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Christopher J. Dwyer

Direct Sourcing’s Impact on 2023 Hiring

Direct Sourcing by Christopher J. Dwyer on

There’s no question as to the power of direct sourcing in today’s volatile business climate. When economic uncertainty arises, enterprises require the ability to scale their workforce based on fluctuating business and market conditions.

Direct sourcing has emerged as a means to revolutionize the ways businesses structure talent engagement, owed to core strategies that amplify talent community development, enhance the candidate experience, and position organizational hiring to leverage its brand and culture to attract top-tier expertise. While the earliest instances of direct sourcing were introduced years ago (and sometimes known as “contingent RPO”), the programs today that follow advanced direct sourcing models are the ones that will scale 2023 hiring in what could be an incredibly volatile labor market.

Join Ardent Partners and the Future of Work Exchange on Thursday, November 10 (at 2pm ET) for an exclusive webcast that will highlight:

  • The power of direct sourcing in today’s frenetic market and its ultimate impact.
  • The Best-in-Class strategies employed by top organizations to maximize direct sourcing efforts.
  • The role of automation and innovation in enhancing direct sourcing’s key elements, such as talent curation, talent community development, and talent nurture initiatives, and;
  • How direct sourcing is positioned to scale hiring strategies in 2023 and beyond.

Register for next week’s webcast here (or click on the image below). We look forward to seeing you there!

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Key Providers for 2022: Beeline

Solution ProvidersTechnology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on

The Background:

Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research has found that nearly 65% of businesses plan to adopt extended workforce management technology by 2024, an idea that signals the natural evolution of contingent workforce management (CWM) into something more expansive and dynamic. Of course, when nearly half (47.5%) of the average organization’s total talent is considered “non-employee,” there needs to be some level of innovation in how businesses tackle their growing extended workforce.

The advent of extended workforce platforms, which meld Vendor Management System (VMS) functionality with progressive HR, talent acquisition, and contingent workforce management functionality, has been a powerful facilitator of control, visibility, and, most importantly, a better candidate experience.

Enter Beeline.

Why They Were Selected:

In the traditional world of VMS technology, it was typically rare to see “talent” prioritized as much as cost savings or compliance. However, as the business arena changed and the evolution of talent began, enterprises required their technology to become candidate-centric models.

Beeline is a platform defined by innovation. Over its tenure as the largest independent provider of VMS technology, the company was a forerunner for Future of Work elements such as direct sourcing, workforce intelligence, and advanced, AI-fueled talent analytics. Today, 18 months after introducing its extended workforce offering, Beeline has become a talent-centric solution that is tailored for the next generation of workforce management solutions.

In Their Own Words:

Beeline powers the future of work with the world’s first extended workforce platform. Our intelligence-driven, cloud-based platform manages more than 30 million contingent, shift-based, project-based, and independent workers and enables total talent visibility into the entire workforce.

As the pioneer of vendor management systems (VMS), Beeline understands the Future of Work is fueled by technology that enables the limitless potential of every business and every individual. Our AI-powered software delivers insights and tools needed to manage the modern world of work. 

With the most seasoned team of contingent workforce solution professionals around the world, we help businesses across more than 120 countries meet their most critical talent needs. To learn more, visit www.beeline.com.

The Outlook:

Beeline’s acquisition by Stone Point Capital earlier this year was just a precursor to the platform expanding its overall reach, with a recent move to snatch up Utmost a clear indicator that the company is all-in on capturing the essence of the Future of Work movement. Beeline has considerable runway due to its robust suite of offerings, one of the most powerful instances of AI-fueled analytics in the space, the industry’s deepest ecosystem, and an overall commitment to a talent-centric technology model that is very much aligned with the direction of the market as its continues to evolve.

Beeline represents the next great generation of not just workforce technology, but also people technology. It is an idyllic and innovative platform that enables flexibility, insights, and true business agility. The company’s core offerings are deep and expansive, touching all facets of the transformative world of work and talent: services procurement, SOW management, candidate experience enhancement, recruitment, direct sourcing, global worker intelligence, and extended workforce management. And, as the industry moves closer and closer to achieving real “total talent management,” it will be solutions like Beeline that pave the way.

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Is Waning Productivity a Worker Problem…or a Leadership Problem?

