Strategic workforce success: How an effective MSP supports higher education excellence.

Bringing structure to decentralized workforce management. 

A world-renowned higher education institution partnered with Yoh to transform a decentralized contingent labor program into a unified, high-performance model worthy of its standards of excellence. With more than $100 million in annual contingent labor spend, the university needed a more unified approach that could improve visibility, support compliance efforts, and create a stronger operational foundation without disrupting how departments worked.

The challenge: Limited visibility across a highly decentralized workforce. 

For decades, the university operated with a fully decentralized contingent labor program that lacked visibility across more than $100 million in annual spend. This fragmentation led to inconsistent markup rates, excessive administrative costs, and significant compliance risks during onboarding and offboarding. The institution needed a partner capable of navigating its complex culture to replace manual workarounds with a scalable, transparent model.

Yoh’s solution: A vendor-neutral MSP model designed for institutional complexity. 

Yoh partnered with the university to roll out a vendor-neutral Managed Service Provider program backed by VMS technology already familiar within large enterprise environments. Before implementation began, the team spent time mapping how hiring, supplier management, approvals, and workforce processes were actually happening across schools and departments. From there, Yoh led the VMS setup, integrations, testing, and end-user training while helping the institution create more consistency around reporting, supplier oversight, compliance tracking, and requisition management.

Throughout the rollout, dedicated program and project teams worked directly with stakeholders across the university to keep implementation moving, answer questions, and support adoption across departments with very different operating styles.

The result: Greater workforce visibility with measurable institutional impact. 

With 90% program adoption, the business impact of this vendor-neutral implementation has been touted as one of the most impactful organization-wide change initiatives implemented in recent customer history. Also, the leader of the HR team was named Staffing Industry Analyst (SIA)’s Game Changer for her role in leading this effort. 

Key results include:

• $11+ million in accumulated cost savings, representing 7.5% of total program revenue

• Increased spend under management significantly, growing from $5 million to $66 million within a four-year timeframe

• An 80% reduction in active suppliers while maintaining 70% diversity spend

• 99% candidate retention, driven by a quality-focused approach to supplier performance

• Centralized worker tracking and stronger compliance oversight

• Expansion into direct hire, IC compliance, and offshore SOW support
  
  

Create a more connected workforce strategy.  

Learn more about how Yoh helps higher education institutions improve visibility and support long-term operational goals without disrupting departmental autonomy.