February 7th, 2024 | Joy Henry, Head of Technology and Business Services, Sterling
Managed service providers (MSPs), seem to double as magicians: hiring top talent and reaching your hiring targets feels like quite the trick!
We understand the challenges staffing agencies and staffing partners face as they work steadily to support your clients and suppliers. Let’s quickly identify the expectations and challenges in each area while outlining how Sterling helps MSPs to make the magic happen every day.
#1: Serving Your Clients
MSPs understand that their clients expect cost savings, efficiency, and consistency from them. Above all, it’s essential for MSPs to provide clients with a motivated, trustworthy workforce of contractors, together with suppliers they can count on.
In order to be confident in their choice of MSP, your staffing clients need to see data-driven results and measurable improvements to justify ROI and the cost of partnering with your business.
At Sterling, we know each client and program are unique. As an example, in our partnership with TAPFIN, we focus on helping them fulfill each of the specific program requirements they support. We help our clients to stay updated in regularly-scheduled meetings with the program owner along with the program directors. We also conduct monthly reporting and business presentations with their clients and program owners. As Lauren Jenkins, Vice President, Client Delivery at TAPFIN says, “TAPFIN’s strategic partnership with Sterling continues to drive tremendous value to our clients, our suppliers, and to our program teams. Their professional and adaptive handling of challenges during COVID is a perfect example of how Sterling consistently meets all targets and our clients are protected regardless of circumstances. We are excited to see this partnership continue to thrive and grow.”
#2: Containing Costs While Providing Value
It’s not easy to keep going above and beyond to support your client’s mission and company culture — all on a limited budget! Fortunately there are cost-cutting measures you can address with your background check provider.
For example, workforce monitoring is a service providing continuous value to your clients while saving your business cost by eliminating the need for re-screening an entire population. For example, instead of conducting annual re-screens on employees, MSPs can incorporate workforce monitoring into their background screening package. This type of screening continuously reviews data sources for record changes associated with the workers you are monitoring. Sterling’s workforce monitoring is a cost-effective way to regularly screen your contingent workforce.
When working with TAPFIN, we’ve provided them with different sanctions searches for their annual debarment, and we also recommended adding extended global sanctions to ensure that all of their suppliers became consistent by running Sterling background checks. The result: we helped Tapfin contain costs while also helping to make their suppliers compliant to TAPFIN’s standards and those of their program owners.
#3: Helping Ensure Your Suppliers Are Compliant
Your suppliers deserve full support, but it can be difficult to keep pace with their needs during the bustle of the workweek. Their experience with your business should be consistent (but flexible) as you strive to provide top talent at the speed of need.
As part of supporting your suppliers as an MSP, each of your screening programs should be compliant with different background checks. This helps ensure your contingent talent has all been screened to the same high standard.
By joining in a strategic partnership with a screening provider like Sterling, MSP business owners help ensure they’ll have a pool of vetted talent to draw from whenever needed.
Sterling is proud to help MSPs excel in their roles by managing these program complexities. We offer global background checks and searches to discover and report the specific information each of your clients require. Recently, we found that one of our clients weren’t covered under a FACIS (Fraud and Abuse Control Information System) search. We now ensure that their suppliers are compliant, partnering with those program owners to show that their packages are compliant. We also ensure that program owners are conducting all required programs and capturing all required searches. In this way, our clients, their end clients, and their suppliers are all aligned on compliance standards.
#4: Delivering a Positive Candidate Experience
Candidates are the brand ambassadors for their direct employers: as an MSP, that’s you! Your candidates are face-to-face with the client every day, so naturally they matter the most.
Sterling places a strong focus on helping our MSP clients to provide a seamless candidate experience. That’s why we offer our streamlined background screening, complete with updates such as our convenient “Check My Status” tool. Our technology gives MSP clients the transparency to know at any given time whether their candidates are clear or not. MSPs can also use our award-winning Candidate Hub to provide a seamless, engaging candidate experience. Likewise, our Client Hub uses a modern, mobile-responsible design to streamline the screening process from beginning to end.
It’s not easy to navigate the complexities of being a successful MSP. While the end goal is always helping your clients meet their business-critical goals, there’s a lot to juggle. That’s why we’re here to help across all four areas of focus while you focus on making the magic happen every day.
If you like to learn more about our staffing industry offerings, please click here.
Sterling is not a law firm. This publication is for informational purposes only and nothing contained in it should be construed as legal advice. We expressly disclaim any warranty or responsibility for damages arising out this information. We encourage you to consult with legal counsel regarding your specific needs. We do not undertake any duty to update previously posted materials.