Business Leadership by Christopher J. Dwyer on

What do tech CEOs such as Google’s Sundar Pichail, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Microsft’s Satya Nadella all have in common? These three, amongst many other high-profile executive leaders, are calling into question whether their workers are working hard enough. Nadella has even coined a term, “productivity paranoia,” that translates into heightened corporate anxiety over whether or not their teams are producing as much as they should.

In a feature published in The Washington Post yesterday (and posted by Boston.com), news of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ work on tracking productivity has businesses rightfully worried about their teams:

Employers across the country are worried that workers are getting less done – and there’s evidence they’re right to be spooked. In the first half of 2022, productivity – the measure of how much output in goods and services an employee can produce in an hour – plunged by the sharpest rate on record going back to 1947, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

What’s incredibly interesting about this turn of events is that, just last year, these productivity figures sparked to their highest level in decades. The Post, in the August 2021 article, attributed these gains to better working conditions, enhanced access to remote and hybrid work models, and other factors. So…what changed?

A return to “normalcy,” even if it can be considered that (more like “semi-normalcy”?), is most likely a culprit after two-plus years of living in pandemic-led conditions. After all of the discussions in 2020 and 2021 (and into this year) regarding the permanent shifts in how we work, it is shocking to see figures like the ones the BLS revealed this week.

The one thing that we are missing here, apparently, is just how permanent the shifts in how we lead truly are. Were the transformations towards empathy, compassion, emotional wellbeing, and better working conditions just a mirage? Or were they for real?

Conscious leadership isn’t just a mindset; it’s a state of being that cascades into how our workforce is treated, how we value them, how we support them, and how we show appreciation. There’s an incredible gap today between the way business leaders are leading and the way they should lead, and that’s reflected in how we are more likely to hear about enterprises failing to provide sick leave, proper maternity or paternity leave, or dynamic support for emotional and physical wellbeing.

Leadership is often broken. And so are some of the ways we work.

Employee engagement is a real and powerful attribute of the modern-day enterprise. The concept at its core is so very, very simple: ensure your workers are engaged, and, in return, they will dedicated to the organization, which, of course…results in increased productivity. Unfortunately, however, we are not fully living in that world today. Worker burnout is all-too common in nearly every company. Emotional wellbeing is not being prioritized at the scale that it should be. Extended vacation and sick leave benefits only exist in a small percentage of organizations.

If a business puts more stock in a free company lunch than it does its overall workplace culture, it’s a serious problem. The issues with productivity, as found by the BLS, can be attributed to a seismic failure at the leadership level of businesses across the country. Does this mean that 100% of the blame falls at the feet of executive leaders? Well, no. Those employees and workers that have engaged in “quiet quitting” are certainly guilty of waning productivity due to taking their collective foot off the gas and producing the bare minimum.

However, there’s a reason for the vast majority of quiet quitting instances that does, indeed, link back to failures at the leadership level. Are leaders being unreasonable with productivity requests? Are there putting more and more pressure on already-stressed workers? Although not many organizations are the same size (or bigger) as Twitter is, the recent takeover by Elon Musk has reportedly resulted in the controversial billionaire asking engineers to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week to meet deadlines. Musk already created a firestorm during the process leading up to his ownership of the social media platform, and seems intent on bringing that attitude into its day-to-day operations.

Over the past two years, we’ve seen (and heard) high-profile CEOs and executives eschew remote work as “aberrations” and being wholly unsustainable. There’s been a major tug-of-war between workers and leaders over return-to-office plans. And, to top it all off, some leaders even believe that flexibility isn’t a foundation of their workplace culture.

There are certainly many workers out there that aren’t pulling their weight. However, there are many, many more workers that are burnt out, disengaged, and disconnected from their workplace’s culture and vision. This is a signal that the problem of waning productivity starts at the top, with business leadership needing even more transformation than it ever has before. Lost in all of this dialogue is the fact that workers are humans, and humans experience feelings, emotions, and desires that can be affected by toxic attributes of their roles.

While economists have no clear answers on why productivity may be tumbling, looking at the rollercoaster transformation of business leadership may be the first clue. It doesn’t matter if an employee works from home, works in a hybrid model, or is in the office full-time; having leaders that lead with empathy and consciousness is the linchpin to sparking real engagement…and avoiding dips in productivity.

