The High-tech, Low-cost HR Challenge for Staffing Agencies

Business model of staffing agencies typically does not represent a broad range of margin per temporary placement. Rather it is built on quantity, the more employee placements, the higher the profit. Hence the CFOs and COOs in the staffing agencies are challenged to equip their HR teams with high-tech and low-cost tools.

Depending on their client′s portfolio, a staffing agency may flourish or suffer during the current COVID-19 crisis. The reports are talking about three scenarios:

1/ Production of some factories came to a complete halt. Those were deemed as nonessential under statewide rules. There is no hiring of the permanent or temporary placements.

2/ Production of the essential manufacturers constructing equipment for the first responders, medical goods or masks has skyrocketed. The numbers also went up for the agencies providing critical temporary and contract employees to support the delivery of crucial services and goods.

3/ Factories with a limited number of open production lines fabricating e.g. masks only as an alternation to their mainstream business. In the meantime, they are collecting dormant orders for an immediate production release once the emergency ceases. For the staffing agencies this means to gear up for an increased demand. 

Regardless the category or the agencies’ industry focus, many of them are now looking into cutting down operational costs to pump up marginal income. One way to achieve efficiency of operational costs is by replacing paper timesheets of the people placements for electronic cards. Paper or multiple-excels timesheets are not designed for large portfolios and frequent billing cycles. What we are often hearing is: faulty, lost, fraudulent and lengthy process. To strike this balance between affordable and modern in a short period of time is not out of reach!

A Story of Trenkwalder

Trenkwalder is a progressive enterprise when it comes to HR tools and processes. Trenkwalder, being one of the largest staffing agencies in Europe, has pioneered operational improvements to the way employee timesheets are filled, collected, and processed. 

We have interviewed Barnabas Fejes, the company’s Group IT Account Manager and our long-term partner and customer. Together we have been advancing functionalities of our software with focus on the staffing agencies’ needs.

Before XperienceHR:

1/ Please describe the situation before XperienceHR around collecting and processing employee timesheets.

Before XperienceHR we processed timesheets based on paper or we were trying to collect data from our clients’ gate systems which extended our monthly process significantly. It took 1 week or more to get the approved timesheets before we could process them.

2/ What was the biggest struggle or annoyance to your administration?

Besides collecting the monthly timesheets at the end of the month, we had to process the data manually. This meant that we were not able to invoice our clients for the delivered services until 1-2 weeks after receiving the timesheets!

3/ Why have you decided to go for XperienceHR software – please name 3 main advantages.

The main advantages of XperienceHR in short - it is a cloud-based solution, their compact terminals are running independently from our clients’ network, not to mention real-time data availability on any platform.

With XperienceHR:

1/ What are the biggest improvements after implementing XperienceHR?

With XperienceHR we were able to extend our portfolio to provide fully digital HR Services to our clients. We can monitor our services in real-time and we can generate timesheets immediately at the end of each month. The reports are tailored to our payroll system. Thanks to flexibility of the application, together with XperienceHR, we have developed quite a number of custom-made functionalities and features based on our needs.  

2/ Where do you see the best savings (time, man-days, budget…)?

Basically everywhere. We do not lose time with data gathering and processing, the payroll can be run earlier, thus the time to invoice generation is reduced. This helps our cash-flow as well.

3/ Can you outline the business areas in which the XperienceHR software and terminals were installed?

Our client’s portfolio is quite diverse. We are working with companies from automotive industry, to retail and transportation, and agricultural companies as well. In every area we have found possibility to implement the XperienceHR system.

Thank you for the interview Barnabas. We are wishing you a lot of success while you are continuously innovating and using modern HR tools!