For decades, managed service providers (MSPs) paired with vendor management systems (VMSs) have served as an operational backbone for the contract workforce management industry. But for some time now, MSPs and VMSs have been receiving consistently unsatisfactory net promoter scores (NPS) from their customers*, while overall adoption has slowed to a crawl.
Customer feedback is always a useful tool for understanding where there are opportunities to improve, but given the consistently downward nature of industry NPS scores spanning years back, we believe it speaks to a deeper, structural issue.
MSP and VMS scores are consistently in the negative range, which is particularly notable when compared against those of umbrella solution categories. HR service providers, B2B software and SaaS, and technology service providers generally land somewhere in the satisfactory range.
NPS scores for MSP and VMS have been steeply trending downward for the past decade. The consistent downward trajectory over many years for MSP and VMS indicates there is not just a laundry list of specific shortcomings, but more fundamental problems that could not be resolved even over a long period of time. Some common shortcomings include:
Given the consistent ten-year downward trajectory in NPS and no indication of rebounding, it’s clear that legacy solution providers’ attempts to reengineer their platforms or expand their functionality have not slowed this decline. There is a fundamental mismatch between what customer businesses need and expect versus what legacy solutions can deliver, regardless of the timeframe.
The problem lies in structure. Legacy solution models have remained transactional, operationally inflexible, and staffing-vendor-oriented, which has dampened the customer experience and the potential value added in an industry where the contract workforce (and what is needed to manage it) is changing.
Technology is rapidly outpacing service models, and deploying it effectively in the contract workforce management industry is the only path to improving customer happiness to modern standards. Modern software platforms are capable of integrating essential services, such as employment, freelancer compliance, and vendor management into a single self-serve platform. Empowering companies with simplified and flexible solutions is how we begin to address the needs of this industry.
Increasingly, companies are finding that a modern platform of this sort is the antidote to the less-than-satisfactory MSP and VMS solution models. It is a way to address the challenge of managing the entire contract workforce with a purpose-built solution.
HireArt is the only complete platform that gives companies all of the tools they need to manage their own contingent workforces. We embed global employer of record (EOR) capabilities, on-demand sourcing, vendor management, and freelancer compliance into a single, unified contingent workforce program.
To learn more about how HireArt can help you manage your own contingent workforce program more effectively, schedule a discovery call today.
