Background

A large enterprise cloud software vendor had been short-listed by a global staffing and services company to replace their legacy ERP. Knowing their prospective client was looking for partners with a long-term vision for the industry, the vendor reached out to Regents Consulting. They sought to evaluate the fit of their product for the staffing sector to confirm and quantify the viability of a strategic commitment to the space.

Challenge

To validate the vendor’s proposed business case for market penetration, Regents outlined key factors and considerations staffing firms take supporting and maintaining their legacy systems and the resulting demand for transformation. Having worked with the majority of the top 20 global staffing firms and all of the top five in implementing, upgrading and supporting their existing ERPs, Regents provided insights into the challenges faced by the largest customers in the industry. They also reviewed the vendor’s pricing model and its competitive alignment for staffing.

Approach

As a framework for the fit/gap analysis, Regents utilized its ClearPath implementation methodology ClearPath accelerates the analysis and design of staffing customers’ future state by aligning systems with an inventory of almost 500 industry-specific requirements developed by Regents (see Figure 1). These requirements are examined in conjunction with Regents’ decades of experience with ERP best practice business processes.

Figure 1: Regents Implementation Lifecycle with ClearPath (click to enlarge)

Through a series of deep-dive product demos, Regents completed a fit/gap analysis, including aligning which product in the staffing technology stack should support each requirement:

• front office, which aligns best to purpose-built ATS and CRM solutions, or
• middle and back office, which align to functionality supported by ERPs.

Gaps were then reviewed further and delineated as either non-industry specific (which should be supported by the ERP product roadmap) or industry-specific (which should be supported with Regents extensions that have been normalized for staffing).

Outcomes

The analysis confirmed the vendor’s unique opportunity to provide a path to the cloud in response to current challenges being faced by large global staffing companies in supporting legacy ERPs. Other key findings included:

• Vendor product provided an 80% fit against common ERP requirements for staffing
• Staffing business processes aligned with the ERP, ensuring appropriate return on customer investment
• Product pricing adjustments should be considered to support the dynamic and changing staffing workforce

Through this initiative, Regents demonstrated that its fit/gap benchmark data uniquely aligns to the specific challenges and opportunities within the staffing sector. Additional outcomes included:

• Product roadmap items to support the vendor’s long-term investment in the staffing industry
• Staffing customer advisory board being considered to further extend staffing feature/functions
• Confirmation that global staffing customers have a viable solution for a world-class cloud ERP