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Recruitment Agency Expo 2012 set out to present “senior recruitment professionals with a time saving one-stop opportunity to gather information and grow their knowledge of the latest developments in the industry.”
From where we were standing this was right on the money, and organiser Bluewater Events should be congratulated for delivering an event that meets the needs of the industry at a time when the economy and jobs market is at a low ebb.
The mood was generally upbeat and, encouragingly, attendance among visionaries and senior decision makers was good. We observed that a lot of start-up agencies were scouting, using the event to appraise the wide range of services in the marketplace. This is a particularly encouraging sign for the economy as small businesses and entrepreneurial flair is widely held to be the economy’s growth engine.
There were a number of exhibitors offering specialist supporting services for the industry including legal firms, marketing agencies, publishers of recruitment industry magazines as well as – you guessed it – software companies. This provides evidence that there is a strong and healthy ecosystem in place to provide the full range of service that recruiters need to meet today’s challenges.
If you missed the chance to talk to Etz at Recruitment Agency Expo 2012, you don’t have to wait a whole year until the next one to talk to us about our timesheet and AWR solution that takes the efficiency of recruitment’s back office to the next level. You can always find us here. Click this link to get in touch now.
Once upon a time…
…developing customised database systems to meet the specific needs of individual businesses required a significant investment. The costs were prohibitive, handicapping small businesses. Larger businesses not only enjoyed greater economy of scale but were also better able to invest in technological advantage.
However, smaller businesses no longer have to play this part of the great game of business with loaded dice. The emergence of software development platforms has transformed the bespoke software development market out of all recognition. This enables Line-of-Business or LoB applications, with functionality specific to particular industries or verticals, to be quickly and more easily developed.
Modularity, advanced API design and XML standardisation for data exchange means that a database driven, SaaS, LoB solution like Etz can be readily fitted to deliver functionality and reporting that meet the specific business needs of each client organisation.
However best value is not a given for every LoB, SaaS based timesheet solution. Whether you are a big city mid-market agency with vertical or sector specialisation, or a small agency in the provinces with a whole of market remit, choosing a good LoB developer and solution provider is the key to obtaining the best value.
To ensure you have a timesheet solution that is fitted to your needs and delivers the best value to your business, make sure you ask the right questions.
Follow these links to see our ‘Five questions to ask when choosing’ and ‘Five more questions to ask when choosing’ blogs.
If you are in the recruitment business then Olympia is the place to be on the 14th and 15th of February. All the services and solutions you might need (and some you don’t!) will be under one roof for you to scrutinise and compare.
The green shoots of real business growth are not coming this spring and we may not see them until 2013… so say the politicians and the economists… In the absence of real growth, many of us understand that business efficiency is the name of the game. If you are aiming to create a lean, mean recruitment machine by improving your back office functions, Etz Timesheet Solutions offers outstanding opportunities to strip out inefficiency and improve bottom lines.
Etz pays it back to the bottom line by enabling cost reductions in admin, resource consumption and direct costs such as postage. Our recently released Document Management module lets you take control of contracts and worker documentation so that you are on top of paperwork and fully compliant with red tape such as AWR.
If you lead a recruitment business then be sure to drop in and see us on Stand 62.
Click here to register to attend on the event website.
There’s good news for Etz customers and those looking to integrate a timesheet solution. We have now released version two of our integration API for developers.
As well as direct access to timesheet ad invoice data enabling client-side developers to build and MIS data systems, the API provides the capability to integrate existing authentication processes with the current candidate/user database, and set up Assignment, Candidates, Consultants, Clients and Client Authorisers.
For more information and to switch on access to the API please email: support@etztimesheetsolutions.com
Hopefully you are managing to keep on top of the Agency Workers Regulations and you will no doubt be seeing your AWR status indicators changing colour by now!
Remember that if AWR is activated on your system you must flag the assignment status as either AWR Compliant or Exempt. When it reaches the AWR marker period and the status indicator turns red, no more timesheets will be generated on the system until the status is set:
The Assignment Summary report also includes the actual AWR status of each assignment as well as the AWR Group and Time Elapsed in Weeks, so this is really useful in ensuring your assignments are AWR compliant.
Make sure you are utilising all the useful features now available within the Incoming Timesheet Images area. Do you know you that you can:
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Retrieve deleted images via the Recycling Bin |
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Use one image to validate multi timesheets via the Keep in Queue option |
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Upload external images to the queue – either single or multiple page (and the system will split into separate images for you) |
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Creates a new timesheet |
| Validate a timesheet without an image – select a timesheet to validate, and then click the checkbox on the validation options |
Moving away from manual paper-based processes often means culture change. Taking timesheets online is no exception.
People are often resistant to change, and many implementation issues are the result of inadequate preparation for dealing with ‘soft’ side issues. To prevent user issues slowing implementation timetables it is important to put culture change preparations near the top of the rollout checklist.
Here are some tips:
2011 has been an interesting and eventful year, and perhaps for some of the wrong reasons.
In finance we’ve seen economic uncertainty grow to proportions that cause political paralysis; and fiscal instability replace politician led democratic governments with economist led interim ruling elites. (And who’s to say that’s a bad thing?)
In technology we’ve seen the loss of one of the true thinkers and innovators of our time. Ultimately when Steve Jobs had an idea he believed in he backed himself to deliver the vision, and on an epic scale.
