How the Onsiter VMS makes finding and managing your external workforce simple and effortless.
As businesses aim to increase agility and stay competitive, leveraging an external workforce has become an essential part of their human resource strategy.
By working with independent contractors, businesses can access specific talent exactly when they’re needed, for as long as they are needed. This allows companies to respond to changes and business needs quickly while keeping human capital costs low. However, a contingent workforce strategy poses additional challenges to hiring managers and HR professionals.
In this blog post, we explain the 2 main challenges, and how the Onsiter Vendor Management System (Onsiter VMS) solves them.
The first challenge in hiring independent contractors: Finding the right person
Working with a contingent workforce, however, introduces other challenges. Procurement and human resource managers will first need to find contingent workers that fulfill their specific project needs. And they need to do it fast.
This part may not sound difficult at first, but the “right” independent contractor can be hard to find. Some talent, especially those highly skilled and experienced, is naturally harder to source than others. Once you’ve found the person with the right skills, you have to make sure they’re priced right, as well. Then, hopefully, they’re available when you need them.
The second challenge: Managing performance and expenses
In research by SAP Fieldglass and Oxford Economics, 65% of executives reported that they use external labor for critical business functions. 91% expect the use of the external workforce to grow over the next three years.
This outlook signals that as the demand for a contingent workforce program grows, the complexity of external workforce management is destined to increase in complexity. Onboarding, managing, paying, and offboarding these temporary workers efficiently will be a challenge without the help of vendor management systems, or VMS, for short.
To solve these challenges, we’ve released the Onsiter VMS, a free-to-use, all-in-one vendor management solution for finding and managing an external workforce. From finding the right talent to onboarding, monitoring KPIs to building reports, and invoicing to offboarding, the Onsiter VMS promises to make the entire process of finding and managing your contingent workforce simple and effortless.
How to find the right talent: Look in the right places everywhere.
The first step in finding reliable, high-quality external talent for your contingent workforce is knowing where to look.
Procurement and HR professionals often turn to staffing vendors, which consist of independent consultants, consulting companies, or contractor agencies. They could also scout for talent or post jobs on professional platforms such as LinkedIn, and marketplaces for freelancers and independent contractors such as Toptal, Brainville, and of course, Onsiter.
There is an infinite number of places to look for contingent labor – but that is exactly the problem. There are so many places to look that searching for the ideal talent becomes a time-consuming task. Our solution to that problem is a feature called the Vendor Universe.
The Onsiter Vendor Universe: Where you can find your stars
Using the Onsiter VMS to post a job or search profiles is a great way to find an expert. There are over 10,000 IT professionals signed up on the Onsiter marketplace who could respond to your job post.
But finding the expert you need can sometimes turn out to be a bit more of a challenge than expected. Perhaps you need someone with more experience or someone with a specific skill that is critical to your project’s success. Maybe you found someone with the right skills, but their price exceeds your budget.
The Vendor Universe feature to the Onsiter VMS eliminates the need to look in multiple places for the talent you need. The feature connects you with every contractor supplier in your region, and therefore, with each and every independent consultant. It gives you the maximum reach in one place, maximising the probability of finding the contingent workers you need, quickly.
How to find your expert with the Vendor Universe
To take advantage of this powerful feature, click on the Vendor Universe link at the top of the screen after posting your assignment. Enter the details of your project to pre-qualify the list of vendors. You can choose just the vendors you wish to work with on your project if you want. This includes your preferred vendors, which you can add to the VMS.
In just a few minutes, you will have reached out to more contingent workers than you previously could, in less time.
To learn more, read How to use the Onsiter Vendor Universe or view this short demo video, How to create and send contractor requests to vendors, on the Onsiter channel on YouTube.
End-to-end vendor management features
From the very beginning, the Onsiter Vendor Management System facilitates ease and convenience. Besides making sourcing the right talent easier, the VMS helps you manage your contingent labor from the moment they respond to your request up to the time they complete their work with you.
Identifying
There are two ways to source talent on the Onsiter VMS. The first way is to post an assignment, and the second is by inviting independent contractors to apply.
1. Posting an assignment
Once you’ve published your assignment, independent contractors with the relevant skills and preferences will be able to see and apply for it.
2. Inviting independent contractors and vendors
After publishing your assignment, you can speed up the process of finding your expert by inviting independent contractors to apply.
You can choose your preferred vendors and professionals in two ways: use the Vendor Universe feature, or browse the marketplace for qualified contractors and invite them to apply for your assignment.
Qualifying
The Onsiter VMS has an automatic price negotiation feature to help you find the right hire at the right price. Set it to automatically suggest your preferred price in case the contractors on your list specify a higher rate than you budgeted for.
You can use the interview templates available on the VMS to help you with the next step in the hiring process. You can add your own questions to the template, but the idea is to ensure that you don’t miss the most important questions that help you choose the right candidate.
Onboarding
Once you’ve chosen your ideal expert, it’s time to sign them up officially. Contracts are generated between you and the vendor directly on the platform, and both parties sign with digital signatures.
In large and complex organisations, it can be difficult to have a consistent and efficient onboarding process, resulting in wasted time and money. It is often the basics like access to systems and basic introductions that are not in place. Onboarding templates are available on the platform to help you make sure you have everything ready so that the expert you hire can deliver outstanding results.
Performing
Have full visibility of the performance and the costs related to your extended workforce. View timesheets, issue invoices, and build reports to keep track of your KPIs and spending.
Offboarding
Offboarding an external contractor involves administrative and knowledge aspects that are important to enable the organisation to build upon the work the contractor has done.
Use the Onsiter vendor management system’s contractor offboarding templates to ensure a successful offboarding process for the contingent workforce acquired through the Onsiter VMS.
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