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How a Vendor Management System Can Help Combat Economic Uncertainty

February 12, 2024

As the world economy struggles with the continued effects of inflation, political turmoil, and economic uncertainty, businesses need an agile workforce that can respond quickly to market threats and opportunities. Since workforce costs are typically a company’s single largest operating expense, smart businesses are increasingly shifting work to a more flexible, more scalable, more cost-effective contingent workforce. 

To source and manage this contingent workforce, nearly 80% of companies with more than 1,000 employees use a vendor management system (VMS), according to Staffing Industry Analysts. A VMS helps automate contingent workforce processes, saving time and money.

How a VMS supports your business resiliency 

Understanding what a VMS is and how it can affect your bottom line is important to the success of your business. Manual processes are giving way to digital transformation. Beeline is a leading expert in this area. With technology, you can streamline processes and open the door to greater cost savings, visibility, compliance, and more. For instance, we all know that lack of compliance ultimately is more costly in the end, with non-compliant businesses paying millions in fines when a VMS could have prevented such a situation. It’s simple – you can’t afford to be complacent in today’s global market. More than 350 of the world’s most recognized brands partner with Beeline for this very reason. 

By implementing a VMS, you can also automate many steps in the contingent talent procurement cycle, cutting costs, increasing efficiency, and reducing the time to fill positions, allowing you very little downtime, if any. Not to mention strengthen your risk management. 

 VMS 101 Infographic

Visibility and control

Organizations increasingly depend on contingent talent to give them more flexibility and agility. In a recent Forbes article, Beeline CEO Doug Leeby points out that more and more companies have implemented layoffs and hiring freezes, which means leaning more on a contingent workforce. So, it’s no surprise that successful companies navigate times of uncertainty by taking action, including Fortune 500 and Global 2000 enterprises, which have historically implemented a VMS to source and manage contingent labor and statement of work (SOW)-based contractors. An important long-term strategy regardless of the global economy, but especially important during times of economic uncertainty.

While a VMS is crucial to successfully managing contingent workforce programs, a VMS alone cannot adequately support the growing strategic importance of the extended workforce, global competition for talent, a surge of technology innovation, heightened focus on personal data, ownership, and talent diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. That’s why Beeline created something better – the world’s first Extended Workforce Platform.

Decades of a global VMS success

With decades-worth of expertise in the VMS landscape, Beeline knows that companies need a future-forward platform to solve the complexities of managing the modern external workforce - including looking for data on non-employees at the same depth and detail as they do in their ATS, HCM, and ERP systems - allowing them to understand this population deeply.

This is why Beeline offers the Extended Workforce Platform, which provides the competitive edge you want, and let’s face it, need, to keep your business growing. A powerful, market-leading VMS at its core, which solves the complexities of managing the modern external workforce. Beeline also provides real-time visibility of your entire workforce all in one place – whether full-time employees or contingent workers. Talk about efficiency.

How did we get here? With over 20 years of innovation, strong talent focus, and a customer-first commitment to partnership, we’ve become a market leader. This gives us the ability to help you re-imagine your external workforce as a ready source of highly skilled talent on demand.

With Beeline’s Extended Workforce Platform, a next-generation VMS, you can have the flexible workforce your business really needs, with a partner that understands the value of well-managed external talent. Ask yourself, how long can you afford to wait?

To learn more about our VMS contact us today.