A Quick Guide to the Recruitment Agency’s ‘Work From Home’ Software Stack

Preventing COVID-19 spreading means working from home is here to stay! But how well are you set up and what should be in your recruitment agency’s ‘work from home’ software stack?

Work from home (or anywhere else) and run efficiently in the cloud

For some that still entertain some notion of going to an office, there’s no definitive date on a return anytime soon. For others that may have ditched the idea of having a geographically centralised place of business before coronavirus came along, then you are ahead of the game. If you have only just come around to thinking a virtual, no-bricks approach is the future, then it’s a brave new world and a fresh beginning.
The ability to work from home actually supports the higher aspiration of achieving geographical independence. This lets you work from anywhere, at a time and a place that you choose. However, to do this effectively you need to put in place the right technologies. Essentially, these map to the functions and are the levers with which you control your business.
Here we take a quick look at the software your recruitment agency should be considering to run efficiently in the cloud.

Understanding the recruitment software stack

The concept of a software stack simply means the collection of software that you use to achieve a specific objective. It’s common in tech circles to talk about the development stack – tools that you use to create new software apps. For business specific software, we might talk about the finance stack or the creative stack.
For a stack to be truly effective, the apps need to complement each other. The ability to interoperate is highly desirable. This may be expressed by simply exchanging specific data points, or by deeper integration such that specific functions for one application are available from within another.
The recruitment stack is broken out into three sections. Firstly, there are recruitment-specific software tools, sometimes called Line-of-Business applications. These perform specific functions related to the recruitment sector. Secondly, there is accounting software that provides the robust financial control and visibility. Finally, there is the management class of apps that enable day-to-day management of people and activity through communication, collaboration and organisation.

Recruitment agency specific software

• Front end software – performs ‘front of house’ functions such as managing hirers and their job information and advertising roles; and managing applicants tracking applications. CRM and ATS are the key applications. Working on the assumption you have these already, there are two key considerations here. Are they in the cloud and do they support integration and/or data exchange with other apps? Salesforce and Bullhorn are prime examples of CRM and ATS.
• Back office software – provides the ‘back office’ functionality, managing the background processes that form the administrative backbone of agency operations. Critical to this is timesheets and processing this data into invoices to clients and payments to temps and contractors. This where ETZ fits in, turning a timesheet into an invoice in less than 60 seconds.
• Onboarding/compliance software – lets you dot all the ‘i’s and cross all the ‘t’s, by ensuring you bring candidates on board in line with all applicable regulations and legal requirements for immigration, HMRC and industry standards. An app like ETZComply centralises all the documentation and admin, while providing features such as electronic document signing and alerts of when documents expire.

Agency accounting software

• Accounting software – historically, many businesses have favoured Sage and other established desktop applications for accountancy. However, the emergence of the cloud opened the market up to new entrants. Xero is one of the runaway successes here and has found favour with many, despite the established names migrating to the cloud.

• Spend management software – employee expense management for travel and entertainment is just one of the areas included within spend management applications. The best apps in this class integrate company credit cards with company outgoings of all types. Purchase order and invoice matching, and real time tracking of spend against budget are typical value-added features of tools such as the Yordex smart spend management platform.

Managing your agency team

• Project management software – these apps enable you to centralise the storage of work and to assign and track the progress of tasks required to deliver a project. Two of the most widely used are Basecamp and Monday.

• Collaboration software – tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams provide the written instant messaging, document and screen sharing and video conferencing that helps your team to collaborate easily. Whether it is organised team meetings or ad-hoc 1-2-1, your agency teams can all work together pretty much as if they are in an office. There are even the digital equivalents of water-cooler to remind you of how it used to be…

• Video and voice calling software – some tools concentrate on just providing video and voice calling and have beaten off competition from apps to remain worthy of consideration. Skype and Zoom are good examples of these types of cloud apps that you might want to consider plugging into your recruitment software stack.

Build a better recruitment agency ‘work from home’ stack with ETZ

ETZ’s leading timesheet, invoicing and payment technology sits right at the centre of a recruitment agency’s back-office. It is a pivotal element when building a software stack that lets your team work from home. ETZ works with popular 3rd party apps ‘out of the box’. We can also custom integrate apps that are not already supported. Just tell us what you need to do!
To find out more about how our technology platform helps power your back-office while working from home, simply contact us today. Call us on 0800 311 2266 or book a demo.