Pharma Manufacturing Case Study: From Spreadsheet Chaos to Strategic Workforce Control

The Challenge

The company had thousands of contractors nationwide but no clear visibility or control over its non-employee workforce. They had no way of managing them, or understanding what they were buying.

Key issues included: 

ONLY 10% SPEND UNDER MANAGEMENT 

The organization lacked insight into who their contractors were, how many, where they worked, and how much was being spent. Supplier usage and total spend were nearly impossible to track.  

0% TRACKED COMPLIANCE 

The company had no idea if workers were compliant with the company's critical intellectual property and security requirements. Assignment durations were untracked, opening the door to significant risk and potential financial penalties. 

0% NEGOTIATED COMPETITIVE RATES 

The company's CFO knew they were likely paying too much for resources, but had no idea what the pricing terms were, nor whether they were competitive.  Without standardized rate tracking, the CFO suspected significant overpayment for contract labor but had no visibility into terms or benchmarks.

The Solution

The lack of visibility and control that the Global Pharmaceutical Manufacturer had into its non-employee workforce left the organization suffering from hidden risks, rogue costs, inconsistent processes, and poor decision-making that directly impacted its ability to improve candidate quality and save money.

To improve contingent workforce visibility and control, the organization began searching for a vendor management system that would help its team monitor and track vendor performance, automate and standardize the end-to-end processes of managing contingent workers and consolidate the program into one centralized location.   

After evaluating multiple vendors, the company selected Conexis VMS for its ability to:

• Centralize all contractor and supplier data in one system

• Track compliance, tenure, and costs in real time

• Standardize onboarding and reporting

• Provide visibility and analytics across departments

Conexis was implemented in under 45 days, and, together with our client, we successfully onboarded all suppliers and workers. Instantly, our customer had visibility to workers, suppliers, and costs. This allowed them to make critical decisions to address compliance issues, enhance key factors of success, and reduce costs.

The Results

Conexis VMS was implemented in under 8 weeks, with no fees for implementation, set-up, or training. The results transformed the company’s contingent workforce strategy, delivering significant cost savings, process efficiencies, and workforce reliability. The business impact included:

95% SPEND UNDER MANAGEMENT

Within 6 months, the company had 95% of contractors in the system. This provided them with incredible visibility, allowing them to identify trends, unreasonable rates, poor supplier performance, compliance gaps, and tenure issues to name just a few.

100% COMPLIANCE

Once all workers were in the system, HR was able to conduct a full audit on each worker, identify compliance gaps, and bring them all into compliance. For long tenured temps, they were able to decide on whether to hire them, payroll them, or release them to eliminate the significant co-employment risk they had assumed.

14.7% COST SAVINGS FROM NEGOTIATED RATES

Once the rate data, job information, and location were known, the company was able to baseline rates against the market and identify rates that were above the market average. This enabled procurement to renegotiate these rates and remove suppliers who were clearly overcharging the company.

IMPROVED EFFICIENCIES

In addition to tackling their primary concerns, the VMS provided significant efficiencies, improved speed, quality of hire, and supplier performance.

BETTER QUALITY HIRE 

With the Conexis system enabling the reporting and monitoring of key metrics, the Global Pharmaceutical Manufacturer was able to quickly improve the overall quality of hire evidenced by significantly improved attendance, attrition rates, and contract fulfillment.

IMPROVED TIME TO FILL 

Being able to manage all the open jobs and supplier proposals in one place enabled the organization to react faster to candidate submissions, complete the contract quicker and onboard workers way faster.

DETAILED REPORTING AND ANALYTICS

Using the Conexis report builder and analytics capabilities, the client was able to set up regular reports to ensure any issues are identified quickly so they could be addressed.

100% VISIBILITY

Conexis VMS has provided full visibility into The Global Pharmaceutical Manufacturer’s contractor population, types of contractors, and costs.

FULL CONTROL OVER CONTRACTORS

The Global Pharmaceutical Manufacturer is now able to exercise full control over its contractor population, across all departments.

CONTROL OVER ROGUE SPEND

The centralized approach to managing contractors has mitigated rogue spend across the program and, as a result, helped the business save money.

ABILITY TO TRACK DATA AND PERFORMANCE METRICS

Conexis VMS has provided The Global Pharmaceutical Manufacturer with the ability to track performance metrics across its contingent workforce program and staffing agencies, enabling the business to achieve continuous improvement in regards to its talent acquisition activity.

Executive Summary

Within 45 days of implementing Conexis VMS, the company centralized its entire contingent workforce program, achieving immediate 100% visibility and 100% compliance of spend under management. Within six months, the company increased Spend Under Management from 10% to 95% and realized a 14.7% cost savings.

With complete visibility and control over its contingent workforce program, The Global Pharmaceutical Manufacturer now has the tools and knowledge required to ensure that its non-employee workforce is helping the business achieve its strategic goals.