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Believe the Hype: Direct Sourcing is a Key Element of the Future of Work

Direct SourcingEventsTalent by Christopher J. Dwyer on

I can remember a moment back in January 2020, an era that seems so very long ago. At that point, the world looked so much different: we weren’t so worried about a global pandemic, nor we were masking up whenever we left the house. We weren’t bombarded by 24/7 news on social media about mass suffering and sickness. And, as we know all so well know, the way we looked at our workforce was much, much unlike the way we perceive talent today.

Ardent Partners’ 2020 State of Contingent Workforce Management research study found that, when polled regarding their top priorities heading into the new decade, direct sourcing and talent pools were #1 and #2, respectively. There were many executive leaders that participated in that study who saw the writing on the wall: talent acquisition needed to change and so did the ways businesses engaged top-tier skillsets and expertise.

Call it omniscient, or call it plain luck; no matter how we describe these pre-pandemic insights, those forward-looking business leaders were onto something. In elegant, MSP-led programs in Europe years ago, direct sourcing took the form of “contingent RPO,” in which businesses built their own talent pipelines via pseudo-agencies that they controlled and operated outside of traditional staffing supplier relationships. So, while direct sourcing isn’t a new concept, it certainly feels like that when we consider the incredible growth of these programs and the attention and focus paid to the concept over the past few years.

(I also have to give immense credit to a dear friend of mine, Jeff Nugent. Here’s a post from 2014 in which he discusses the benefits of direct sourcing. Yes, 2014!)

In the business arena, ideas and strategies that attract so much attention are inevitably destined to fail to live up to the hype. There may have been a moment or two a couple of years ago when it seemed that direct sourcing could have headed down that same fateful path. However, it very much did not, due to three main reasons:

  • Talent pipelines and talent communities became the lifelines of businesses throughout the COVID-19 pandemic as they required flexibility and scalability regarding their workforce.
  • The candidate experience, which became ever-so critical, followed a core element in Best-in-Class direct sourcing programs: talent nurture capabilities, and;
  • Businesses required a steady flow of both active candidates and passive candidates to power through The Great Resignation.

Heading into 2023, the very realm of “hiring” will take on new meaning as businesses contend with a variety of issues that could impact their organizational pathways in getting work done…and, of course, merely surviving. The war in the Ukraine continues to rage and disrupts global trade. The Great Resignation is turning into “The Great Resettling” as workers begin to discover how they want their careers to unfold. The specter of an economic downturn hovers, with recessionary fears sparking precautionary layoffs and major transitions by organizations. And, yet another COVID winter surge is just up ahead.

For enterprises today, direct sourcing isn’t just a concept that’ll ease some measure of talent shortfalls. Direct sourcing is, and has been, a key element of the Future of Work movement. Whether it’s the ability to traverse omni-channel talent engagement, building deep, segmented talent pools, fostering core talent communities, or developing enterprise-wide workforce scalability, direct sourcing remains a powerful strategy as the world of talent and work continues to evolve.

Join Ardent Partners and the Future of Work Exchange on Thursday, November 10 at 2pm ET for our next exclusive webcast, Scale Your 2023 Hiring Initiatives With Direct Sourcing. Register for this exciting new webinar and learn more about the impact of direct sourcing on talent acquisition and recruitment in the months ahead.

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Key Providers for 2022: Worksome

Solution ProvidersTechnology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on

The Background:

The extended workforce, according to Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research, comprises over 47% of the average organization’s total talent. This is a far cry from even the beginning the decade, when the contingent workforce was a smaller portion of enterprise talent.

One of the hallmarks of the modern extended workforce is the dynamic makeup of this type of labor, heralded by businesses being enabled with an omni-channel experience that traverses beyond staffing suppliers and agencies. Freelancers, independent contractors, and gig workers all encompass the powerful skills and expertise represented by non-employee talent, and, not all of these workers are managed correctly, accounted for, or engaged seamlessly in today’s volatile business climate.

Enter Worksome.

Why They Were Selected:

The Future of Work Exchange colloquially uses the phrase “digital staffing” to define a wide array of solutions that don’t fit neatly into traditional workforce technology (such as MSP or VMS). Digital staffing platforms typically offer VMS-like functionality with additional “flavors” that make them appealing for businesses that need specialty offerings for initiatives related to freelancer management, direct sourcing, digital recruitment, and more.

In a very, very short amount of time, Worksome has grown from a Freelancer Management System (FMS) with a talent marketplace foundation to an agile workforce management platform that offers end-to-end functionality for HR, extended workforce management, compliance and risk mitigation (particularly worker classification), workforce intelligence, etc.

