success story
Beeline replaces aerospace giant’s home-grown VMS with state-of-the-art technology
More than a decade of partnership delivers millions in savings each year.
- Industry
- Aerospace
- Client Since
- 2012
- Category
- Contingent Staffing, Services Procurement
The challenge
The world’s largest aerospace company, our client is a leading manufacturer of both commercial jetliners and military aircraft providing products and services to customers in more than 150 countries. With more than 170,000 people in over 65 countries, the company takes pride in having one of the most diverse, talented, and innovative workforces anywhere, and in leveraging the talents of hundreds of thousands more working for their suppliers or as part of their highly skilled and talented extended workforce.
With an annual contingent staffing spend of more than $800 million in labor categories ranging from engineering and information technology to professional and clerical positions, the client operated one of the largest in-house vendor management offices in the world, using a proprietary vendor management system (VMS) established internally to automate their program.
After more than a decade of operation, the client knew they needed to update their aging system to a state-of-the-art VMS that could manage not only their global contingent staffing needs but their entire extended workforce, including statement of work (SOW)-based contractors. Key requirements for the new system included the ability to work with multiple Managed Service Providers (MSPs), support more than 100,000 client users, and interface with eight internal data systems. Additionally, it would be necessary to transition all legacy extended workforce data and 8,000 ongoing assignments from their proprietary system to the new VMS.
In the first 12 months of operating Beeline Enterprise to cover US contingent staffing only, the client reported saving $3 million due to better vendor pricing.
The solution
Beeline proposed a three-phased VMS implementation, beginning with all US contingent staffing programs. This was to be followed by the provision of a full-featured services procurement solution to support all SOW-based and other contractual programs. Once these were completed, we proposed to extend these capabilities on a global basis to ensure global visibility and accountability in a single system, while incorporating differences in local laws, regulations, and special requirements.
The first phase of the program involving contingent staffing went live, as scheduled, in September 2012, followed by the implementation of services procurement in 2014. In 2018, the client also adopted Beeline’s unique regional VMS program (RVMS) to manage more than 20 countries with relatively small populations of contingent workers.
The results
- In the first 12 months of operating Beeline Enterprise to cover US contingent staffing only, the client reported saving $3 million due to better vendor pricing. At the time, they estimated that productivity improvements and cost avoidance due to enhanced compliance improvement would result in more than $1 million annually in additional savings, a number they have since exceeded.
- Based on the success of Beeline Enterprise’s contingent staffing module, the client chose to expand the VMS to handle Services Procurement, an area involving more than $1 billion in annual spend. This implementation was completed in October 2014.
- In accordance with the original three-phased plan, the next step was to roll Beeline Enterprise out in 15 countries in EMEA and APAC as the client moves toward comprehensive control of its global extended workforce within a single, fully integrated system. This plan was modified in 2018 to include RVMS in certain European (and later Asian) markets.