Most employers will agree that flexibility breeds business advantage.  In fact, 90% of the human resources executives who participated in the ASA´s 2005 Staffing Customer Survey noted that the more flexible staffing and recruiting firms are in helping clients fill positions, the more valuable they are.

To maximize growth and profits, staffing and recruiting firms must embrace true flexibility, which starts with enabling the virtual office to extend the economics of productivity beyond the office.  As a result, staffing and recruiting companies are able to meet the hiring demands of their customers in real-time, while staffing and recruiting professionals maximize their earnings potential, accelerate their careers, and create a healthy work-life balance. 

Demystifying the Virtual Office

To most staffing and recruiting executives, the term "virtual office" connotes an employee telecommuting from a distant location with no oversight or controls to measure productivity.  

At the highest level, the virtual office does not connote a distant, physical location, but rather it empowers every staffing and recruiting professional at the company, that touches a candidate or a client, with the capability to access information at anytime from anyplace.  The flexibility to virtually access information that is no longer bound by time or location is what strategically will drive the industry to meet the growth challenges of the next decade. 

What constitutes the virtual office and how does it create this kind of flexibility?  The answer may not surprise you - it´s a combination of software, the Internet, and mobile devices.  What may surprise you, however, is how technology has evolved to make the implementation of the virtual office easy, flexible, powerful, and cost effective.

With the level of increased pressure to meet the hiring demands of clients, staffing and recruiting firms must make technology decisions holistically.  No longer can firms afford to look at email, the applicant tracking system, sales force automation, the Internet, and mobile devices separately.  Integration is the key to creating a virtual office to drive the productivity of each of your employees. 

An Integrated Front Office is Critical for an Effective Virtual Office

Why is integration critical?

Simply put, the virtual office does not serve the individual within your firm; it drives the business of your entire company through real-time communication and collaboration that requires every element of your technology solution to work in concert. 

Remember the negative connotation of the virtual office - the lone professional working independently from a distant location?  With an integrated front office system, every staffing and recruiting professional, whether in recruiting, sales or support; on the road, in the office, or at home; is working together leveraging the same information to execute on a common goal - finding the right candidates to fill jobs.

Contrast the integrated front office solution with the silo approach of most staffing and recruiting software vendors.  Jumping back and forth between open applications, which degrade performance, the users of "Silo Software" work separately between their systems to find candidates, track applicants, and source new job orders.  Each function works well independently, but rather than filling the volume of job orders available and scaling the company´s growth to maximize revenue and profitability, the system instead breeds complexity.  The right candidates are not easily matched to job orders, and critical documentation detailing client requests and feedback is missing.  Compounding the problem, sales and recruiting are wasting valuable time toggling back and forth between email and calendaring and the applicant tracking, job management, and sales force automation systems.

With an integrated front office, the system creates a virtual office, based on collaboration, which enables a 360 degree view into every relationship critical to the staffing and recruiting firm - contacts, candidates, colleagues, and clients.  Contacts are leveraged and linked to candidates with detailed notes and assigned tasks among the recruiters.  When sales sources and generates new job orders, recruiters are instantly notified, and candidates, already in the system, are quickly matched.  Revenues and profits are further maximized by the automation of timecards and configurable invoices.  Communication is seamless and fast throughout the entire company because of email, calendaring, and instant messaging that is native to the integrated front office system.

Firms may even strategically extend their virtual office beyond their employees to contacts, candidates, and clients.  Again, configurability is critical.  Through On Demand software, the firm may configure their candidate´s or client´s use of the system in real-time.

The virtual benefits of an integrated front office system also extend directly to the management of the firm.  With an integrated system, reports can be created detailing every metric related to the relationship side of the business.  At anytime, and from anyplace, the most productive employee and client relationships can be identified.

On Demand

The real-time communication and collaboration of the virtual office is enabled through a true Web native or On Demand solution that eliminates the need to install and manage hardware, software, and a complex network.  Also known as Software as a Service, On Demand software is licensed on a monthly basis per user.

There are many imposters of this type of solution, including those using terms like application service provider (ASP) or Web hosting.  What differentiates a true Web native or On Demand solution from the ASP or Web hosted one?  The difference is subtle but critical to the growth of your business - the true On Demand solution is easily configurable to your business and to your client´s needs in real-time, both when implemented and as your business evolves.  For example, if medical staffing is increasingly becoming a larger portion of your business, and your clients require specific changes to your invoices, demand more detail on professional certifications, or need more reporting on work history, then your quick response to satisfy that need is critical to retaining those customers.

Configurability in this case is much more meaningful than customization.  With configurability, you use the application´s functionality based on the way your business runs in real-time, at anytime from anyplace.  In the ASP or Web hosted model, the staffing and recruiting firm is typically providing traditional software that does not allow for rapid configurability and overburdens the user with complexity and a lack of integration.

Real-time Mobility

The flexibility of the virtual office is limited without real-time wireless synchronization.  Synchronization is critical to leveraging the benefits of the virtual office from anytime and anyplace.  With synchronization, staffing and recruiting professionals are communicating and collaborating in real-time from any location, using the convenience of devices like Smart phones and PDAs that enable information access when a wired connection or a wireless computer network is not available.

When combined with the power and flexibility of an On Demand, integrated front office solution, real-time wireless synchronization allows staffing and recruiting professionals to create a truly virtual office that gives them instantaneous access to candidates, appointments, tasks, email, and file attachments.

The Virtual Office: Implementation is an Evolution; The Business Benefits a Revolution 

Proven, battle-tested solutions are available today to transform your firm into a staffing and recruiting virtual office within a few short weeks.  The data and security associated with your firm´s extensive relationships are critical and need to be migrated to a secure, reliable, and scalable On Demand system that is configurable to the unique needs of your business.

Easing the migration is an integrated front office solution that promotes communication and collaboration through a single user interface and database to simplify the use and management of the system throughout all levels of the organization.  The single user interface and database´s benefits are easily extended when used with the world´s most popular devices to create real-time wireless synchronization.

The staffing and recruiting industry finds itself at a key inflection point - a large hiring demand is driving exciting opportunities while a shortage of qualified applicants is creating a significant business challenge.  Those firms poised to maximize their growth potential will be flexible enough to embrace the business and technological benefits of the virtual office by adopting an On Demand, fully integrated front office system that can be accessed at anytime and from anyplace.