Data for All: How Data Democratization Benefits Your MSP, RPO Programs

Dominic Konieczny and Alice Witchalls contributed to this report.

If you’ve never seen the term before, you may be asking yourself what is ‘data democratization’? 

In simple terms, data democratization is the continual process of enabling all individuals in an organization to utilize data, regardless of technical ability. This is typically with the goal of making data-driven decisions more quickly than would have been otherwise possible. 

In today’s world of talent shortages, it’s more important than ever that managers have access to data to help them make the right decisions when hiring. In the time it would take to request and receive talent insights from a centralized analytics team, a manager could easily have missed out on finding and securing the right candidate for their role. 

The Value of Data Democratization in MSP and RPO Programs

Access to data is often the crucial differentiator in making informed decisions that can shape your workforce and path to achieving business goals. Over the past couple years, AGS has partnered with Lightcast, a global leader in labor market analytics, to rollout self-service access for our Client Delivery teams. This means AGS program managers now have direct access to insights that further enhance their ability to guide hiring managers across the globe in hiring decisions and improve the overall experience and results of their candidate search. 

Some of the ways in which AGS program teams have been able to positively impact their clients’ workforce decisions using these new reporting capabilities are: 

• Advising on supply and demand trends in a local market for specific skill sets to set expectations on time to fill.
• Alerting managers to direct competitors seeking similar skill sets in their market and the need to move quickly on interviewing.
• Identifying in-demand skills where a shortage of talent or fierce competition could lead to wage inflation and thus the need to increase budgets.
• Recommending alternative markets with a larger supply of talent and lower costs, particularly where roles can be remote based or offshore.

With greater access to the Lightcast platform combined with contingent workforce benchmark data using our Acumen® Intelligent Workforce Platform, the sharing of labor market insights between our program teams and hiring managers is benefitting companies by helping them to secure the right talent faster and realize more cost savings as they explore alternate markets.

Below, are a few real-world examples of how the AGS and Lightcast partnership has resulted in insights that have helped our clients get better access to talent while efficiently managing costs and positioning them well for a future-forward, skills-based approach to hiring.

Use Case: Exploring Emerging IT Markets in India 

Over the past decade, India’s IT sector has experienced significant growth, largely driven by outsourcing and increased demand from global companies. This surge in demand has led to an expansion of the workforce, with more professionals entering the IT industry. However, demand has outpaced supply in Tier 1 markets such Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune, resulting in escalating operating costs, and wages increasing on average by 10% per year over the last five years.

Businesses are now looking to emerging tech hubs in Coimbatore, Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Thiruvananthapuram, attracted by their growing talent pools, lower costs and rapid government investment. With as many as 25 emerging IT hubs in India to choose from, AGS has leveraged Lightcast’s global data and examined 10 Tier 2 locations that could serve as new sourcing grounds for highly skilled IT talent.

Coimbatore distinguishes itself as a mature and growing market with a substantial IT talent supply of 40,000, twice the average of other Tier 2 cities. With three workers for every job posting, compared with one worker per posting in Tier 1 cities, and well-established infrastructure, Coimbatore presents itself as an appealing market. Sustained strong demand also indicates this is a sought-after location for sourcing IT talent.

Lightcast’s Job Posting Analytics report also identified Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Thiruvananthapuram as emerging hubs with significant talent reserves and a growing presence of established IT companies. By comparing the supply of talent to the number of job postings, Thiruvananthapuram shows lower demand pressure than other markets. Analysis of the skills frequency within professional profiles indicates Thiruvananthapuram also has a higher concentration of the most sought-after IT skills such as Java and SQL.

While all of these hubs emerged as desirable options, Thiruvananthapuram stands out due to its strong supply of talent, balanced demand levels and skill set concentration. Furthermore, Thiruvananthapuram’s excellent transportation infrastructure, high number of STEM graduates and lower cost of living make it a compelling case for businesses looking to leverage talent elsewhere. 

