Buying a vendor management system is just the beginning of the journey. In this blog, we take a look at what a vendor management system is, what features a VMS has that can help your business manage its contingent workforce, and what you need to bear in mind when preparing your employees to use one to ensure adoption.
The Importance of the Contingent Workforce
The contingent workforce is hugely beneficial for modern business. Use of non-employee workers can augment a company’s permanent employee workforce, overcome industry skills shortages, reduce workforce costs and enhance business flexibility.
It’s because of these benefits that organizations are increasing their use of contingent workers. In fact, the average percentage of workers who are contingent is expected to grow, according to SIA, and to 29% by 2030.
Despite this growth in contingent workers, the vast majority of businesses still need to improve how they manage their contingent workers.
Most organizations still have no real strategic program in place to manage contingent workers and staffing agencies. They manage them on manual spreadsheets with no company-wide and standardized processes in place, resulting in a lack of visibility and control over contingent workers.
To resolve this, organizations must implement a contingent workforce management program with a vendor management system at the very center of the program.
What is a VMS?
A vendor management system, known as a VMS, is a software platform that centralizes, automates, and consolidates your entire contingent workforce management program into one central application.
This allows your business to optimize how it manages both contingent workers and the staffing agencies you use to source them, ensuring you have complete visibility and control over your non-employee workforce.
When your business implements the right VMS software into your processes, you’ll be able to: better monitor and track staffing agency performance, gain visibility into your non-employee workers across your entire organization, automate the end-to-end processes of managing contingent workers and staffing agencies, mitigate employee compliance risks, and centralize all contingent workforce information into one place.
What features does a VMS have?
A VMS offers a range of features including:
- Vendor onboarding
- Data analysis
- Workforce sourcing
- Software integrations
- Risk assessment and compliance
- Payment automation
- Process automation
- Vendor optimization
- Vendor scorecards
- Program centralization
- Invoicing
- Requisitions and approvals
- SOW management
- Direct sourcing capabilities
The problem with most vendor management systems is that they are designed for enterprise organizations with complex scenarios, include way too many features, and can be very expensive. Not only does this hit the bottom line, but it also makes it time-consuming and difficult for your employees to learn how to use them.
Thankfully, there’s now a better option that simplifies the training process and allows your team to start managing its contingent workforce with a VMS from day one.
How to prepare your employees to use a vendor management system
There are a few things your organization can do to prepare your employees to optimize how it uses a vendor management system. We’ve listed just a few of the top things to focus on:
- Get buy in from your team: Centralizing your contingent workforce program with a vendor management system is a crucial step in ensuring that you are able to build a highly-strategic company-wide program that all hiring managers follow. But to do this, you need to get buy-in from all stakeholders. Vendor management system buy-in from all hiring managers, HR teams, and procurement professionals within your business will ensure that all managers responsible for hiring and managing contingent workers are recording data as-and-when needed. This will help you gain the data you need to mitigate risk and drive continuous program improvements. Not sure how to get buy-in from your team? Check out our blog on How to Build a Winning Business Case for VMS Implementation: How to Build a Winning Business Case .
- Set clear and realistic deadlines for training and rollout: Employees will feel significantly less stressed about the introduction of new technologies when they know exactly what to expect from the timeline of how long training will take and when the rollout of the new technology will occur. Rather than springing training on unsuspecting employees in a company-wide email, focus on gaining buy-in from your team and then set out a plan that will include clear deadlines for training and the outline of when the technology will be rolled out.
- Invest in technology that’s easy to use: The traditional vendor management system larger players have built systems that are incredibly complex, with alot of bells and whistles that your organization is likely to never need. Implementing this VMS technology is not only highly expensive, but it takes significantly more time to train your employees and successfully implement it into your processes.
Why invest the money and time into these complex technologies when your business simply doesn’t have to? There are other VMS solutions, such as Conexis VMS, that are specifically designed to be easy to use and quick to implement - ensuring you realize contingent workforce ROI as soon as possible.
Conexis has created an easy VMS solution that your team can start using right away
Conexis VMS is the easiest vendor management system, built on the latest technology and designed with the user in mind. We’ve purposely left out the complicated bells and whistles of the traditional VMS solutions, so that your organization can have a VMS implemented and ready to go with little-to-no employee training.
Not only that, but we’ve built Conexis VMS to be an easy-to-use platform. This means that from a user experience, it is easy to use (which results in high adoption rates) and less time is needed figuring out how your VMS works. This results in more time focusing on the core competencies that drive true business growth.
- Read More about the importance of User Adoption and NPS➡️ How Sub-Par VMS Tools Impact Contingent Workforce Program Adoption
➡️ Finding the Best VMS Software: Why Your VMS Provider's Net Promoter Score is Important
➡️ VMS and MSP Adoption: The Key to Successful Workforce Management➡️ Support for Vendor Management Systems: Why Customer Care is Important
➡️ 5 Key Steps for Successful Vendor Management System User Adoption
Interested in learning more about Vendor Management Solutions?
Whether you are looking for a new VMS Solution, or just getting started, we are here to help. See how easy Conexis is to use by taking a quick 2 minute Self-Guided Tour. Contact Us for a Free No-Obligation Consultation to discuss your workforce challenges (and get immediate actionable insights) or Book a Personal Demo Today!
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