In my opinion, you need the advice and knowledge of someone who understands this specific niche market and that’s where recruiters like Edbury Daley can make a difference.
We’ve already enjoyed success in this market for a while but as we knew this development would come sooner rather than later, we made it our long term objective to replicate our success in the permanent market for procurement technology specialists by making ourselves the go-to supplier for the associated interim market.
There are details of what we are doing to achieve this, but before we get to that we need to address what needs to be on your agenda if you are planning a transformation project around the adoption of a digital procurement solution and want to consider hiring an interim.
Clearly defined requirements – plan this so you can take control of the skills you need to hire rather than being reactive and having to firefight mid-way through a project.
A clear plan on when you intend to hire – too many organisations get this wrong and go to market at the wrong time making life harder for themselves. Plan ahead, decide on how to source the people you need and identify realistic, achievable timescales.
A realistic budget – get some advice on the likely cost of the resource you need.
With the two latter points, many organisations often overlook the value of engaging a specialist recruiter that can advise and help plan ahead. If you want to gain an advantage on your competition for these scarce resources, don’t treat the recruiter as a necessary evil and view the relationship as transactional when you can get real value from some basic SRM practices – that’s what our most successful clients do!
So what is it that makes us so well positioned to advise in this area? Here’s a sample of what we are doing to ensure we can meet the needs of our clients:
- Use our extensive network across the procurement technology market to identify who is buying or upgrading solutions, embarking on new projects or finishing existing contracts.
- Using a range of methods to build relationships with every relevant interim specialist in the European market. For example, we attend relevant events like eWorld, Procurement Leaders and SAP Ariba Live to build and evaluate the relevant talent pool.
- We provide existing customers with regular updates on the availability of specialist contractors to support their resource planning.
What will that mean for CPOs, CFOs and CIOs invested in these projects?
- We can advise them on which contractors are available now and when others will be free in the short term.
- We can advise them on developments in day rates and candidate availability as we are building detailed knowledge about the skills landscape in this niche market.
- We are involved in the sector and monitoring the peaks and troughs in supply and demand meaning that contractors are coming to us first looking for new roles because we are specialists with a strong reputation in the market.
So that’s the good news. We know what’s happening, we are advising our clients and doing everything in our power to help them achieve their goals because that means a successful outcome for us.
But there is some bad news that is hard to sugar coat. IR35 is coming to the private sector interim market and that is going to have cost implications for us all! Employers, recruiters and contractors!
With this in mind, we have also invested significant time and resources into understanding the impact of the forthcoming changes in IR35 tax legislation. If this is something on your radar that you need to know more about, I’m sure we can help. If it’s not on your radar yet, it needs to be soon.
The key thing to note at this stage is that it’s going to affect the majority of contractors in any project that goes beyond April 2020. That might seem a long way off at the moment, but if you’ve got a transformation project starting later this year and you intend to use interim resources, you will need to account for it in your budget.
The only bit of good news I can offer around an increase in tax costing you more of your budget is that we are well placed to advise you on the implications. I’ll keep attending the IR35 seminars, reading the briefing papers we get from our professional body (APSCo) and keep sharing the information with our clients to help them plan ahead.
If any of the issues I have raised in this article are likely to impact your business then maybe it’s time to get in touch with me. I’ll do my best to answer your questions and I’m confident that it will help you understand the value of planning your recruitment in advance.
For further information on the procurement technology sector and recruitment advice please take a look at some of our articles and videos.