• 3 min read

Key Features to Look for in a VMS

A Vendor Management System (VMS) is a software that allows organizations to manage all of their contingent workforce hiring processes, whilst also cost-effectively ensuring improved efficiency. In fact, 71% of staffing industry clients use a VMS. In this article, we look at what key features should you look out for when considering your options.

What are the key benefits of having a VMS?

  • Cost-saving: there is a variety of reasons that a VMS can reduce costs – i.e. help you find a suitable vendor for the most best price.

  • Better vendor relationships:  a VMS makes managing and maintaining good vendor relationships easy, no matter how many vendors you work with.

  • Greater selection of vendors: VMS usually offers a larger selection of vendors, giving you more options over who to work with.

  • Better contract management: view the status of all vendor contracts in one place and make use of informative actionable data.

3 Game-Changing VMS Features

Labor Category Price Intelligence

It’s vital that vendors get paid correctly – no more, no less. A VMS helps you get it right; it identifies the pay rates of other vendors based on similar roles, skills, and location. It prevents miscalculations, incorrect payments, and helps avoid overspending.

This is one of the key features in our VMS.  It’s time sheet and expense management modules can be tailored to honour pay scales and pay rules of the wherever your team works, globally.

AI/Machine Learning

Artificial Intelligence can do pretty much anything a human can, particularly when it comes to working with data. Top VMS use Machine Learning (ML) to further enhance AI performance, helping it anticipate actions, boosting its efficiency.

ML enables AI to adjust its own algorithm based on human feedback, and then measure the quality of the outcomes. It’s capable of refining the algorithm further on its own accord. When used in a VMS, ML mainly helps with candidate selection, picking the most suitable candidates for the job.

Moving Towards a Blended Approach

There is a need for Vendor Management Systems to be more flexible and adaptable to the ever-changing markets, enabling organizations to use various approaches to source workers.

A ‘blended approach’ allows organizations to hire talent direct and use third-party talent sourcing agencies, whichever they find more suitable to fill a given role. Today, in order to stay competitive, firms need to make the most of emerging talent markets and the Gig Economy.

A good VMS should accommodate several talent sourcing approaches, helping to make finding, hiring and managing talent simple, allowing you to invest time in other important tasks.