In Their Own Words:

Worksome is the new standard in external workforce management, providing a faster, more agile way for companies to work with freelancers and contractors–with less admin, less risk, and a better experience for everyone–trusted by 1,500+ companies worldwide. Worksome offers streamlined administrative operations so businesses can find, contract and pay external workers in one click, while giving the insights needed to continuously optimize external workforce operations. With Worksome’s award-winning compliance solution, customers benefit from built-in background checks, instant worker classification, and automated contracts – as well as automated payments and integrated billing to ensure efficiency. Visit www.worksome.com for more information.

The Outlook:

This summer, Worksome reported 3x year-over-year growth, proving that the solution has become a true player in the extended workforce management technology market. And, with the recent news that the platform has expanded into seven new markets, including Germany, France, Australia, Singapore, Canada, Ireland, and the United Arab Emirates, Worksome is positioned for even bigger things in the months and years ahead.

The utilization of freelancers and independent contractors has grown considerably, especially in a business arena that demands workforce agility, top-tier skillsets, and on-demand access to Best-in-Class talent. Worksome’s powerful functionality enables progressive, end-to-end automation for all facets of freelancer and contractor management while improving the overall candidate experience for these types of non-employee workers. As an “all-in-one FMS” solution, Worksome is built for the Future of Work era. As more and more enterprises require real-time visibility into the deeper elements of their workforce, aim to engage and source external workers much more quickly, and crave the necessary automation to handle both tactical and strategic workforce management processes, Worksome will continue to shine as a robust platform that provides dynamic value.

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Scale Your 2023 Hiring Initiatives with Direct Sourcing (Upcoming Webinar)

Direct SourcingEventsTalent by Christopher J. Dwyer on

Hot on the heels of our Five Things You MUST KNOW About the Future of Work webcast earlier this month, Ardent Partners and the Future of Work Exchange are excited to announce that our next virtual event will be held at 2pm on November 10. This time, we’re focused on perhaps the most dynamic topic in today’s exciting world of work and talent: DIRECT SOURCING.

Going into 2020, direct sourcing and talent pools were top priority areas for businesses across the globe. One global pandemic and a Future of Work-accelerated business arena later, it has become even more critical for businesses that want to thrive in the months and years ahead. 2021 and 2022 were mired in “The Great Resignation” and a “Great Resettling” of workers across various industries, roles, verticals, etc. Along with the volatile labor market that this sparked, businesses are also worrying about the specter of another economic recession while also attempting to plan for an important calendar year in 2023 from corporate objective standpoints.

Direct sourcing, and the concept of Direct Sourcing 2.0 (a FOWX original term meant to define the next era of direct sourcing), has proven to drive incredible value across several key areas of talent acquisition, recruitment, and workforce management, including: enhancing the candidate experience, boosting the hiring manager experience, revolutionizing talent engagement, improving the overall quality of talent, and enabling seamless talent redeployment.

Join Ardent Partners and the Future of Work Exchange on Thursday, November 10 (at 2pm ET) or an exclusive webinar, How to Scale Your 2023 Hiring Initiatives With Direct Sourcing. We’ll unveil some brand new data points, several Best-in-Class strategies for launching and maximizing direct sourcing programs, and so much more! Register now!

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The Future of How We Work Includes…Naps?

Business LeadershipGeneral Insights by Christopher J. Dwyer on

Raise your hand if you’ve experienced burnout at work sometime over the past year. Worker burnout (notice that it’s worker burnout, not just employee burnout; external workers face this issue, too) has become a critical issue in the new world of work, with more professionals than ever before dealing with overwrought anxiety, stress, and both mental and physical exhaustion from their careers.

A study by job board Indeed, released earlier this year, found that 52% of all workers are feeling burned out, which was a near-10% increase from a pre-COVID study. While this increase doesn’t seem like much on the surface, just imagine the cross-section of workers this represents in terms of sheer volume…that’s millions and millions of business professionals, blue-collar workers, white-collar workers, freelancers, contractors, gig workers, etc. that are currently mired in a burnout epidemic.

Too, Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research found that 72% of executive leaders anticipate transforming the way they manage their teams by centering their understanding of workers’ perspectives, feelings, and, yes, stress and exhaustion. This shift in business thinking (a key element of the Future of Work movement) translates into leadership knowing that burnout has become an issue to tackle in an increasingly-evolving world of work.