What’s around the corner?
As Etz brings the areas of recruitment and finance together in many agencies, we thought we’d offer the view from where we’re sitting. Here are some predictions for 2012.
SaaS will grow
The proliferation of SaaS will continue unabated. The business model behind many web apps is simplicity itself and critically it wraps in compelling benefits supply-side and for customers, especially around cost. This makes SaaS a winner in the short to mid-term at least.
Costs will continue to be squeezed (we say that with uncertainty!)
UK Government is now on record as saying we are four years into austerity with 6 more to come. Merkel’s murky proposal for re-negotiation of EU member contracts looks set to pour oil onto a hot fire. That’s where we are now. Who knows where we’ll be tomorrow? Whatever your point view it looks like the best you can do is plan for more uncertainty.
Social media will continue to grow
One academic view is that social media is democracy in action – it’s a chance to participate and make your view known. However, we’re not sure it feels exactly like casting a vote when we blog, tweet or comment on a post though. What is uncontested is that social media is a powerful force, that intelligently applied, may be put to great use by SaaS providers for the benefit of customers. Watch this space!
Software companies will work harder to stay up to date
The development of Line of Business (LOB) applications goes hand in hand with the SaaS delivery model. LOB creates dedicated applications that meet a specific business purpose (like Etz Timesheets). This is highly effective in solving specific problems, in a business area like finance, or a sector such as recruitment. Technologies like Microsoft .NET framework and development platforms like MS Dynamics CRM enable seamless integration with MS Office, so expect lots more LOB web apps to evolve.
AWR software will become commonplace
AWR (Agency Worker Regulations) has increased the admin burden in the recruitment back office. AWR adds to the list of general recruitment compliance issues. There is an increasing need for agencies to take control of this area as compliance failure has significant financial and reputational penalties. Software that maximises efficiency and totally wraps up the compliance requirement of the recruitment back office is set to be a big winner.
REC published its Annual Industry trends survey last month and despite the increasing uncertainty that is dominating the economy, the recruitment industry is demonstrating great resilience. Between Q2/10 – Q1/11 industry turnover increased by over 25% to £24.6bn, compared with the equivalent reporting period the previous year.
Medium-term, out to Q2/15 the report predicts modest but still respectable growth that may see total turnover top the £30bn mark.
Digging into the stats we also find some excellent pointers underlining healthy economic activity. From these we can make our own interpretations.
The concept of ‘automation’ is usually associated with mechanical devices that free people of laborious and monotonous tasks. Many of us take office automation for granted; all-in-one photocopy fax and scanning machines; dishwashers in kitchens; computer-assisted tasks like transcribing voice to text. Even email is essentially automated snail mail.
Aside from investing in a vacuum cleaning robot from iRobot (I kid you not), many of us think that we’ve got just about everything covered in terms of automating the office.
The truth is automation is not just about automating physical tasks. We can also automate information. There may be repetitive manual tasks associated with a particular instance of information automation, but the important bit is not the elimination of the physical task. The real benefit lays in facilitating and regulating the automatic flow of information to achieve complex objectives.
Computing technologies move so rapidly that the market for solutions that exploit information automation is constantly shifting. From time to time it is well worth examining information automation from a strategic perspective to see if there are any technology developments that can better help us achieve our business objectives.
Here are 5 areas where automating information not only removes manual labour, but also introduces business efficiency.
Enterprise Marketing - many organisations outsource marketing; while this works for many, it’s useful to be aware of options for in-house marketing activity. Entry level Enterprise Marketing systems automate email marketing activity and more fully featured systems can wrap in surveys and campaign-specific micro websites that capture the contact data of any unknown site visitors. Recruitment Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) may have marketing modules bolted in to publish jobs and monitor applicant activity.
OCR scanning – financial services businesses that receive paper statements may have to copy-type or scan and map data with OCR tools to enter data into back office systems. This can be labour intensive and plagued with problems of accuracy. Specialist OCR scanning providers provide turnkey solutions that enable information automation. In recruitment, OCR scanning is one option for dealing with capturing information from handwritten timesheets. Unfortunately OCR’s accuracy rate tends to fall off a cliff when dealing with handwriting.
Offsite backup – automating the flow of information from onsite servers to offsite data backup service providers eliminates the need for back up tapes, loading tapes into servers and sending tapes offsite. It’s not just for recruitment; any type of business can benefit from vastly simplified disaster recovery procedures that are enabled through offsite data backup. This significantly reduces the risk of IT failures damaging business continuity.
Sales Force Automation – Sales Force Automation (SFA) takes CRM online and enables customer information and sales opportunities from different marketing and promotional channels to be managed so that sales teams are more effectively managed and customers more efficiently serviced. Once again recruitment Applicant Tracking Systems may have elements of SFA and CRM embedded within them with features that assign a client, job or applicant to a recruiter, and enable the extraction of management information to analyse performance.
Automated online timesheets – no list of office information automation solutions would be complete without mentioning timesheets. (Even if we do say so ourselves!). Seriously though, many businesses, in recruitment or HR that use manual timesheet systems could reduce back office inefficiency and unnecessary processing costs, not to mention errors and timesheet fraud, with an automated online timesheet solution.
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