Posted on Mon, Sep 27, 2010 @ 03:16 PM
VMS is here to stay, what do we do about it?
By Edward Jackson, President
I was flattered to be a guest panelist speaking with Dana Shaw from Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) about VMS at the recent SIA Healthcare Summit in Chicago. Since Provade doesn’t have a wide presence in the Healthcare industry, my comments applied to the market in general.
The Summit attendees were mostly staffing companies that provide talent to the healthcare industry. They had questions on VMS that were wide-ranging. On the whole, though, it was clear that the audience was not familiar with the differences between MSP and VMS.
It brought back memories from the SIA Summit in 2003 when almost everyone thought that VMS and MSP were one in the same. The questions ranged from “why don’t you allow us to talk directly to our end users?” to “how do you determine the mark-ups/bill rates?” We had a good dialog about the role and responsibilities of VMS and MSP providers. I hope that the discussion helped the participants think about how best to engage and succeed in staffing for managed programs.
It was a good reminder that while VMS tools have been around for over 10 years, we still have a long way to go in defining not only our marketplace but our value proposition to our partners, customers, and suppliers. We owe it to ourselves to be better at educating those stakeholders so that they can get more value out of both the program and the software.
P.S. Staffing Industry Analysts has published a great lexicon on all contingent workforce management terms – including VMS and MSP. You can check it out here.