“Are you creating value?”

The first person who needs to answer this question in every staffing organization is the owner operator.  Here are some related questions:

• Is your staffing firm producing value in the marketplace?
• More specifically, are you creating value for your clients?
• Can you define what that value is and is it measurable?

By its nature a business is an economic entity and is sustained only as long as it makes economic sense to itself and its client-base.

Create value to reverse falling margins and other negative staffing industry trends

Over the last 20 years, one of the most significant trends in the staffing industry has been the shift from being a small supplemental workforce agent to being embraced as a key component to businesses’ workforce strategy.  The fallout is the relegation of staffing to procurement due to the increased spend in dollars each year.  Many of our clients who use our staffing software deal with procurement people in contract renewal or bid processes.  They have discovered that the primary goal of the typical procurement professional is to diminish the true value of the staffing service so they can achieve the lowest per unit cost.

It’s nothing new but this complaint of many staffing operators is still fresh: my peers and competitors are not helping the situation by low balling contracts and further diminishing the perceived value of the staffing product.  Therefore, making the economics of doing business even more challenging.

A number of staffing firms have successfully pushed back against these staffing industry trends by moving up the value chain in their clients’ organizations.  Often these firms have focused on niche markets and developed a level of expertise elevating them above the procurement office into the operational areas of the firm where managers are interested in outcomes such as performance and production product quality.  As these staffing operators do the hard work to be embedded as a value-added solution into their clients’ business processes they achieve such profitable results as:

• Better margins
• Consulting fees
• Long term relationships
• Barriers to competition

Email me to share ways you’ve fought falling margins by adding value to your staffing services?

Contact us to discuss how we’ve helped staffing companies improve their margins and move up the value-chain in their clients’ organizations with our staffing software.

Dave Reiss
Founder and CEO
Applied Systems Technology
845-534-7100 X1102
dave@astusa.com
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