The VMS approach to “contingent workforce” supply chain management is a well-established trend throughout many segments of the staffing industry.  This concept of supplier or vendor management was derived from other areas of procurement and adapted and applied to temporary worker spend/utilization (i.e., to managing staffing suppliers of contingent workforce).

A new innovative solution provider, Candex, has introduced and is gaining traction with a similar concept for managing the suppliers (agencies/recruiters) of permanent hires.  

Candex, launched in 2011, provides an e-platform that enables employers to work with staffing firms/recruiters across the world to source employees for local geographies with streamlined efficiency and reliability.  The Candex platform allows employers to define standard recruitment contracts by geography or customize contracts for particular suppliers.   It also provides employers with access to all of the suppliers registered with the Candex platform and provides detailed performance profiles on each one.

Candex supports multi-lingual/multi-currency interactions/transactions through distant suppliers.  It provides internal “social” communication capabilities between employers and staffing/recruiting firm personnel as well as extensive process transparency (data and analytics) across hiring personnel and recruitment services suppliers.

The company tends to see itself much more as a technology-enabled platform provider than a services company (so nothing like an MSP or RPO).  Its primary mission therefore is to continue to engineer technology into a supporting platform across which companies can efficiently and precisely source needed talent in any global location.

The founder of Candex, Jeremy Lappin, is a serial entrepreneur with some successful human capital-related ventures behind him (including Bounty Jobs).  Lappin said he founded Candex because he saw that companies were wasting thousands of hours administering suppliers and they had no way to extract meaningful spending and performance data around their supply chain. “Candex provides visibility and transparency around permanent recruitment and drives cost reduction and faster access to smarter talent.” 

Candex initially focused on the bio-pharma industry, but it has now expanded to serve a broader group of impressive companies in other geographies and other industries (current customers include Corning, Pfizer, Regeneron, Experian, Celgene, Bausch & Lomb, and others).  The company maintains an office outside Philadelphia, one in London, and a software development center in Israel. The company is backed by prominent industry veterans such as John Bowmer, former CEO of Adecco, Piers Marmion, former CEO of Heidrick & Struggles, and Shiv Agrawal, CEO of the largest recruitment group in India.