Construction firm improves staff management

E-procurement system will ease admin burden of Carillion's 1,500 temps

Building firm also looks to cost savings

UK construction company Carillion is to use an e-procurement system to reduce the operational cost of employing temporary staff.

The fully hosted web-based system supplied by ExpressHR, is based on Microsoft Windows 2003 and Sequel 2005.

The e-procurement system's workflow application will manage timesheets, invoicing and payroll associated with the 1,500 temporary staff Carillion employs each week.

Carillion business systems manager Paul Preston says the main driver for installing the technology is greater visibility of temporary staffing, which can avoid duplication of processes and supplier contracts and cut costs.

‘The new system will help us monitor our staffing requirements, supply suitable staff and depending on whether we are supplying blue collar or white collar posts it can help with coordinating the interview process,’ said Preston.

The implementation replaces a manual system and will be used by managers at Carillion’s recruitment arm SkyBlue, by Carillion line managers, candidates and suppliers.

Carillion hopes the system will speed up response times to staffing requirements and improve the candidate quality with a target to put all temporary staffing spend through the system by the end of the year.

IDC analyst Beatriz Valle says a web-hosted service is the best value solution for smaller process volumes.

‘This is the perfect type of application for Carillion’s requirement because we’re not talking about large process volumes and they will save money through a web hosted application because they don’t have to create the application themselves,’ she said.

‘And a more automated process definitely saves money on their previous manual process optimising their resources,’ she said.