Benefits of Integrating Business Systems with a VMS

Why Is VMS Integration with Business Systems Critical?

All VMS solutions require a certain amount of your business data to be able to effectively run your CWM program. Examples include:

• Information related to your existing employees who will be hiring or managing contingent workers
• Accounting data like cost centers, departments, or WBS numbers to properly bill/invoice out of the VMS.
• Items specific to your business that may need to be tracked on each contractor’s assignment, such as badge IDs or desk location.

In addition to the data required to run your CWM program in a VMS, some data integrations will also make your program run more efficiently. These are typically transactional integrations that will send new worker data to your HR or HRIS system for provisioning, assignment extensions, or terminations. The integrations can also be leveraged to send data to an LMS system or ID management system, all reducing the reliance on a person to enter this data directly into a system.

Many VMSs will also support data integrations for time and expense entries, allowing you to utilize a time entry system you may have already configured and send that data to the VMS for billing.

Many more possible data integration points can be utilized between your systems and your chosen VMS, and those are typically identified and defined during your VMS implementation based on the specific needs of your CWM program.

What Will VMS Integration Cost You?

As you have just read, integrating your existing systems with your VMS is arguably one of the most important aspects of your CWM program. When done right it will make your CWM program run smoothly and efficiently, and when done wrong it can lead to delays in hiring, frustration, and higher overall operational cost for the program.

As with any technology upgrade, cost is an important consideration. There are two main costs to be concerned about when talking about VMS integration:

• Cost to Implement: You’ll need to invest in resource time to create/enable data integrations between your systems and your VMS. How much time you’ll need will be driven by the integration capabilities available within the VMS you are choosing.
• Operational and Support Cost: In short, when your integrations are error-prone, hours will be spent regularly analyzing issues and correcting data in multiple systems. This will lead to a frustrating CWM program, potential delays in common processes, and an increase in the overhead cost associated with your CWM program.

Now let’s take a look at how the technology provider you partner with can help you optimize your investment.

Optimizing Your VMS Integrations with Magnit IO

At Magnit we have invested in and developed the best data integration platform available in the VMS space – Magnit IO. A system-agnostic, scalable, robust, no-code integration platform, Magnit IO was designed to address all the data integration concerns listed above and much more. Read on to understand how Magnit IO simplifies data integration with Magnit VMS, provides clients with an operationally efficient CWM program, and ensures that less time is spent on technology and more time on getting you the best contingent workforce to support your business. 

Implementing Data Integrations with Magnit IO

When it comes time to implement your VMS, your integration needs will be high on the priority list. How much development will you need to commit to? How long will it take? These are a couple of the most common and important questions to ask and understand as a VMS customer.

With Magnit IO we have made every effort to simplify the integration implementation process, and more importantly, reduce the investment needed to stand up new integrations. The Magnit IO platform provides no-code configurable integrations for all data points needed to support your CWM program. That means there is no reliance on development cycles or code release cycles to set up new integrations.

In addition, the Magnit IO platform is incredibly robust in capabilities. With Magnit IO, integrations can be configured to map data from almost any file structure, call an API hosted on any of your platforms, or allow for your system to call a Magnit IO-hosted API. In short, what that means is we can use any data files you may already have available and map those into Magnit VMS. It means we can use any APIs you already have available to get data in and out of Magnit VMS or provide details for you to call our APIs to get and push data to the Magnit VMS. Such agility can greatly reduce your investment to stand up your VMS by removing or minimizing the development work required from your resources for new integrations. 

With all VMS implementations, knowing where, when, and why to integrate your data is just as important as how to. At Magnit we have a time-proven integration delivery life cycle that is led by and managed by a highly experienced Integration Product Team. Our experts will:

• Lead you through program scoping, providing you with best practice recommendations based on your back office systems
• Lead joint design sessions to cover data mapping, transfer protocols, encryption requirements, and more
• Set up all integrations on the Magnit IO platform
• Facilitate end-to-end testing
• Provide go-live and post-go-live support,
• Prepare support documentation for post-go-live program knowledge

Our experience is expansive as we have integrated with over 80 unique back-office systems, including all major ERPs, PPMs, CRMs, financial systems, purchasing systems, and many other types of client systems. We will help guide you through where, when, and why integrating with your back-office systems will improve your CWM program and how those integrations will best support the business processes you are trying to achieve. 

Ensuring CWM Operational Efficiency with Magnit IO

Any time you integrate your business systems with your VMS, you’ll be improving the operational efficiency of your CWM program by reducing manual entry and ensuring data parity between systems. However, data issues will likely arise at some point, as there are many complex processes in a CWM program, including sourcing, onboarding, worker management, approvals, time entry, billing and invoicing, reporting, and more.

Given that such issues can quickly become costly to your business, quick notification and action must be taken to address the issues.  With Magnit IO we have 24/7 monitoring of all integrations. The Magnit IO platform has configurable email-based notifications that will alert the recipients of your choice as well as the Magnit Integrations Support team when an issue does arise. With the Magnit IO support team and detailed logging, such issues can quickly be identified and resolved, reducing or eliminating any impact to your operational program. 

Increasing Flexibility and Scalability with Magnit IO

Beyond its ease of implementation and support structure, what sets Magnit IO apart from all other VMS integration capabilities is its robustness, scalability, speediness to deploy, error mitigation capabilities, and VMS-specific design for integrations. These results in a reduced resource investment for clients, quicker implementations, and more stable operational CWM programs, reducing potential costly operational impacts.

When we talk about how Magnit IO is robust, we’re referring to all the capabilities built into the platform to simplify the integration work for our customers. By being able to configure to differentiate file structure and transfer protocols, map data, set up file encryption, map default specific configurations/settings, reuse a single file for multiple purposes, connect directly to third-party platforms via our productized integration, or set up an automated notification, we can provide our customers with as much flexibility as possible to reduce their efforts to stand up integrations with  Magnit VMS.

With regard to scalability, the Magnit IO platform has been designed to allow for an explanation of both physical capabilities as well as functional capabilities. The Magnit IO platform is currently supporting over 1,800 active integrations for over 350 customers across the globe. We average 20 new integrations per month and continue to expand our offerings and technical partnerships for direct integrations to third-party systems such as Workday, ServiceNow, Glider.ai, and many others.

Discover more about the latest VMS technology:

• To learn more about Magnit’s VMS integrations, as well as our approach to VMS security, user experience, analytics and more, visit our Magnit VMS page.
• To discover how next-gen VMS technology and total talent intelligence are helping drive CWM program success, read this Talent Tech Labs white paper.
• For guidance on selecting a VMS partner, check out SIA’s VMS Global Landscape report.

If you’re interested in learning more about how Magnit is helping organizations implement winning contingent workforce programs globally, please contact a Magnit representative at info@magnitglobal.com.

Disclaimer: The content in this blog post is for informational purposes only and cannot be construed as specific legal advice or as a substitute for legal advice. The blog post reflects the opinion of Magnit and is not to be construed as legal solutions and positions. Contact an attorney for specific advice and guidance for specific issues or questions.