Increasing Speed and Decreasing Costs: The Jacobson Group's Journey with VMS Sync

The Jacobson Group, based in Chicago, Illinois, is a leading provider of talent to the insurance industry. Since its establishment in 1971, the company has been connecting organizations with insurance professionals at all levels across all industry verticals. The Jacobson Group offers a range of services including executive search, professional recruiting, temporary staffing, and subject matter experts. The company has been a client of Bullhorn since 2008 and has traditionally preferred working with high-touch, highly-consultative clients.

The Jacobson Group, a leading provider of talent to the insurance industry, had traditionally preferred working with high-touch, highly-consultative clients, and Vendor Management System (VMS) relationships did not allow for this. Prior to 2019, the company actively avoided VMS-style business and did not seek new opportunities in this area. However, they noticed a shift in the industry, with organizations as small as $5 million in spend outsourcing the management of their contingent labor program or centralizing the procurement of their contingent labor through in-house Managed Service Providers (MSPs). As MSP and VMS solutions began to increase rapidly in their space, The Jacobson Group realized they were missing out on potential revenue.

In response to the industry shift, The Jacobson Group initiated a pilot program in 2019, focusing on three clients with whom they already had an MSP agreement. They designated a specific recruiting team to work on VMS jobs and adjusted their processes to support this different style of business. They also invested in Bullhorn VMS Sync to automate job data flow from the VMS into Bullhorn, which led to immediate results and proof of concept. The team was also able to pilot VMS Sync’s new submittals functionality, which completes the VMS automation loop, enabling users to automatically submit candidates from directly within Bullhorn into Beeline and Fieldglass VMSes, eliminating the need to log into each VMS individually.

• The adoption of VMS Sync and its new submittals functionality has brought about significant operational benefits for The Jacobson Group. The increased speed to submit and newfound efficiency has allowed the team to begin working on a job the moment it’s released. The automation of many manual processes has resulted in cost savings that can be passed along to the customer. The less labor-intensive process allows the team to handle a larger volume of work. The automation of processes and increased training has also increased overall recruiter productivity, enabling the team to focus on more strategic initiatives like strengthening relationships with candidates, being more engaged with those candidates, and finding out what hiring managers are really looking for.

• The Jacobson Group increased their fill rate on orders coming through VMSes by 5x without significantly increasing the size of the team.

• The team increased their participation rate to over 159%, submitting more than 1½ people per job order that the company receives.

• The Jacobson Group was able to increase its number of customers by 400%.