Client

North American contingent workforce management company.

Challenge

Our client is a rapidly growing Contingent Workforce Solutions provider that offers a suite of services to enterprises, staffing agencies, and independent contractors. For enterprises, our client acts as an “employer of record” and provides services to ensure compliance with relevant labor laws. These services include onboarding and verifying eligibility status for new contractors and providing payroll to the contingent workforce on behalf of their clients.

The client uses Bullhorn as a workforce management platform, Sage for financials, and several custom-built systems for service provision and management.  The existing process contained too many manual data entry steps that were costly, difficult to scale, and error-prone. Errors could be expensive if they resulted in incorrect timesheet and payroll inputs. A significant weakness in the process was the reliance on Excel as the master payroll data source because it is an uncontrolled system. In addition, contractor communication was based on email, which was clunky.

The client wanted to streamline their entire workflow with automations between systems to eliminate manual data entry and risk. They also wished to replace email-based communication with contractor portals to collect relevant onboarding and management data.

Solution

Dispatch developed a multi-phase process improvement solution that reinvented the core business processes of the client. 

Email-based contractor onboarding processes were replaced with intelligent web portals. These portals allowed contractors to upload relevant information, such as SSN/SIN numbers, address, corporate data, proof of work eligibility, etc., much of which could be automatically validated before acceptance. This information was integrated directly into Bullhorn to create new contractor files or revise existing records. The portals could also be branded with our client’s brand or the end-customer brand as appropriate. All manual intervention and file handling was eliminated except for exception handling.

The current state timesheet and payroll process were also reinvented. The existing process required contractors to take screenshots of timesheets entered in various systems, which were manually verified and then manually entered into an excel file for payroll processing.  This was replaced with integrations directly with timesheet systems that collected timesheets approved by the end customer. The approved data was automatically synchronized with Bullhorn. Bullhorn now auto-generates payroll output files, which is then integrated with Sage for payroll processing. This same data is used to generate invoices for end-clients.

Outcomes

The reinvented process completely changed the scalability of the business. Manual data entry was virtually eliminated, and the process is no longer dependent on email communication. Costly errors have been dramatically reduced.  The contractor experience is improved, and the client has increased confidence that services are in control at all times.