Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and the Need for Agility

    By Michael Sacco

The word ‘agile’ is a literary Swiss army knife; it works in so many different contexts. It’s versatility, however, can lead to overuse, diluting its meaning and significance.

Like ‘strategy’ throughout the last decade, ‘agile’ has become a favourite go-to term for companies; a pervasive buzzword in the business world, used to describe everything from project management methodologies to organisational cultures.

‘Agile’ means to move quickly and easily – nimble, fleet and dexterous. It’s also a method of project management, featuring short sprints and iterations.

In my line of work – I lead an amazingly talented and committed team who provide equally amazing talent acquisition solutions – ‘agile’, the adjective, is a major feature and value proposition; whilst we apply concepts from ‘agile’, the methodology!

In a world of ever-increasing volatility, ambiguity, and opportunity, recruitment solutions need to be more flexible, nimble, and – dare I say it – more agile.

There is little ‘agile’ about the traditional approach to Managed Service Providers (MSPs) – the acronym for programs whereby an organisation outsources the entirety of its contingent workforce management to a specialist third-party (contract fulfilment, onboarding, supply chain management, invoice consolidation, and so on) to save costs, improve compliance, and for total workforce visibility.

These programs normally require long term lock in contracts, complex technology integrations, high upfront costs, and lengthy, resource-sapping implementations. Trade-offs that normally only large enterprises can afford before gaining a positive ROI.

When I tasked my team to create an MSP program that removed hurdles for larger organisations and opened to door to the value of MSPs for organisations with more modest contingent spend profiles, we didn’t just chip away at the existing process. We started over, from scratch. We built a unique configuration: a program deployable in 4 weeks not 4 months. We optimised (and simplified) the decision-making process. We designed a low complex deployment methodology for the underpinning technology – vendor management system (VMS) – accessing the all the benefits without the restrictions.

That amazingly talented and committed team I mentioned earlier have managed to break new ground.

What have we called it… you got it, MSPagile MSPexpress!