Partnering your way to agency success

Anyone who has visited the United States will be familiar with home retailer, JC Penney. Founded 115 years ago and with around 1,100 across the country, the company’s founder James Cash Penney once said that "Growth is never by mere chance; it is the result of forces working together." He was right.

The last two years have seen the recruitment industry grow at a faster pace than at anytime in the previous 10 years. The number of new entrants into the sector is at an all-time high, while the growth rates enjoyed by many existing players has, in many instances, surpassed even the most optimistic of forecasts. Recruitment has, in fact, become a success story and like most success stories its achievements are the result of collaborations.

As a business, we have been in the fortunate position to work with some of the most promising and fastest growing recruitment businesses in the country. Binding each of these businesses together is their ability to recognise that their strengths lie in working on the business rather than in it.

In other words, they don’t attempt to be a Jack-of-all-Trades by taking on the responsibility of every day-to-day task that needs to be performed in the business. Indeed, they value their time as the precious commodity it really is and would rather focus more of that time by playing to their core strengths – selling and growing their businesses.

So rather than spend their days managing payroll, raising and chasing invoices, ensuring they remain compliant, juggling cash flow and all manner of other essential yet time-consuming activities, they instead delegate responsibility to specialist recruitment finance and back-office providers such as Simplicity.

But doing so isn’t just a matter of saving time and spending more of it on chasing new business, it is also about protecting the business you already have and ensuring you have the capacity to manage larger contracts as they come in.

Perhaps the greatest concern that all recruitment business owners face is knowing they have the cash flow to hand to pay their workers (and their own staff) on time, every time. Missing payments is not an option and as your business grows the risk of this happening can increase.

For instance, suppose you win a contract to supply 1, 10, 20, or as many as 200 or more temporary workers to start next week, you would be right to get excited by what this means in terms of your growth plans. However, if there is no guarantee of the funds being available each week to ensure everyone gets paid the implications this could have on your business are not worth thinking about.

Our experience has shown that the average time a client takes to pay their invoice is 60 to 70 days. So if you need to supply staff tomorrow or next week, do you have enough in reserve to cover your costs? What impact would a delay in funds clearing your account have on the speed by which your agency is able to grow?

That’s where Simplicity’s recruitment finance solution comes into play. Rather than having to wait 60 or more days to receive payment from your clients, we provide you with access to your margin every Friday.

At a time when recruiters have never had it so good and the prospects for the industry are so bright, collaboration between agencies and key partners like Simplicity is the obvious solution for those businesses with their sights firmly fixed on growth.

Growth will still happen even without these partnerships, but the speed at which it takes place will be slower and largely out of your control. Wouldn’t you prefer to grow at the pace that’s right for you?

For more information on how Simplicity can help you grow your recruitment business...