Nearly two weeks ago, The New York Times ran a feature on Tricia Hersey, the so-called “Nap Bishop” who preaches the value of rest, recovery, and reflection on the human body…and mind.

“Thus the Nap Ministry was born, and Hersey anointed herself its Nap Bishop. She urges followers to use time they might otherwise devote to extra work to sleeping instead, the stretches they’d spend staring at a screen to staring into space. Tense moments given over to worry about disappointing others would be better spent reflecting on our own needs and comforts, Hersey said. It’s about collectively refusing to run ourselves into the ground.”

The most powerful statement in that excerpt? “Collectively refusing to run ourselves into the ground.” Too many of us (the vast majority of us, I would believe) work well past the 40-hour mark each week, dedicating ourselves to our craft, our professions, and our passions. And, just because something is a passion doesn’t mean it can’t burn us out. Even the best-fit, best-aligned roles that make us complete can also make us haggard and exhausted.

When I first read the feature on Hersey and her Nap Ministry, I was a tad confounded myself; after all, taking a snooze at 2pm in the afternoon when you’re supposed to be behind a laptop, on the surface, just seems wrong. And it’s here where Hershey just nails this idea of “rest as privilege”:

“Rest can also feel like a privilege, and many people tell Hersey they can’t afford to lie down when there are bills to pay. She acknowledges that many see walking away from obligations as unrealistic, but counters that devoting even one spare moment to rest is worthwhile, and a practice that can be built on over time.”

Burnout has become an epidemic within the workforce over the past several years, particularly over the last two-plus years due to more and more professionals spending more time in a remote environment, in which the boundaries between “work” and “personal life” are often blurred. Those workers that cannot operate in a remote environment have also been pushed beyond their limits with staffing shortages abound.

I’ve worked remotely for a number of years and decided to experiment a bit with Hersey’s teachings. All of last week, I incorporated more rest, reflection, and yes, naps, into my daily work routine:

  • Monday. An afternoon stacked with meetings and calls means I can’t sneak away for some shuteye during the second half of my work day. I decide to shut down my laptop for 45 minutes at 12pm, play some acoustic Smashing Pumpkins, and close my eyes. My alarm blares as I am in a deep dream state. Immediate insights: Don’t nap when you came home at 12:30am from a concert in the city (again, Smashing Pumpkins), still feel the effects of a COVID vaccine booster, and wake up at 6am to walk the dog. If my alarm didn’t ring, I could have slept for another few hours.
  • Tuesday. My day looks nearly as same as it did on Monday, with a heavier arsenal of meetings during the second half of the day. Without the aura of exhaustion that plagued Monday, I set an alarm for 3:57pm (three minutes before my 4pm meeting) and head for the quietness of the master bedroom at 2:45pm. Immediate insights: This one actually rejuvenated me and gave me enough of a boost to 1) get through the rest of my work day, 2) manage two overtired children for homework and dinner, and 3) be awake enough to catch up on some television with my wife.
  • Wednesday. This is a truer test for the power of naps, with meetings staggered throughout the day (every other hour beginning at 10am). I aim for a 30-minute snooze after lunch. Immediate insights: This was less a “nap” and more “reflection.” I didn’t truly all asleep, but the serenity of sitting on a comfortable bed with nothing but my thoughts helped me refocus on my breathing and thoughts. It was a nice addition to the work day.
  • Thursday. The calls are relentless today, as is my delivery schedule. I notice that my only real opening for rest (or reflection) is at 4pm. I take the opportunity to shut down the laptop a bit early, head to the master bedroom, and set a timer for 70 minutes. Immediate insights: This was, by far, the best nap all week thus far. I had enough energy to handle an extra hour of work while the kids did their homework. And, thanks to Freshly, I didn’t have to cook. And, Thursday Night Football (the entire game, for once) was a real possibility.
  • Friday. Some team meetings in the morning, as well as catching up with old friends in the MSP world. With (obviously) much work to do in a no-call afternoon, I consider skipping a period of rest and reflection today…but when I realize that the weekend ahead is filled with kids’ activities and sports, as well as some FOWX work to tackle, it bodes well for my body and mind to slow down and shut off my mind for a bit. Immediate insights: My final nap during this very, very interesting experiment is absolutely refreshing. Many of us feel exhausted on Friday afternoons, with that edge of burnout carrying into the weekend.

