Getting ahead in the Cloud

4 May 2011

The Challenge

C&M Travel Recruitment, a specialist travel recruiter with its head office in London, had been using the same recruitment software for the past 10 years. With an office soon to be opening in Sydney, Australia, as well as a branch in Manchester, C&M’s commercial director David Robinson felt that the firm’s software solution wasn’t keeping up with the new technology.

“With the old system, we were managing our database in-house on our own servers,” he told Recruiter. “It wasn’t moving with the times so we started looking at other options.” He explained: “Travel recruiters spend extensive amounts of time abroad for conferences and recruitment events. Our incumbent platform meant that remote working had to be specially set up in advance and supported by the IT team.” Robinson realised the need for a systems refresh. In particular, a fully-integrated solution that could incorporate C&M’s preferred applications and recruitment tools within one platform.

However, the recession hit and rather than spend money on capital outlay, he said, the recruiter put the decision on hold, even though the company had committed to opening up in Australia. Last year, though, they began to re-examine the options again. Robinson explained: “We were looking for a system that would provide an easy ’plug-and-play’ remote working capability that staff could operate themselves.”

C&M’s goal to be a market leader in the travel recruitment sector meant that apps and other recruitment tools that its consultants were now using had to be integrated and easily accessible, wherever in the world a consultant was working. From a financial point of view, it didn’t make sense to invest in new servers or databases, Robinson said. “Our existing third-party suppliers weren’t integrating into our current recruitment software it was not as seamless as it might have been,” he explained.

The Solution

Robinson came across recruitment software provider Bullhorn Marketplace and “was surprised at how future-proof the system was”. Bullhorn’s UK managing director Peter Linas explained that its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applicant tracking system (ATS) and customer relationship management (CRM) platform is accessed via Internet Explorer, which means a user can go online and log into Bullhorn from anywhere in the world. “Although initially attracted by the ATS and CRM system,” Peter Linas told Recruiter, “C&M saw the advantage in Bullhorn Marketplace.”

Marketplace is Bullhorn’s very own ’app store’, he explained, where the client can choose from a number of third-party solutions integrated into the Bullhorn platform. “The apps are used within the product,” he explained, “so consultants don’t have to leave Bullhorn. Everything talks to each other.” There are currently 23 Marketplace apps and C&M could continue to use its preferred suppliers, but more easily from within the system.

Travel recruitment is fastpaced and it is only going to get faster: the beauty of Bullhorn and the apps is that they allow recruiters to do all their work within one screen

DAVID ROBINSON

The apps C&M has adopted so far are: Drag and Tag, which allows recruiters to import contact details directly into Bullhorn from the web; Broadbean, which posts jobs to job boards across the globe; SMS for Bullhorn, which allows recruiters to send SMS vacancy alerts to candidates; Daxtra Resource Station, which searches Bullhorn and other online resources for the best candidates and loads them directly into the platform’s database. And recruiters are also using ETZ Time, which automatically creates and processes online timesheets, converting them to invoices.

“Because Bullhorn works in the cloud,” Robinson said, “from a financial point of view we didn’t have to outlay exchange servers or IT equipment to manage server databases. And we get 24/7 technical support from Bullhorn, which has worked very well so far.” In fact, following online video training beforehand, to give everyone familiarity in the system before it went live, Bullhorn Marketplace was called into action over one weekend, “with virtually no problems and minimal downtime”, Linas said.

The main benefit for C&M is a streamlining of the recruitment process. Robinson explained: “Travel recruitment is extremely fast-paced, and it is only going to get faster; the beauty of Bullhorn and the Marketplace apps is that together they allow our recruiters to do all their work within one screen. There are far fewer distractions as a result of flicking from one system to another, and things don’t get forgotten or missed out because a lot of the leg work is automated.”

Apart from not having the initial luxury of a project manager for the software swapover “That was basically me,” Robinson admitted were there any challenges from Bullhorn’s perspective? “There weren’t any challenges it’s what we do,” Linas answered.