Brief: What VMS Customers Can Teach You About Effective Workforce Management

Vendor management systems (VMS) have become a critical part of operating a flexible contingent labor strategy. These tools, which give customers an automated process for hiring and managing nonpermanent workers, act as a single point of reference for critical workforce decisions — and help companies monitor and control the cost of their contingent workforce. As part of our research into VMS vendors for our recently published Forrester Wave™: VMS, Q1 2014 evaluation, we conducted online surveys of customer references. The 32 end user customer references gave us strong insights into the value of VMS for both contingent labor (non-project-based) and SOW/project-based work. In particular, we found that reducing the number of errors in time reporting and invoicing is the top benefit of using VMS software — which is important when one-fifth of IT budgets go to contingent workers. This brief outlines what we heard from the customer references, and provides guidance for companies considering implementing VMS.