Tradestaff Success Story

Tradestaff reaps time and cost benefits from integrated system.

Industry:  Recruitment, predominantly in the labour hire marketplace for blue-collar and industrial positions in construction, engineering and logistics sectors.

Headquarters:  Head office in Christchurch, New Zealand

Location: 14 branches from Auckland to Queenstown

Staff:  69 internal; payroll 2000-2500 weekly

"FastTrack knows recruitment; you can't argue that. They are good at what they do. Overall our level of satisfaction is high."

Janice McNab
General Manager 

The business challenge

Tradestaff general manager Janice McNab knew it was beyond time to replace the company’s existing computer systems.

The front office client-candidate management system was no longer meeting the modern operational needs of a large business and the payroll system was struggling under an increasing weekly volume. The company had three, standalone systems.

“From our branches’ perspective, we had a very manual, largely paper-based recruitment system that had been in place since we were established,” McNab said.

“We wanted something operationally that would create efficiencies for branch staff. And from the attraction-and-retention view for our recruiters, we wanted to have something that was seen as being the best in the market for database management.”

The FastTrack solution

Tradestaff and FastTrack successfully implemented FastTrack’s Enterprise suite, giving the company a fully integrated front, mid and back-office solution. The suite comprised SkillsBase and Recruitment Manager, Recruitment Payroll Manager, Integrated Ledger, Timesheet, Awards and RMS Views.

Business benefits

• 30% reduction in time taken to undertake operational activities is expected.
• 10% increase in productivity of consulting staff.
• Improved efficiency in capturing information and in capturing more layers of information.
• Powerful search capabilities company-wide across an integrated database give unprecedented speed and access to in-depth candidate and client information not previously available.
• Big reduction in repetition and data entry time for staff and significantly lower error rate
• Stable and reliable system from the start of the implementation phase.
• More information is retained within the business instead of only in the heads of consultants.
• Improved access to reporting/paysheeting data required by government agencies.
• Reduction in response time to requests for information from clients.
• Employee information previously held at branch level is integrated into one company-wide database, improving access to management information. 

Why did Tradestaff choose FastTrack?

“FastTrack’s biggest attraction was that it is an integrated system,” Janice McNab said. “The other systems we looked at would have required us to buy another payroll system, so we weren’t going to gain enough over our existing setup.

“We wanted a one-stop shop, a system that would provide front, middle and back-office all in one. You enter the data once and it is used throughout the system.

“FastTrack’s name came up consistently when we were talking to other recruiting people. FastTrack is used in a lot of other sizeable recruitment companies in New Zealand and Australia, so its strong brand and reputation were certainly part of our decision.”

Did FastTrack understand your business?

“If we had not been confident that FastTrack understood our business, then we would not have chosen them,” McNab said.

“Implementing an integrated system gave us the opportunity to look at the processes of our business and ask ‘How could we be doing it better? How can we be better servicing our clients and candidates?’

“We did some customisations, to make sure we would get staff uptake and they would be excited and love it. But what we have is not far off the out-of-the-box product.

“FastTrack does know recruitment; you can’t argue that. They are good at what they do. Overall, our level of satisfaction was high.”

Were you satisfied with the implementation?

“Overall, FastTrack did an exceptionally good job of managing the whole project,” McNab said. “The implementation went as smoothly as anyone could have hoped given the size and scale of what we were trying to do.

“There weren’t any unexpected surprises. There was genuine desire on both sides to make sure that whatever issues came up they were identified, dealt with, and solutions found and put into place.

“Our FastTrack project manager did a phenomenal job. She made sure we understood the amount of time and resources that would be needed and set realistic expectations. Having a dedicated project manager from the start was clearly crucial in having a successful implementation.”

FastTrack Enterprise solutions implemented

• SkillsBase and Recruitment Manager
• Recruitment Payroll Manager
• Timesheet
• Integrated Ledger
• Awards Interpreter
• RMS Views 

Featured article: ftp e-newsletter - November 2011