OCS@Work - This Issue
Flexible Resourcing Benefits
Client Centric Teams
Insourcing Service
Consultant Matching
Bringing Business Knowledge
Specialty / Niche Skills
ISSUE
Autumn 2015
Investing in Client Centric Teams
Our flexibility of resourcing has always been an attraction to our client base. This coupled with our client centric approach makes us the perfect resourcing partner.
Many of the examples discussed in this newsletter describe how OCS invest in creating a staff team within OCS that are selected to match our clients across multiple characteristics so that when you need a resource OCS is in a position to deliver.
In most cases our clients work with us in our recruitment process to make sure that the staff recruited into OCS would be suitable for assignments with them but we ask for no up-front commitment.
Our strategy is about being in a position to support you and so our investment is in being able to deliver on that promise.
For many years we have implemented this approach and thanks to our client relationships this has sustained us and them through challenging resourcing times.
Perhaps there is a forthcoming project that you may need help with, OCS is well placed to provide you with specialist expertise, working jointly with you to recruit the best resources available.
How can OCS Flexible Resourcing benefit your business?
Here at OCS, we know that efficient management of resources is a key foundation on which any successful business operation is built. This is particularly the case in the IT department with the multiple call on resources for projects and operational support. This is a difficult task at any time but today with the current IT skills gap in the job market this means that it is becoming even more essential to maximise the skills available to you.
In order to optimise the use of resources, many of our clients come to us to utilise our staff based flexible resourcing services. We offer an easily accessible third party service that can be called upon to handle the peaks and troughs of demand as well as other resourcing challenges that crop up from time to time such as illness, sickness, maternity, attrition and the movement of staff between different projects.
Usually when companies experience a shortfall of staff for whatever reason, or require a person with skills set not present in their current internal staff, they can turn to recruitment agencies and freelance consultants in order to fill the gap. Whilst this can sometimes be successful, it is not without its limitations, which can range from not being able to find a consultant willing to commit to shorts pieces of work, to not being able to find someone who has the right non-technical skills.
By using our flexible resourcing services, we are able to help clients overcome these problems by offering a far more personal service which can be tailored to the specific needs of each company; we know that one size does not fit all! Not only does a more personalised solution lead to finding the best people for the job, but it also leads to more cost and time effective solutions.
OCS operate a permanent staff team which means we are able to offer more options to our client’s IT needs. We can offer resources for short, medium, or long-term periods of time, or indeed part-time, meaning our clients are only paying for what they need, and exactly when they need it. Familiarisation with the client’s system and environment takes place on the first assignment and then they can then be called on at different stages of the project to utilise their skills and knowledge. In addition, clients are able to pre-book our staff for future work, resulting in cost and time efficiency.
Our central focus is to do all we can to make sure that the staff we have are well matched to the IT needs and culture of our clients. This strategy permeates through everything we do from recruitment to career development. When considering the right consultants to recruit, we take into account much more than the necessary technical skills. We want to make sure that the matching process is more individual than that. We aim to recruit staff that are the right fit for our clients in terms of culture and soft skills.
Furthermore, during our staff’s development, we are constantly looking to make sure skills are aligned to our client base both for current work but also for the future. This highly client centric approach to the recruitment and development of staff ensures that our staff are perfectly matched to our clients, resulting in hugely successful long term partnerships.
All the best
Maurice Aroesti
Group Chief Executive
Client Experiences
A small selection of some interesting flexible resourcing solutions we’ve provided to our clients
Insourcing Service
One of our key clients came to us as they wanted to in-source an external support team to look after business as usual systems in parallel with a large redevelopment program.
However, they wanted a model that was both cost effective and would ensure smooth integration into the internal permanent team to the point where the team was indistinguishable from internal staff.
It was decided that the right form of resourcing would be for OCS to provide them with a fixed cost staff-based team hand-picked and selected by both the client and OCS.
In this model, we provided OCS staff for our client which then, from a managerial point of view, became fully integrated into the internal team. Targets, holidays and sickness were all handled as though the OCS staff were internal but at a fixed monthly cost. Not only did this provide a budget effective solution but has been successful in creating an integrated team that could work as one.
Matching Service
When faced with supporting systems over the long-term prior to their replacement, our client was keen to find a partner who would invest in finding and recruiting the best possible match of resources for their team.
Although technical skills were important, more important was the ability to fit into the clients department in terms of softer skills such as communication, commitment and team working.
Having worked with this client for many years, they were familiar with our style and the type of staff that we employed and so we were a natural fit.
Over the last few years, when needed, we have worked closely with the client to recruit the right people into OCS to make sure they have a seamless integrated team of OCS staff who can provide services into their department with great success.
Bringing Business Knowledge to our Clients
The extent of our personal matching service is highlighted in our work with a Life Sciences company. They needed to outsource project managers and business analysts but it was of central importance for them that the staff had the right pre-existing business domain knowledge. If recruiting through an IT or job agency, the impersonal service provided would generally not take this into account and indeed in this case could not identify enough candidates with the right business knowledge
By using OCS, our client was able to pass this job over to us. Using our contacts, recruitment services and knowledge of the domain we sought to recruit consultants who would match not only terms of IT skills but also domain knowledge.
We undertook a client centric selection process in order to identify only the most relevant candidates and then worked with the client to assist us in interviewing these candidates to ensure that we recruited candidates that would be ideal for their needs.
Having successfully recruited these staff from their industry we are now able to offer a client a perfect solution to their resourcing needs.
Specialty / Niche Skills
It is often the case within our large corporate clients that skills shortages appear in areas which are specialized, niche or legacy in nature.
Often these are extremely difficult to resource and indeed finding a partner prepared to invest in these technologies is rare.
This was the case with one of our clients who needed to utilize a rare skill but still wanted the flexibility in scheduling and utilizing the resource.
With our core client centric strategy this is an area where we excel and investment in recruiting the right staff to provide flexible consulting based resource in a niche area is something we are happy to do. Once we identified and recruited the skills our client had the freedom to use our staff like a third level support organization.
Working on a sensitive budget, we were able to provide resources for short periods of time without a long term contract, which meant that the client only paid for the resources they needed, when they needed them.
This also had the added bonus of being able to pre-plan the use of our staff in advance, allowing efficient utilization of time.
Familiarization took place in the first assignment and from then on, our staff are already versed on the systems and environments and can offer their knowledge and skills when needed, in the meantime remaining with OCS and working on other projects and clients.