A global pharmaceutical leader focused on cost savings

The challenge

With operations around the world, our client suffered without a centralized contingent staffing procurement process. Managers routinely engaged suppliers on their own with no regard for operational, security, or budgetary compliance. Consequently, our client’s contingent labor supplier community ballooned to include hundreds of unqualified and improperly vetted companies – including more than 80 suppliers for IT positions alone. Furthermore, the client had little to no visibility into its contingent workforce activity and regularly incurred thousands of dollars or more in rogue spend.

In addition to controlling costs and quality, the client was very concerned about compliance. Operating in a highly regulated industry, the client needed to ensure that their extended workforce program complied with all applicable laws and regulations as well as company directives that were subject to regular internal audits.

The solution

With a focus on compliance and quality, we implemented our powerful VMS in coordination with the client’s MSP. To gauge supplier quality, each existing supplier received a formal Request for Proposal (RFP) issued through Beeline VMS. The suppliers were evaluated on their ability to provide quality talent, comply with Beeline rate cards, and adhere to MSP rules. Based on the results of the RFP, we built a high performing supplier community and reigned in rogue spend.

To ensure contingent labor quality, the VMS tracks and facilitates background and drug screening activity, ensuring that suppliers are adhering to a precise, verifiable, step-by-step onboarding procedure. Using our system, the client knows which non-employees have access to company facilities, which workers are compliant with organizational policies and government regulations, and which suppliers provide non-employee resources most efficiently to support the company’s needs.

The client’s implementation of Beeline VMS includes approximately 10 integration points with their SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The integrations transfer data associated with assignments, expenses, invoices, cost centers, and users, as well as client-defined fields, creating a powerful, seamless solution with real-time synchronization between enterprise systems used by important stakeholders within the client’s Procurement, HR, Finance, and Accounting organizations. When the client added a Workday® HRIS solution to manage its employees, Beeline established an outbound file transfer from the VMS to Workday, providing better control over user access and provisioning.

Recognizing the spend visibility, cost savings, and risk mitigation value Beeline VMS provides for the company’s US operations, the client also asked Beeline to support their extended workforce in Puerto Rico, the UK, and Ireland. In each of these implementations, the system had to reflect payment policies and procedures that were different from those in the US.

In addition to sourcing and managing contingent workers provided by staffing suppliers, the system also manages statement of work (SOW)-based independent contractors (ICs) via the VMS’s services procurement functionality. And, to give the client quicker access to qualified candidates, Beeline implemented another talent acquisition channel using direct sourcing. This channel is now in its second generation, with a new curator and new direct sourcing platform.

A global pharmaceutical leader focused on cost savings

The challenge

The solution

The results