While most of my experiment revolved around naps during the workday, the underlying foundation of Hersey’s mission is not for all of us to shut down and sneak in a snooze, but rather truly rest and reflect during those chaotic hours in which we are toiling away as part of our professional personas. Replace any of the above naps with 45 or 60 minutes of self-reflection or mindfulness, and the result will be the same: some semblance of a solution to burnout in an era when it’s just too, too common. We are all very likely to open our laptops during non-work hours, so there shouldn’t be an issue with grabbing some rest or reflection (or just some quiet non-work time) during the business day.

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Beeline to Acquire Utmost: Extended Workforce Tech as a Future of Work Nexus

Solution ProvidersTechnology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on

When Stone Point Capital acquired Vendor Management System (VMS) giant and extended workforce platform Beeline back in the spring, CEO Doug Leeby alluded to the fact that the transaction and new ownership would allow the most mature independent provider of VMS technology to be more active and more aggressive in the software acquisition market.

Today, that first domino fell for Beeline, as they have announced plans to acquire fellow extended workforce solution provider, Utmost.

Utmost, founded in 2018, became a growing force in the VMS solutions market over the past couple of years due to its progressive and strategic approach towards extended workforce management and the convergence of HR- and procurement-led functionality, buoyed by its dynamic technology architecture. The Utmost platform boasts a wealth of innovative modules, including an omni-channel talent sourcing solution (“Front Door”), Global Workforce Intelligence (enabling true total talent intelligence), a reimagined services procurement tool, and a burgeoning talent technology ecosystem. For Beeline, this represents a robust opportunity to capture small- and mid-sized extended and contingent workforce programs by tapping into the unique nature of Utmost’s progressive functionality.

“The Future of Work is built on the technology that delivers on the evolution of talent engagement, talent acquisition, and talent management,” said Doug Leeby, CEO of Beeline. “Bringing Utmost’s innovative offerings into the Beeline umbrella of solutions will complement our extended workforce technology and provide our clients with even more value as they optimize they ways they get work done.”

Utmost’s hallmarks, including its ease-of-use automation, frictionless integrations, and quick implementations, will enable Beeline with the ability to tap into the small- and mid-sized markets by offering a nimble foundation of offerings that link directly with these organizations’ key pain points. “Companies in the mid-market require more agile solutions at a lower cost with enhanced access points,” said Leeby. “Beeline is a fantastic “work engine” with massive functionality; Utmost will help us meet the evolving needs of this specific market while keeping our main vision in scope with the ways talent and work are evolving.”

At the center of this major market acquisition are the core constituents of the new world of work: the HR, procurement, and talent acquisition executives that run extended and contingent workforce programs, the suppliers and partners that fulfill their needs for skillsets and expertise, and the talent that drives it all.

“Acquiring Utmost is a representation of the future of extended workforce management technology,” said Colleen Tiner, Beeline’s SVP Strategy. “The transformation of both platforms has been highly complementary from business and functionality perspectives. Combining our market experience with Utmost’s solutions will help Beeline to provide Future of Work-oriented and talent-centric technology to our clients and the market.”

Tiner added that one major result of the acquisition is harnessing the power of Utmost’s strong onboarding and provisioning workflows, as well as the solution’s unique services, and bringing those into Beeline’s extended workforce platform.

Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange analysis of the acquisition:

  • While there are several redundancies in functionality, the Utmost acquisition represents a way for Beeline to continue doing what is best known for: innovating. There were many logical acquisition targets for Beeline in the wake of Stone Point Capital’s purchase of the company earlier this year, including direct sourcing platforms and specialist solutions (such as AI-fueled software), however, the company chose to go big with the Utmost move. The core of this acquisition is actually quite simple: it will allow Beeline to continue its long track record of being a pioneer and innovator while expanding its existing scope of Best-in-Class extended workforce management technology.
  • “Total Talent Intelligence” becomes “Global Workforce Intelligence.” In the 2022 VMS Technology Advisor, we wrote: “Utmost offers the market’s deepest total talent intelligence through agile and dynamic dashboards that present users with the ability to pinpoint (with regional- and location-specific accuracy) the makeup of FTEs, contingent workers, professional services, independent contractors, etc. and make decisions and take action in real-time (i.e., anomalies regarding compliance, etc.).” Beeline will expand the realm of total talent intelligence through its powerful analytics, AI, and machine learning capabilities to bring its clients “Global Workforce Intelligence,” taking TTI a step or two further.
  • Beeline will have a clear pathway into the HR and talent acquisition markets. Contingent workforce management has never been a pure procurement play, but there was a time when the function dominated how the extended workforce was ultimately managed. Today, as the world of work and talent becomes more candidate-centric, technology platforms must place workers at the center of their models. The Utmost acquisition enables Beeline with crucial HR intellectual property and functionality, not to mention Utmost’s expected influence on Beeline’s greater product roadmap. The infusion of HR-oriented functionality into Beeline’s array of offerings, combined with a global workforce intelligence play that will surely draw the attention of C-suite leaders, make this deal a groundbreaking one for the industry.
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Key Providers for 2022: Prosperix

