Manuel Roger on Beeline Extended Workforce Platform: 3 Insights.

This is the final post in our blog series, which aims to provide deeper context into our announcement of the world’s first Extended Workforce Platform. Today we welcome Manuel Roger to the blog to understand the impact of our news globally.

1. In Europe and APAC, VMS adoption is mixed, from those standardising their programs on tech for the first time to big, global programs that are quite mature. How will Beeline Extended Workforce Platform reframe customer expectations in your markets?

In Europe and APAC, the market is still quite emerging in term of maturity. Companies are still relatively new to organising structured cross-country contingent labour programmes.

For first-time VMS buyers, standardising a contingent workforce programme on a technology platform can be intimidating. User adoption can be difficult, given the historical complexity of technology solutions in this category. Beeline Extended Workforce Platform addresses this by creating an experience that’s intuitive while “hiding” the complexity from the user.

This experience, coupled with our rich data set and 20+ year product maturity, is what makes Beeline the best choice for businesses with large, complex, global contingent workforce programmes. Rather than generic workflows, the Beeline experience meets businesses and talent teams exactly where they are at – their country, their language, their internal policies and in-country regulations.

2. How important is Beeline’s 20-year history when it comes to clients?

First and foremost, our 20 years’ experience in the contingent labour industry has allowed us to build the most experienced, knowledgeable, and DEDICATED team. Companies deploying and running a robust contingent labour programme need to be supported and guided by deep domain expertise and experience to be successful – be it a simple one country IT contractor programme or a global multi-billion, multi-country, multi-continent, multi-labour category programme.

20 years of experience also translates to the biggest workforce database available globally. In the past two years we have invested a lot of time and energy deep diving into this immense data warehouse to learn from it and provide meaningful and actionable features and functionality to our customers.

Creating a nice-looking VMS and rebranding it a platform is relatively easy. What can’t be bought is the deep knowledge and expertise it takes to truly understand the underlying business challenges of the market, including the specificities and complexities of local laws and local business practices. This is something that is built over time and what no other technology provider for sourcing and managing contingent labour can do at the scale of Beeline.

3. What are the biggest priorities for buyers today, and how does Beeline Extended Workforce Platform address them?

One key priority is gaining visibility into their contingent labour. Who buys what contingent labour, from which partner, at what cost? Businesses need to quantify the value delivered by partners and contingent workers, and measure and report on contingent labour programme activity to make informed decisions today and for the future.

Compliance is also a key concern as local legislation evolves. Just two examples are IR35 in the UK and the DBA Act in The Netherlands. Companies need to enforce, track and report on compliance with the local regulatory framework in order to meet strict government requirements to ensure worker protection and tax collection while keeping the flexibility and agility they need.

Finally, given the level of competitiveness they operate in and the aftermath of the economic crisis due to the global pandemic, companies need to drive productivity and efficiency to remain relevant and ensure their long-term sustainability. They can no longer afford to rely on cumbersome, costly, slow and manual processes. Leveraging Beeline Extended Workforce Platform allows them to automate and streamline processes – from the sourcing to the management of their active contractors up to the financial process and controls.

For more on what this means to the industry and to Beeline’s clients and partners, see our previous interviews with CEO Doug Leeby and SVP Brian Hoffmeyer.