How To Implement Direct Sourcing Through High5 Talent Clouds

As you may have read in our recent article, “Direct Sourcing and High5 Talent Clouds,” this strategy has become a highly sought-after method of finding quality talent in today’s market. For your organization, the benefits of implementing direct sourcing include process efficiencies, cost savings, improved talent quality, decreased time-to-fill, and risk mitigation, among others. 

Assuming you’re sold on the benefits, the next question becomes, “How do I go about implementing it?” Understanding what specific steps are required to implement direct sourcing through High5 Talent Clouds will allow you to know exactly what to anticipate and who to involve to ensure program success. 

A few considerations before you begin implementing your direct sourcing strategy

If you don’t know where you are today, it’s hard to know where you’re going tomorrow. The first step is understanding your current workforce mix to get clarity on your future talent needs. This includes getting feedback from key stakeholders on current challenges, projects, future demand, and what your ideal talent mix looks like. 

A critical part of the process to implement direct sourcing is developing a succinct definition of what issues will be solved when you implement direct sourcing. This can be used throughout the implementation to stay on track and ensure any developments, partnerships, integrations, and configurations remain consistent with your overarching goals. It’s important to consider any organizational concerns and long-term business goals that a direct sourcing channel will address.

Throughout the time in which you implement direct sourcing, you’ll need resources from key business areas to successfully develop this strategy, including HR/Talent Acquisition, Procurement, IT, Legal, Finance, and stakeholders from high-user business lines. Identify the people who will need to be involved early and make sure they have a good idea of the time commitments necessary for project success.

You’ll also want to understand the impact a direct sourcing implementation will have on any existing organizational processes, technologies, contracts with service providers, and any in-house functions and technology needed post-implementation. 

Finally, it makes sense to meet with experts in the industry who have successfully created talent clouds for customers to implement direct sourcing, and to understand the most important considerations for implementing direct sourcing, including timeline and anticipated cost. 

(Hint: That’s us.)

Now, you’re ready

Once executive buy-in has been received and you feel comfortable you have a picture of the current talent landscape, it’s time to implement direct sourcing. Listed below are high-level key steps in the process and considerations that may be important as you go:

1. Execute Master Service Agreements (MSA) and Service Level Agreements (SLA) with necessary partners: this is the governing document that outlines all parties’ terms and conditions for an entire relationship. The SLAs are specific deliverables agreed upon that must be met during the contracted relationship.

2. Project Kickoff: This includes implementation readiness, business requirements gathering and analysis, high-level solution and process design documentation. This is also the time to document company brand and culture that will become the building block for attracting future talent. 

3. Gap Analysis: This involves looking at your existing processes like on/offboarding and determining what gaps exist today that a direct sourcing model will fill. Using the problem definition mentioned in the first section will help with this. 

4. Design Workflow: This step involves detailed application requirements documentation, functional design, input, and expected output to how a direct sourcing process will work.

5. System Configuration: Review and confirm all expected platform configurations are in place to meet all business requirements. Not only do you want to specify all configs, but you’ll also want to document configuration control, status documentation, and audit processes. 

6. Back Office Integration: Understand key integrations that may be necessary now and in the future as a direct sourcing model grows in scope. Applications that could be interfaced with may include:

– Oracle/SAP/Workday/Other ERP for invoice processing 
– e-Procurement systems
– Time tracking systems
– Project management systems

7. User Acceptance Testing: This involves validating that requirements have been translated accurately, end to end system and integration testing, data loading, supplier loading, and site deployment.

8. Signoff: This is where you’ll get the final internal signatures section signed by the most senior executive affiliated with the project.

9. Communication and User Training: Here, you will build out change management communication to hiring managers, including compliance expectations, hiring manager training schedule, and training material development.

10. Quarterly Business Reviews: Create a QBR schedule to objectively monitor performance and determine which talent channels provide the highest partnership level. 

It may feel overwhelming, but if you’re partnering with the right direct sourcing partner, the process to implement direct sourcing should be pain-free. As long as agility, flexibility, and efficiency are top of mind, implementing a successful direct sourcing strategy can happen sooner than you think. Get started now!