direct transfer of data, such as different earning codes that could be applied to various aspects of contractor assignments. The Simplify VMS implementation team captured all the business rules applicable to shift differentials, pay premiums, and other assignment variables, and created a seamless integration with the time-and-attendance system for a direct transfer of data.

Result

For the first time, the client was able to ensure visibility and compliance into their entire contingent workforce. By onboarding Simplify VMS, the client eliminated multiple manual processes, dramatically reducing paperwork, and enhancing time-to-fill speed. With the standardization and automation of onboarding and offboarding processes, the new system substantially reduced security and compliance risks.

Ultimately, having achieved its key objectives of gaining visibility and control over its contingent staffing – approximately 80% of its incubator labs extended workforce spend – the client outlined its next goal: to implement a services procurement solution within the VMS to manage services covered by statement of work (SOW) agreements. The planning of this program expansion is expected to kick-off in early 2020.