Efficiency fit for executive search leader
Odgers Berndtson is the largest executive search organisation in the UK. A worldwide presence in over 50 countries is the foundation for its international reputation as a world leader in helping organisations to acquire top executive talent.
The business is a matching service that locates the skills and expertise that businesses need to operate and succeed in the UK and on the world stage. To ensure it has the capability to match people correctly to the right role, the company places an emphasis on consultant expertise. Consultants may be specialists in defined market sectors, or they may specialise in functional roles that span all industry sectors such CEO, finance, IT, HR and company secretary.
Uniquely the company is the only executive recruitment firm that has an in-house Interim management team dedicated to matching up executives with time limited assignments.
The Challenge
“A typical workflow for our manual timesheet system included elements such as Interim executives filling in forms and hiring managers signing them; this would be followed with back office and finance processing that generated payments to Interims and invoices to clients,” says IT Director, Adam Gibson.
“Faxes and emails were key vehicles of administrative traffic,” he says. “There’s a lot of potential for forms to be incorrectly completed and information to go missing. When you put it all together, it’s impossible to avoid concluding that it is labour intensive.”
“There may be hundreds of executives placed on an Interim basis at any one time. Inefficiency is a standard feature of manual timesheet systems and this escalates with increasing scale,” says Adam Gibson.
However, from the perspective of Odgers Berndtson, using paper-based timesheets for senior executives creates issues beyond pure business efficiency. These are also issues of perception and reputation, ‘softer’ but just as important. Adam Gibson says, “Odgers Berndtson promotes the highest standards of professionalism. When dealing those at the top of management, such as Interim ‘C’ level executives, manual timesheet systems can seem out of place or inappropriate.”
“At the top of business, there is an emphasis on process and efficiency. To many clients and Interim executives, recording hours on paper forms is an outdated practice. It runs counter to much of what skilled executive management practice is about,” Adam Gibson says.
Taken together, inefficiency and the mismatch of paper timesheets with the executive level, created a compelling case for Odgers Berndtson to move on.
The Solution
Odgers Berndtson created a comprehensive specification to define the requirements of a timesheet solution to move the Interim side of the business forward.
“As we assessed likely candidates we discovered that meeting the specification in full would entail bringing in a large, fully featured business system, in effect an enterprise management solution. The issue with ERP systems is that they have an enormous impact across the business,” says Adam Gibson.
“Stepping back a little we stripped the specification back to the core. We discovered that by dropping peripheral elements we could still achieve 80% of our original objectives. Etz Timesheet Solutions enabled us to bring in the right degree of improvement without having to initiate a large change management project across the business,” says Adam Gibson.
“Etz has helped to move the Interim side of our business forward by improving the efficiency and professionalism with which we deliver Interim executives.”
Etz replaces paper timesheets with a web-enabled application. This is a three way system. It allows Interim executives to fill in and submit timesheets; on the client side it allows hiring managers to approve timesheets; and for Odgers Berndtson it automates the back office for finance and admin teams to efficiently process payments and invoices.
“The solution also attaches expenses, so together with front and back office in effect three functions are integrated, shrinking and simplifying a process that used to take a week or more to work through. Specific customisation included changes to the user interface and integration with the management information system,” says Adam Gibson.
The Results
Etz delivered a significant increase in efficiency when compared with the administrative overhead of the manual timesheet system. Adam Gibson explains: “This is realised as the re-allocation of our Interim team’s time to activities that return better value to the business.”
In the same way that the business issues that drove the project were not just about efficiency, there are also other factors that are difficult to quantify but that hard to ignore when assessing the value that the solution delivers.
Etz helps senior managers to obtain insights that inform operational decisions. “Etz feeds key data such as time allocated and costs to the management information system reporting function. This is on the fly, helping the business remain agile,” Adam Gibson says.
Etz is good match for Odgers Berndtson because it is ‘right-sized’. Firstly the solution delivers the right amount of functionality and efficiency without demanding business-wide change. Secondly with mid-market service providers there is a greater value attached to key accounts and it’s easier to form strong relationships at a high level. “Frequently, when you employ larger organisations, it seems that you get pushed down the queue,” says Adam Gibson.
A good example of this was seen during the integration phase of the project. With larger organisations integration can be over complicated through layers of process and project management.
Adam Gibson concludes, “The relationship is far enough away to remain professional, yet close enough for business alignment. Etz helps to move the Interim side of our business forward by improving the efficiency and professionalism with which we deliver Interim executives.”
