success story
Contingent Workforce Management in the Insurance Industry
Centralize sourcing and management of the global non-employee workforce.
- Industry
- Insurance
- Client Since
- 2014
- Category
- Contingent Staffing, Services Procurement, Resource Tracking, Direct Sourcing
The challenge
The client is one of Americas leading insurance companies with multiple subsidiaries insuring automobiles, homes, and small businesses, as well as other insurance and financial services products. The organization has more than 48,000 exclusive and independent agents and approximately 21,000 employees.
Nearly 25 percent of their company’s workforce is contingent (approaching 80 percent in IT alone). As such, it was considered a critical category and risk area warranting an audit covering financials, security, contractual and legal compliance, and data quality.
- Access to operational data and increased reporting visibility: This customer had a managed service provider (MSP) in place, but wanted to automate their program, bringing in technology that would allow them to continue to innovate and help streamline their processes organization wide. They also wanted to automate the requisitioning of contingent labor, invoicing, reporting, and compliance processes.
- Complex regulatory and security requirements not being met: Their main objective was to strengthen the internal governance around the use of contingent workers, including independent contractors and consultants engaged in statement of work (SOW)-based projects. They also wanted a way to track outsourced services, ensuring compliance with all government mandates and regulations.
- Compliance concerns and failed internal audit: Most importantly, the organization had failed an internal audit in 2013. As a result, it needed a technology solution to manage their contingent workforce that would ensure that all activities were documented and required security measures were in place.
The solution
Supported by their MSP, they thoroughly evaluated the VMS marketplace, looking for a true business partner. They ultimately selected Beeline and implemented the platform in 2014 to elevate their contingent labor management program.
The organization runs over $120 million in annual contingent labor spend through Beeline. They have approximately 50 suppliers, and Beeline is used regularly in 45 U.S. locations.
The client uses Beeline’s Resource Tracking, which provides a single repository to track all extended workforce resources, regardless of resource type, location, or hours worked. The customer is using the product to seamlessly transition from unmanaged tracking to managed sourcing, as they work to determine the correct categories of spend and compliance needs for each resource.
They also use Beeline Direct Sourcing which allows them to reduce their talent costs while increasing efficiencies and additional avenues for finding available talent while maintaining full regulatory compliance.
The result
Today, Beeline tracks, manages, and optimizes the company’s non-employee workforces, while integrating with their most mission critical applications like SAP HRIS and ERP accounting modules, as well as applications controlling building security, badging, claims, time management and capacity planning, IT project management, and Cornerstone OnDemand on-line training.
- Standardization across entire organization: The client is able to centralize sourcing and management of the global non-employee workforce, capture contingent spend enterprise wide, ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, reduce costs with competitive bidding, rationalize their supply base (offboarding 17 suppliers since go-live), and standardize rate cards.
- Compliance and corporate governance rules are met: They can ensure that valid master service agreements (MSA) and work orders are approved for all contractors and their employers by implementing a process of continuous monitoring and compliance validation.
- Reduced co-employment risk: They have a fail-safe procedure for verifying worker classification, background screening, logical and physical security, compensation, and immigration status.
- Improved visibility and ability to track outsourced services: They have end-to-end visibility into the contingent workforce to enhance procurement processes, workforce planning, corporate governance, labor relations, and security, and report back on all metrics to the customer in concise, measurable ways.
In 2017, the company’s Internal Auditing Department conducted another in-depth review. During this audit, the scope expanded to include payment processes, data interfaces, system balancing, production error handling, and validating daily production support touch points.
Beeline was instrumental in allowing their organization to successfully pass this audit. The fact that all data about contingent workers, financial approvals, and work order amendments are captured by Beeline helped CWM tremendously in answering the auditors’ questions,