EmployBridge Gains Flexibility and Scalability with CRM Solution

The Opportunity

EmployBridge, a national leader in staffing and workforce solutions, found itself with an aging, unstable Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.  The system jeopardized the company’s 155 branches, seven brands, its ability to staff 19,000 field associates, and most importantly their relationships.  The five year-old system was highly unstable resulting in lengthy outages and lost data.  EmployBridge engaged Credera to discern and implement the best CRM solution for their situation.

The new CRM tool needed to provide flexibility and scalability to keep pace with EmployBridge’s ever-changing staffing needs.  It also had to achieve three business objectives:

• Allow employees to track and manage customers, people, job orders, and assignments

• Integrate the best features of their Applicant Tracking System (ATS) into the CRM solution to present users with a single application experience within MS Outlook, and

• Build a robust integration layer to integrate with existing systems (Lawson, ATS, PeopleNet, MS Outlook, and other business critical systems).

The Approach

An extensive software selection was conducted, which narrowed down the list of options to three CRM systems: Bullhorn (a staffing industry targeted solution), SalesForce.com, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  Credera demonstrated that the customized Dynamics CRM solution provided EmployBridge with the best overall combination of flexibility, scalability, and reliability.

Credera architected and built a Microsoft Office and Dynamics CRM/xRM solution turning the traditional product-focused CRM into a human capital and talent management system.

Credera’s solution was divided into three parts:

• The first part involved an extensive customization of an on-premise IFD Dynamics CRM instance to turn the traditional product-focused solution into a staffing application via 37 custom entities and over 40 dialogs/workflows.

• The second part leveraged the Dynamics CRM SDK to build a custom ASP.NET website, which allowed for faster job order entry, auto-matching of employees to job orders, and other key staffing functions.

• The third part was an extensive CRM SDK powered integration layer that synchronized data within EmployBridge’s Applicant Tracking System, time collection systems, payroll and billing systems, and third-party vendors.  The integration layer consisted of 47 CRM plugins, multiple .NET web services, and .NET Queue Services.

The Results

The initiative was completed in 11 months using an iterative approach, rolling out the solution to EmployBridge’s 750 users through a proof of concept, pilot, and company-wide launch model.  The new CRM solution is utilized by account executives, recruiters, and staffing supervisors.

After moving to CRM Dynamics, EmployBridge saw significant results.  As of this writing, the system has taken in over 56,000 assignments and put over 10,000 new employees to work.  Benefits experienced after only four and a half months in production include:

• Increased number of job order requests and the number of employees on assignment

• Increased speed to place an employee on an assignment

• Reduction in time spent on entering data

• Ability for recruiters to process 25,000 job applicants a month to identify best talent

• Ability to use custom search features to match best applicants to job orders via a variety of criteria

• Seamlessly onboarding candidates and enrolling them in the onsite time-clock and payroll systems

The Video

Chris Loope, CIO, EmployBridge, is profiled in the video, Great Work with Great Clients – EmployBridge.  Loope provides a peak into their business and highlights how EmployBridge and Credera were able to improve client delivery, customer care, and address ever-changing staffing needs.

Press

After the successful completion of this initiative, Microsoft crafted a press release highlighting the efficiencies EmployBridge gained – EmployBridge Puts People to Work Across the US With Help From Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

• CRM
• EmployBridge
• Staffing
• Microsoft Dynamics