ManpowerGroup Solutions Analyst Day – It’s All About Talent

On June 8, 2011, ManpowerGroup Solutions held its first analyst day where it talked about multiple services, including its RPO business, which is currently providing recruitment services in ~35 countries, including for eight global clients, which range in scope from two to ten countries. ManpowerGroup Solutions has a center of excellence in the U.S. to share best practices so it provides a consistent experience and doesn’t reinvent the wheel for each implementation. It is smart enough, however, to recognize that the greatest satisfaction for the hiring manager comes when services are delivered locally. Thus playing to its strength of having the ability to deliver RPO locally, with a total company presence in ~82 countries.

In Q1 2011, it closed 37 RPO deals: 8 in APAC, 9 in EMEA, 2 in LA, and 18 in the U.S. For the next eighteen months, it’s focus includes driving consistency of operation and customer experience and improving the client’s employment value proposition via improved employer branding and candidate experience.

ManpowerGroup Solutions still has the largest RPO deal to date in the industry, a $200m contract with the Australian Defense Force to provide full end-to-end services from sourcing through onboarding for 8,500 – 10,000 new hires annually. Approximately 300 personnel are employed onsite to support the contract which includes a marketing team of 22 people providing services that include social media and employment branding. There is also an 80 seat call center to proactively manage relationships with candidates and 90 I/O psychologists.

Other highlights of the day included a presentation on ManpowerGroup Solution’s Tapfin business, a MSP that handles over $3.3bn in managed services spend and administers 221 MSP programs globally.  This was followed by a demo of Workforce Scan, a consulting process to help model future scenarios of emerging supply and demand gaps in the availability of talent needed by taking a 5, 10, 15, or 20 year timeframe view.

There was also an announcement of a new contact center offering to help existing client centers increase productivity, improve customer service, and retain talent through a set of services including: talent sourcing; program and process management; best practice and benchmarking consulting; and talent-based outsourcing for center-based and distributed workforces such as virtual / work-from-home models. NelsonHall will cover more on this recent announcement in our tracking service and next HRO Industry Insight Newsletter.

According to its new Workforce Strategy Survey, almost a quarter of employers across 36 nations admit their workforce strategy does not support their business strategy or have any idea if it does. More than half of this group is doing nothing about it, which sounds like more opportunity for RPO providers to help employers with workforce planning.  I’ll share more on this topic next time!

Gary Bragar, Lead HRO Analyst, NelsonHall

Playing the Hidden Object Game with HRO News

As one of NelsonHall’s research analysts, I follow what is happening in the various HRO markets. The simplest method is reading press releases, to which we add our commentary in our tracking service.  As a reader, you see a portion of this analysis in our HRO Insight Blog and HRO Insight Newsletter.

On my own time, I like to play basic computer and online games. One of my favorite types is hidden object games where you follow clues to solve puzzles. Occasionally, tracking press releases is a bit like a virtual scavenger hunt for the larger objective.

Let’s take a look at an example with Ceridian’s recent announcement of its acquisition of Versult Group, Inc. Versult Group is a workforce management consulting firm acquired to enhance Ceridian’s implementation, training, and support services for its InView Workforce Management (WFM) solution.  It is a straightforward article, easy to cover as is, and then I followed one clue to another and ended up with a richer story. HRO analyst fun!

Back in February 2011, Ceridian announced its partnership with Dayforce to launch InView.  The two partners began working together a year earlier to integrate Dayforce’s WFM software suite into Ceridian’s payroll and HR administration services and ready both teams for launch. Ceridian also made an equity investment in Dayforce, which had already raised $20m, including $10m from Bridgescale Partners in July 2010.

Versult was one of seven Dayforce implementation partners and Versult had already performed implementations with Ceridian. As a bonus to Versult’s experience with WFM system implementation, it brings its own mobile access application, Versobile, to Ceridian.

Ceridian intends to further develop this platform for its clients seeking SaaS-based HR services by integrating beyond the current HR administration and payroll services to create an end-to-end offering including: H&W, tax, pay cards, COBRA, recruiting, EAP, tuition reimbursement, performance management, and training.

The payoff so far is that Ceridian’s investments are seeing rapid initial client acceptance. The platform has already grown to 90 Ceridian customers, rapidly escalating from 20 in February 2011.

This is a good, well-thought-out strategic move for Ceridian. It gets to cost effectively expand its SaaS service portfolio, leverage the strengths of its current offerings, increase scope with its client base, and add an experienced implementation team. It also has an equity stake in WFM, an increasingly important service line given employer concerns with cost control and the capability for rapid and effective workforce scaling.

Let’s leave this chapter of the story with a puzzle. How long will Ceridian be satisfied with a partnership with Dayforce, the WFM software source, when it felt the need to acquire Versult, the implementer?

Now for HRO vendors large and small, how are you solving your piece of the HRO SaaS puzzle?

Linda Merritt, Research Director, HRO, NelsonHall