Navigating Complexity with Confidence

It’s no secret that the workforce industry is undergoing seismic change. Volatile markets are tightening budgets, amassing technological capabilities are leaving buyers hesitant to invest and demographic shifts are evolving cultural norms around the workplace. 

In its 2024 Workforce Solutions Buyer Survey, Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) reports a 10-year decline in VMS and MSP satisfaction levels, with this year’s results showing a potential reversal of the trend. In a recent editorial, “Righting the ship: VMS/MSP providers tackle waning satisfaction,” SIA shares several factors behind decline levels – lack of innovation, strategic implementation challenges and perceived decline value – and how the market is responding. 

I agree with SIA's claim that workforce solution providers are facing some industrywide challenges. Despite navigating this dynamic, complex landscape for the last decade however, AGS’ NPS scores do not reflect the waning satisfaction levels the overall industry average illustrates.  

Underscoring something I’ve known for a long time: 

Not all MSPs are delivered equally. 

Continuously Investing in Innovation

AGS is continuously investing in technological innovation that we bring to bear for our clients – including innovative partnerships with Globality, Lightcast, Brightfield and UiPath, among many others – through an ecosystem approach to workforce technology: Acumen® Intelligent Workforce Platform. 

What’s great about Acumen is that it allows us the ability to structure a technology stack that is tailored to meet the needs or problems a client is looking to solve. It gives us a ton of flexibility to keep the stack relevant and future-proof for our clients, and most importantly, unlock the value of data that flows between all the apps. 

Superior Strategic Implementation

I’m really passionate about the impact of a top-notch strategic implementation – filling the gap, as the editorial puts it “between conceptual innovation and practical implementation.” It’s also where AGS really shines. We’ve had over 50 strategic implementations over the past few years – whether they’re new clients or expansions into new services or geographies. This is in credit to the phenomenal work of our Global Business Services team. We’re working on another dozen or so strategic projects for clients – misclassification, direct sourcing, Universal Workforce Model, etc. – that will drive transformational results for our clients.  

Expanding Impact Across Spend Categories

In the last three years, AGS has increased our SOW clients five-fold. We’re seeing growth in the value we’re delivering as evidenced by our NPS scores, because we’re helping companies gain visibility, control and decision-making capability over a previously unmanaged component of spend in their environment.  

When the scope of a program doesn’t change year over year, you’re not going to extract additional value. You can only reduce rates so far until it’s like squeezing water from a rock.   

We’re committed to solving the problems of today balanced with a long-term vision and path to real transformation.  

At the end of the day, NPS scores reflect an MSP’s service. It’s a practitioner’s point of view, but if your end users are happy, it will show in your NPS scores. AGS fares well when competing to win next–gen programs – we have over 40 programs where clients sought an initial MSP partnership but were not seeing the desired ROI. And while we have had minimal competitive loss of clients (we’re at a 95% retention rate), we have seen a few programs return to AGS after another provider failed to deliver ROI.  

I’m proud of the customer service we’re delivering for our clients, as well as the innovative and transformative ideas we’re bringing to elevate our value through the power of human enterprise.