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I am acutely aware that consultants specialising in contractual work often operate to tight deadlines and demanding specifications. In these circumstances customer and candidate care can falter – but my experience with Quanta has been outstanding.Specialist Contractor

Transforming recruitment processes and lowering costs for a leading telecommunications manufacturer

Quanta was approached by a global telecoms products and services supplier, which had significant issues with its incumbent resource supplier, a major blue-chip company. These issues resulted in increased costs that impacted directly on the profitability of the business.

The approach that had been adopted by the incumbent supplier restricted the client’s opportunity to maximise productivity of permanent staff and didn’t encourage contract staff to share their knowledge. This affected both ongoing and planned projects within one of the largest rollouts of SAP/R3.

The client had been developing an ‘e-front end’ for the SAP/R3 rollout – which had been classed as being crucial to the client meeting its strategic business objectives. The rollout required 300 highly skilled IT staff to work in Sweden.

Approach

Just before Quanta became involved, the resourcing process was taking too long – and the client’s management had lost confidence. Resourcing delays were affecting progress of the rollout – in resource costs alone, a delay of one week was costing $100,000. Also, a minimal level of internal resource was being used – the incumbent resourcing partner using external contract staff – and there was clear evidence that some third-party companies were taking advantage of this situation.

Quanta’s approach was to take short-term ownership of the recruitment process and to apply some sustainable improvements in governance, agency management and communication. Quanta implemented a tightly managed ten-week programme of improvement, after which control of resourcing was handed back to the client’s incumbent resource partner – with improved controls in place.

Process

Get-well plan sanctioned as part of the discovery phase.
Gained governance control of the recruitment process - implemented effective communications between incumbent supplier, the client and all third parties.
Consolidated all outstanding recruitment activities to establish a baseline master resource schedule and demand profile.
Implemented formal performance metrics across all activity areas – including process responsibility and ownership as a core feature.
Engaged the client’s internal resource managers to find suitable internal candidates across the client’s organisation worldwide.
Assessed key roles that could adversely impact the programme - engaged the client’s strategic alliance partners to provide ‘niche’ skills.
Resourced and assigned three interim programme managers to key roles for six weeks.
Established formal weekly reviews with all parties, including with the incumbent resource partner.
Reduced the volume of second-tier agencies and implemented ‘reward and penalty’ scheme.

Outcome

Rapid introduction of skills into the rollout programme. Prior to Quanta’s assignment and as a result of resource shortfall, the programme had suffered four delays of more than one week. After our intervention, none were reported.
Average time to identify and recruit a priority 1 or priority 2 resource was reduced from 2-3 weeks to under 48 hours.
Internal staffing ratios improved to 34% (this was only 7% prior to our assignment).
We reduced the amount of management time on the project - before Quanta became involved, there were daily review meetings; afterwards the client and the resourcing partner only needed to review progress once a month.
The client reduced its external spend with recruitment agencies by an average of 3 X FTEs per month (which equated to a $3.7m annual saving).
Focusing a smaller number of agencies allowed the cost of new contractors to reduce by 22%.
Internal confidence levels increased from 31% to 96%.
The client adopted all of Quanta’s recommended process improvements, following which there was no residual dependency on Quanta.

The client was delighted with the outcome – there was a measurable, dependable and sustainable process for ensuring forward visibility of requirements, delays and priorities.

The client’s competence manager for the e-business programme stated:
“Having retained Quanta to review our resourcing process, I would recommend them to anyone. They have made, and will continue to make, a major contribution to the success of the e-business programme.”

References from this client are available on request.