Dropping the last piece of recruitment’s back office efficiency jigsaw into place
Morgan Law
Morgan Law executive recruitment agency was formed in 2000. The focus of the business is to help organisations recruit new talent into middle-management and executive management roles.
Operating with 40 consultants from offices in central London, the business typically places in excess of 1,200 senior management candidates across 500 clients every year. Its brand is built on innovation and this is expressed in the ability to deliver results across a range of Finance, HR, Procurement, Marketing/Communications and Executive positions.
The company receives wide recognition for excellence and performance by consistently charting on business and recruitment industry ‘league tables’ such as The Sunday Times Fast Track 100. One of the reasons for this is growth; the company reported a 50% increase in turnover as it approached its tenth anniversary.
The Challenge
“We specialise in corporate services recruitment, and typical roles might be Finance, HR and Public Relations Directors. This is for a mix of permanent and interim positions; temp assignments may be anything from a few weeks or from 6 months to a year,” says Miles Shepherd, Finance Manager at Morgan Law.
He continues: “In 2007 business really took off. Most agencies start off with basic software and as the company grew we needed to look at other options. In mid-2007 we brought in the Oxford Software Tempaid product to take control of payroll and invoicing for the temp side of the business.”
Tempaid lets Morgan Law manage temporary worker placements by linking employee records to contracts of interim employment assignments. Essentially Tempaid generates a timesheet each week for every interim worker.
“Although Tempaid brought temp payroll and client invoicing together, we still needed to process paper timesheets and manually input timesheet information. We were swamped with hundreds of timesheets, some of which we couldn’t read. It was very labour intensive.”
“When we looked at the inefficiency of manual processing against the cost of bringing in a timesheet automation solution, we knew we had reached a tipping point.”
The Solution
David Morgan and Simon Law, the founders of the business are entrepreneurial, innovative and hands-on. This was demonstrated when they recognised the need to tackle back office inefficiency by automating paper timesheet processing.
Etz Timesheet Solutions partners with Oxford Software. It is an online software solution that plugs straight into Tempaid. This high degree of integration enables timesheet information generated by Tempaid to be imported straight in to Etz. This then creates a digital timesheet which it presents as a webpage.
“Every week a ‘blank’ timesheet for each temp is exported from Tempaid over the internet to Etz. Temps, client approvers and our administrators simply logon to Etz to enter details, sign-off hours, or manage the system. The transfer of completed timesheet data is automated back into Tempaid where we carry out the payroll function.”
The Results
There are benefits for clients and temps as well as Morgan Law’s back office. “For clients it eliminates mistakes that may result from illegibility and it is easier to authorise timesheets. Invoices are clearer, and invoicing by email not only reduces postal and stationery costs for us, but means easier processing for clients,” says Miles. “Temps are quite impressed. It’s easy for them to manage with access at all times. They get email and SMS alerts such as payment notifications, so we have a lot less queries.”
In addition to measurable efficiency, Miles notes an important ‘soft’ benefit. “In this electronic age, the use of an internet based solution saves time and is a more professional approach for our candidates and clients alike.”
The Etz timesheet solution was tested extensively for 6 weeks before going ‘live’. “The only integration issue arose as a result of the strict internet policies used by some clients. This prevented web access to the system and receipt of invoices by email for some clients. Etz’s technical staff liaised with client IT departments to ensure that firewalls allowed the necessary traffic to pass through.
“We moved over to Etz in 2008 and are a lot more streamlined in the back office now,” says Miles. “In terms of timesheet automation in the recruitment sector we were probably ahead of the curve by maybe a year or two.”
It’s more than coincidence the company continued to grow from the point of Etz Timesheets’ introduction. Most would accept that back office efficiency is a platform for growth in most businesses. “The current economic climate has lead to a period of consolidation in the recruitment industry; but even as the market has cooled recently the basic efficiency of the back office means we remain competitive,” commented Miles.
Finance Manager, Miles Shepherd sums up their experience of Etz:
“In terms of timesheet automation in the recruitment sector we were probably ahead of the curve by maybe a year or two.”
