I just recently returned from this year’s Staffing Industry Analysts Contingent Workforce Strategies Summit, aka the CWS Summit. This show continues to deliver extremely valuable and relevant content to buyers of contingent labor. The sessions are valuable and educational, especially for first generation programs, but nothing beats the value that happens outside of the event.

What I love most about this two-day event is that it presents tremendous opportunity by having all the industry stakeholders together in the same place at the same time. As one of many staffing solution providers at CWS Summit, everyone from users to vendors speaks on what is happening in the marketplace. The big takeaway is learned best practices.

Once again the team at SIA put together a nice agenda. If you are considering adding this to your 2015 budget, here are a few important takeaways to keep in mind to truly benefit from CWS Summit.

Meet with the service providers – If you’re a buyer of contingent labor, don’t insulate yourself from the providers and event sponsors. I realize that you are bombarded with invitations and meeting invites leading up to the event, but try to find the right opportunities to check in with your current providers and to meet with a few companies that you’ve never worked with before. You may find the solution that will take your program to the next level.

Partnership discussions between service providers: MSP providers, VMS providers, Staffing providers, IC management providers – we all have the opportunity to interact and meet at these events, review successes, discuss how to better serve their shared client base and discuss new partnership opportunities.

Meet with current customers – Take advantage of having a high percentage of your customers all in the same place at the same time. Have an event, introduce them to each other and share best practices.  Get your leaders in front of your customer base, conduct mini business reviews and get a pulse of how the engagement is going.

Meet with prospects – Where else can you meet face-to-face with so many prospects over such a short amount of time? Introduce key prospects to current customers. Differentiate yourself from your competitors. Learn about what sessions are making the largest impact (Topics such as ACA and international program expansion strategy seemed front of mind with many attendees this year). Need to show ROI for the conference? There is no better way than using it as a springboard to add a new customer.

Team Building  – Shouldn’t all conferences be in Las Vegas? Well even if they aren't, the opportunity to travel outside of the office as a team offers something far greater than what is at the surface. By making it a team effort, conferences are a good way to build new business or partnership opportunities, improve upon existing relationships, and work collectively to identify new solutions to your company's existing problems. 

This blog was written by Jim Hein. As Vice President of Enterprise Solutions for Yoh, Jim bring 20 years of experience obtained from leading staffing industry sales and operations functions to Yoh’s Managed Services and Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) clients. Having a strong proficiency in the design, development and delivery of workforce strategies enables Jim to deliver a wide-range of innovative workforce management solutions. His focus is to continuously exceed Yoh's client expectations by crafting customized workforce solutions that meet each clients’ unique talent management requirements.