Yet, having such visibility of staff fill rates, costs and revenue is a challenge many staffing firms grapple with.  

Most firms are unable to see whether expected revenue was realised until after the pay and bill cycle is complete. And that has the potential to significantly impact profitability. 

At 2cloudnine, our innovative global pay and bill platform solves this problem – protecting profit margins for staffing firms around the world.

The challenge today

Robert Thomas, our new UK Solutions Architect, explained: “Most staffing firms operate in a fragmented IT environment. Their core CRM, payroll, billing and time capture systems and processes are not connected on one underlying technology platform.

“That creates this challenge where there’s no way to understand real-time fill rates and costs, and the effect on margins. Why? Because there’s no single referential link between the actual job and what’s being delivered in terms of labour, the time involved and expenses.”

Typically, staffing firms make proposals and forecasts based on assumed staff availability and predictable demand. But that’s very different to reality; a job will be filled by multiple worker profiles.

“That’s why staffing organisations need a solution that provides real-time cost and profitability insights – so they can make timely and informed decisions for their business and their customers. Without it, they won’t know that billing is higher than projected for the customer or that their margin is being eroded by higher-than-expected worker costs until it’s too late.” 

The solution: a platform that gives you a single source of truth 

2cloudnine’s pay and bill platform provides staffing firms with revolutionary order-to-cash capabilities. It’s the only multi-jurisdictional platform built on Salesforce that gives you a single source of truth for customer and workforce data in real time. 

“Because we integrate seamlessly with any recruitment and workforce management solution on Salesforce, we can meet the front-, middle- and back- office needs of staffing firms in a single system. And that delivers tremendous benefits when it comes to real-time insights and safeguarding margins,” Robert said. 

“Our platform tracks the expected labour, time, cost and margin for each job against the actual fulfilled time and attendance as it happens. This includes delivered volumes, costs and invoiced amounts down to a single transaction line.”

With detailed and consistent real-time performance data, you can change the course of a contract before the job is completed. It gives you the power to maximise profitability and deliver better service more efficiently.

It keeps you a step ahead

For leading staffing firm M^cArthur, access to real-time data and business insights has been one of the most pleasing outcomes of using 2cloudnine’s pay and bill platform. 

Pezh Moradi, M^cArthur’s Chief Operating Officer, said: “Being able to see what’s happening in our business in real time, instead of waiting weeks or months to look in the rear-view mirror, is a game-changer.

“It’s replaced manually created management reports, and we’re making leaps and bounds with our client dashboards. While there’s more to do, we have no doubt that 2cloudnine’s capabilities will empower us to make better strategic decisions.”

Key benefits

1. Accurately forecast and measure job performance. With access to up-to-date costs to serve, you’ll see how forecasts compare to actuals.
2. Improve pipeline planning. Effectively manage resource pools and availability and maximise onboarded temporary workers to take advantage of opportunities and respond to clients’ needs. 
3. Improve fill volumes. Easily identify and rectify costly issues such as non-attendance or incomplete timesheets.
4. Make smarter, faster decisions and reduce risk. Because you can instantly see whether things like bill rates and fill rates are higher or lower than expected, you can course correct and prevent a hit to profitability.  
5. Improve billing and client satisfaction. Your clients have real-time visibility of expected billing and resource capacity, so there are no surprises. 

How our platform helps you to protect margins