CWS 3.0: August 1, 2012

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The Man Who Sold VMS

Vendor management systems historically have been greatly disliked by staffing suppliers. The common perception is that VMS technologies hurt a supplier’s business. They lower margins, stop the suppliers from communicating with hiring managers and in general make life and business harder for the staffing supplier. However, anecdotal evidence from Staffing Industry Analysts’ VMS/MSP Competitive Landscape survey indicate that those perceptions are easing, albeit slowly.

A part of this trend is due to the efforts of Jai Shekhawat, whose VMS, Fieldglass, was developed with the supplier in mind. The opening he saw? No VMS company was empowering the staffing supplier, he told Editorial Director Subadhra R. Sriram. Instead, folks viewed the acquisition of contingent labor as a procurement problem. Shekhawat, however, saw Fieldglass as a software-as-a-service application that helped suppliers better serve the buyer’s temp labor needs. Read more about his vision and the changing face of the VMS here