Using data to make truly strategic contingent workforce decisions means going beyond what a typical vendor management system (VMS) dashboard shows by default. It means applying sophisticated analytic tools to the data collected by your VMS to answer the questions that really matter:
Unless you can answer these questions, your contingent workforce program office is working blind. Adding data and analytics to the mix enables your organization to make informed strategic staffing decisions that make it more competitive and profitable.
Total workforce optimization, in its simplest terms, is the process of finding the right mix of employees and non-employees to accomplish your organization's goals as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.
How do you know whether it’s better to hire an employee to fill a role or engage a contingent resource? At times, the choice is obvious: when you need short-term access to strategic skills, a highly skilled contractor or interim worker is the right choice. But what if the work is ongoing, spanning many departments or locations? To make that call, you need visibility into your workforce data.
You might choose to classify a particular skill requirement as a core skill so that future hires for associated roles will be permanent. You may determine that other skills are best provided by contingent staff, consultants, independent contractors, or even AI agents. The only way to make these decisions is with true workforce visibility via your VMS.
When it comes to using contingent talent, your primary choices are to use external staffing vendors or to source the talent directly. If you choose external vendors, which ones? Workforce visibility and data provided by your VMS are your best guides for making this decision. Are your direct sourcing capabilities more effective for filling certain roles than those of external staffing vendors? If you don’t know the answer to that question, set key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine the answer. Perhaps you will find that direct sourcing is strong in some areas but not in others, so your best option may be to outsource some roles and source others directly.
Staffing agencies are often chosen based on relationships or inertia – ‘we’ve always used them’ – and not on metrics. Supplier scorecards created by your VMS provide the metrics you need to compare vendors and make better staffing decisions.
Staffing vendors need KPIs that are monitored, measured, analyzed, and reported in a scorecard focused on quality, cost, and efficiency. Using data from across your organization, you can discover which suppliers consistently deliver quality talent quickly, and which combine competitive pay rates for talent with competitive bill rates based on reasonable markups.
Processes, markups, and performance can vary widely. According to industry analysts, markups in 2026 typically range from 25% to 60% over workers’ actual pay rates, but can reach more than 75% depending on the industry, job category, and skills scarcity.
To add the most value, a contingent worker should start contributing from day one. This requires immediate integration with the rest of the team. Your data should provide insights into both hard and soft skill requirements, enabling you to choose the contractor or freelancer with the right combination of professional and interpersonal skills.
Workforce data that highlights ‘when’ can be just as critical as ‘what,’ ‘where,’ and ‘who.’ If your hiring data is visible across your organization and alerts about demand patterns or assignment expiration patterns are triggered through your VMS, you can make faster talent acquisition decisions.
A great example of this is leveraging worker deployment. If assignments are expiring in one part of the business just as fresh requisitions are being activated, workers can be shifted easily, enabling a seamless transfer of skills and knowledge.
Data is critical to ensure that all statement of work (SOW) milestones are met on time and on budget. Analytics can help you track projects, identify trends, and measure performance. Beeline VMS provides analytic tools to measure and evaluate contractor performance. This gives you important insight for negotiating better pricing for future projects.
Beeline VMS provides data and AI-powered analytic tools that make it incredibly easy to track and manage the activities and performance of your contingent workers, contractors, and staffing suppliers. It enables you to compare the cost efficiency of direct sourcing versus vendor sourcing and to compare staffing vendor performance.
Visibility into pay rates, markups, vendor performance, and SOW delivery turns contingent workforce data into a strategic management tool. The insights you gain from AI-driven data analytics can drive real-time continuous improvement and control across your organization. Download our free guide to see how a VMS from Beeline brings that visibility together in one place.