Solution ProvidersTechnology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on

The Background:

The world of talent and work is on an upward trajectory, with a vast majority of businesses actively anticipating the adoption of revolutionary strategies, platforms, and solutions to truly optimize the way they get work done. According to Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange research, not only do 72% of enterprises expect to implement a “total talent acquisition” strategy before 2024, but 76% of businesses also anticipate extending HR- and talent-acquisition-like competencies and experiences into their extended workforce management programs within the next 18 months.

What does this mean? Enterprises across the globe crave innovation from their workforce management technology and services, essentially requiring an extra edge of progressive functionality that can transform contingent workforce programs into initiatives that resemble the Future of Work in terms of candidate experience, hiring manager experience, direct sourcing, talent intelligence, etc. In essence, what the business arena needs now is automation that enables agility, scalability, and flexibility.

Enter Prosperix.

Why They Were Selected:

During its near-decade run as Crowdstaffing, the solution now known as Prosperix revolutionized the technological concepts behind digital staffing, direct sourcing, and workforce management. Under the Prosperix brand, the company is doing the same with the Future of Work. Prosperix is known for its innovative VMS Network approach to Vendor Management System (VMS) technology and dedication to enhancing both the candidate and hiring manager experiences.

Prosperix’s unique approach to the talent acquisition and workforce management technology market is further enhanced by the arrival of its new, bundled service offering, Prosperix Xponential. The idyllic blend of tactical and strategic elements of Xponential provide businesses with the necessary power to manage all facets of today’s dynamic workforce, from talent engagement and the candidate experience to managed services, payrolling, and access to the solution’s deep network of candidates and suppliers.

In Their Own Words:

Prosperix is accelerating innovation in hiring and workforce management, enabling every business to build an extraordinary workforce. Our end-to-end software incorporates network effects, automates processes, and simplifies human interactions, while delivering actionable insights and improved outcomes. With our best-in-class solutions, we fuel our client’s biggest dreams by elevating human, workforce, and business prosperity.

Prosperix’s innovations, including the industry’s first (and patent-pending) VMS network and the newest addition, Prosperix Xponential, are garnering attention and giving clients the ability to achieve exponential scalability, agility, resilience, and business outcomes. We serve clients from a wide range of industries such as financial services, insurance, technology, entertainment, and utilities. They engage tens of thousands of contingent workers in professional and non-professional roles including IT, marketing, sales, finance, HR, customer support, manufacturing, and healthcare technology.

Founded in 2012 in Silicon Valley by CEO Sunil Bagai, our company has evolved into one of the industry’s leading technology providers, but with a significant difference – we focus on the combination of technology and people to build a prosperous ecosystem. By balancing the needs of businesses, suppliers, and workers, we help every client establish and maintain a high-quality workforce that meets current and future hiring needs. Visit www.prosperix.com for more information.

The Outlook:

When the company announced its rebrand last year, the main focus was on the “prosperity” of workers and the businesses that employed them. The innovative approach was certainly a progressive marker of where the world of work was heading, as two-plus years removed from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, enterprises find themselves requiring fresh ways of attracting, engaging, and managing talent from various sources, whilst realizing that a talent acquisition and HR focus was the ideal means in leveraging today’s evolving workforce to truly thrive during challenging times.

Prosperix’s VMS Network is a Best-in-Class platform that effectively serves as an agile convergence of digital staffing technology and next-generation VMS functionality. The amalgamation of direct sourcing, candidate experience management, end-to-end contingent workforce management, and digital staffing, combined with the newly-bundled Xponential offering, position Prosperix as a powerful platform that represents the very best of Future of Work-era technology.

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