Are you ready to implement a VMS (Vendor Management System) into your organization’s contingent workforce processes? Congratulations! Now it’s time to focus on making sure hiring managers actually use it. In this article, we look at why user adoption is important and provide you with five key tips on increasing user adoption when implementing your VMS.
When you implement a new technology you are disrupting the daily routine of your team. Their processes change, they are required to use new tools and their day-to-day tasks are suddenly different.
Even though the benefits of a Vendor Management System (VMS) are significant, the sudden change can be met with frustration and resistance. If that’s not addressed, employees won’t optimize their use of the technology and your business won’t see true ROI on its investment.
Before we get into how your business can drive successful user adoption of your vendor management software, let’s first take a quick recap at what a VMS actually is and how it benefits your staffing agency hiring process.
What is a VMS & how does it benefit your externally sourced workforce efforts?
A vendor management system, also known as VMS or vendor management software, is a software platform that allows your business to source, manage and pay contingent workers and the staffing agencies that supply them as part of your contingent workforce program.
By centralizing and automating your externally-sourced workforce program into one location, you can use a VMS to procure contingent workers, hire permanent employees sourced through staffing agencies, measure staffing agency performance, track payments and a huge number of other processes associated with your non-traditional workforce.
By consolidating this into one system, your business will realize a range of benefits, including:
- Improved internal efficiencies that allow hiring managers to focus on core competencies that drive business growth.
- Gain complete visibility and control over your externally-sourced workforce.
- Move away from outdated and inefficient manual ways of managing your contingent workforce, such as spreadsheets.
- Improve how you classify your contingent workers.
- Gain complete insight and control over contingent workforce spend.
How to increase VMS user adoption
So, you know exactly what a vendor management system is and you’ve decided to implement this new technology into your organization’s process. With that in mind, here are five key steps in ensuring successful user adoption of your vendor management software.
1 - Align your chosen tech solution with your workforce strategy:
When implementing new technology, many organizations go with the “top brand”. They choose a solution based entirely on the fact that they’ve heard the name before and believe that if it works for one company, then surely it works for them as well.
Any technology implementation should be aligned to your business strategy. When it comes to your workforce requirements, pick a VMS that aligns with your unique needs. For companies with smaller-spend contingent workforce budgets, look for a cost-effective solution that is easy to use and comes without the complex features of the larger VMS providers. When technology works seamlessly with your business, users will naturally adopt it.
2 - Obtain buy-in from your entire team:
Achieving successful user adoptions for your new VMS software requires gaining buy-in from all stakeholders within your organization. That means everyone involved in the hiring and IT process, whether it be your procurement team, HR, IT, finance or other hiring managers.
Educate each department on the benefits of a VMS implementation. Your entire team will be far more likely to support, and use, your VMS solution when they understand how it will improve their job and bring benefits to the company.
3 - Build a change management program:
A change management process provides a structure and approach to support your organization in the preparation, planning and adoption of new technology - and the new ways of working that will come with that.
By creating a strategy to prepare, support and help individuals or teams in making organizational change around the implementation of vendor management software, you will be setting your team up for successful user adoption.
4 - Focus on staff training:
One of the biggest risks to successful user adoption is a lack of sufficient training for employees. If your team doesn’t know how a VMS works within their contingent workforce processes, adoption is unlikely.
When choosing your VMS vendor, make sure that training is a part of the implementation process. A vendor management system provider should be able to work with you to implement a technology that works seamlessly with the way your hiring managers work.
5 - Encourage, collect and use feedback throughout the VMS’ lifecycle:
Once your vendor management software has been implemented, you can still gain insights from your employees on how effectively they are using the technology. By encouraging feedback on a regular basis, you’ll be able to improve your processes and increase user adoption in the future.
The Importance of User Adoption
At Conexis, we understand that adoption and user experience are a priority. If users don't like a system or find it too complicated, slow or not easy-to-use, they will not use it and look for workarounds. This affects adoption rates and benefit realization.
How do we address adoption rates?
1 - We design a specialized training program for all of our clients
2 - We have daily SLAs. Our Customer Care Team holds themselves to a high standard. In fact, they set the SLA they work towards every day. Guaranteed response in one hour and 3 hours resolution 80% of the time.
3 - We have regular feedback sessions and measure NPS among our current users. We are proud of our NPS score of 71.
Would you like to learn more about Vendor Management Systems?
For those seeking a fresh VMS Solution, download our complimentary VMS Buyers Guide. It has everything you need to know about vendor management systems and equips you with essential insights on what to look for when choosing the perfect VMS for your needs; complete with specific questions to ask potential VMS providers.
About Conexis VMS
Conexis VMS is a robust, cloud-based, mobile-friendly software application that empowers your company to streamline and oversee your entire contingent workforce, regardless of the diverse skill sets you require. Our award-winning Vendor Management System is the the most modern and advanced VMS tech stack available today that has been built with the user in mind. It starts with the latest codebase and extends to our lightning-fast AWS microservice infrastructure. Add to that our Open API and Software Development Kit (SDK), making Conexis the lights-out leader in VMS technology. Because of our technology, Conexis VMS implementations is fast and easy. Plus, we can have your organization up and running in as little as a few weeks!
Learn more about our Company and why organizations are choosing Conexis VMS
Contact Us
Whether you are looking for a new VMS Solution, or just getting started, we are here to help. See how easy Conexis is to use by taking a quick 2 minute Self-Guided Tour. Contact Us for a Free No-Obligation Consultation to discuss your workforce challenges (and get immediate actionable insights) or Book a Personal Demo Today!
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