Use Case: Identifying Preferred Markets for Sourcing Recruiters   

A global technology company seeking to establish a team of recruiters across North America and Europe came to AGS for a site selection analysis. The primary objective was to identify locations that offer optimal access to high-quality talent at a competitive cost to maximize recruitment efficiency. 

We utilized a combination of macroeconomic indicators, including unemployment rates and the cost of living, alongside supply and demand data from Lightcast. The platform enabled AGS to evaluate and identify top sourcing locations, striking the right balance between talent accessibility and cost efficiency.

For this study, we dug deep into job postings relative to talent availability, enabling a focused assessment of specific job titles and skill sets. This is particularly valuable as it provides a clearer picture of talent demand based on online profiles and job market dynamics.

Our research found that London emerged as the strongest talent market for recruiter skill sets within the UK due to plentiful supply, with over 1,400 profiles matching the required skill set for this role. Despite a strong supply of candidates, London is a high-cost location in the UK as well as globally, with wage pressures a potential limitation of this location. Edinburgh stands out as a more desirable location on cost when compared to London; however, Lightcast data tells us this is a very competitive market for the recruiter skill sets, with posting competition at 18%, notably higher than London’s 4%.

Madrid poses a strong alternative location in Europe, balancing talent availability with a lower cost of living. Madrid is emerging as an attractive hub for sourcing nearshore talent, particularly where cost savings are a priority. In North America, Toronto stood out as the top location for recruiters, with low posting competition and a lower cost of living compared to other cities in this study.

Lightcast also has the ability to incorporate skill sets into geographical assessments, enabling us to identify regions with adequate talent supply matching language requirements across Europe. With more companies considering offshoring to benefit from cost savings, language proficiency is a high-demand skill set. We utilized this to evaluate the population of workers with fluency in English listed, to assess the impact and thus ease of sourcing talent in each location. In Madrid, when listing English language as an independent skill requirement, talent supply fell by 86%, indicating a significant rise in competitiveness and potential limitation if looking to outsource in this location.

Use Case: A Look at the Semiconductor Industry 

The semiconductor industry has a volatile history with cyclical trends in sales over the years. Since the sudden interest in generative AI opportunities – and concern over future supply shortages as political landscapes shift – this industry is looking to bounce back in 2024-25, albeit with many uncertainties still on the horizon. 

While countries and companies across the globe are looking to shore up their supply of semiconductors, those players in the industry themselves are focusing on securing the right talent to support their operations and growth. In such an industry with relatively niche skill set requirements, it’s more important than ever to make use of global labor market data to identify the right markets and candidate pools. 

For an industrial manufacturer, AGS looked at some of the most prominent semiconductor markets to highlight candidate supply and demand pressures. Our study showed that excluding China and Taiwan, where a vast majority of semiconductors are manufactured (but data availability is limited), the next largest producers, and thus those with the greatest supply of talent, are the US, India, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. 

We took a deeper look at Germany, looking at software developers skilled in Field-Programmable-Gate-Array (FPGA), with Munich being by far the largest market. With over 20,000 software developers in the workforce, but only 250 online profiles citing FPGA skills, it highlights how niche this skill set is. Demand, as expected, is high with over 200 advertised job postings for such a small talent pool, leading to elevated levels of competition. 

In summary, though Germany has the largest supply of this talent in Europe, it also has some of the fiercest competition. Employers in this industry might do well to look at alternative markets in the Netherlands, Spain and Poland, where demand is lower by comparison. Romania is a promising emerging market with far less competition but a considerably smaller supply of talent.

Data Democratization Empowers Recruiters, Workforce Advisors

With the ongoing talent shortage unlikely to subside in the near future, employers will continue to find themselves struggling to source the right candidates for their roles. The move to being a skills-based organization is increasingly viewed as part of the solution to this challenge.

However, despite the promising potential advantages of becoming a skills-based organization, skeptical stakeholders will want to see a large amount of data before adjusting their mindset and organizational processes. Partnering with workforce experts, like Allegis Global Solutions, informed and empowered with trusted global labor market data and analytics, as provided by the Lightcast platform, will be key to this change.