WHY BOND PERSONNEL LOVE VOYAGER SOFTWARE
WHERE DID IT ALL START FOR JOHN DOUPE, DIRECTOR OF BOND PERSONNEL GROUP?
I started my career as an IT Professional in the 80’s working as a mainframe operations analyst for companies in the financial and insurance sectors. Although I enjoyed the technical work I really wanted to use my technical skills and knowledge in a more commercial role. I put my CV out there and was quickly offered a job as a Recruitment Consultant with an agency in London as their mainframe specialist. I’ve never looked back.
After stepping in and out of various Recruitment roles including a Director position for the largest Recruitment firm in Ireland I decided to take control of my future and created Bond Personnel.
TRADITIONAL RECRUITMENT VALUES, TOUGH COMPETITION, HIGH RUNNING COSTS AND A COMPETITIVE MICRO-NICHE MARKET
Based on solid foundations Bond Personnel grew to a team of circa 30 people with 4 branches at our peak. At that time our growth was only curtailed by our ability to fund that growth. Fibre, Broadband, email and web connectivity was in its infancy and so getting the data to the fingertips of my Recruiters was expensive and slow. We had a plethora of manual systems including 3rd party CV parsing tools, off the shelf CRM systems, Outlook, Excel, websites, Resourcing teams, Managers, KPIs and a bunch of non-recruiters filling the gaps.
Whilst we retained the ability to deliver a quality service, we’d become slow, laden with costs, IT headaches and our billing cycle was like a roller coaster. At that time, only 50% of staff held a Recruitment target and focus.
STEPPING OUT OF THE DARK AND INTO THE LIGHT WITH VOYAGER INFINITY SAAS
Whilst exploring the ability to move my existing systems to the web and facilitate remote working for some staff, I received an opportunistic sales call from Voyager.
I was introduced to Voyager Infinity SaaS a web-based deployment of their flagship CRM during a 15-minute online demo, which then lead onto detailed demonstrations by 7 of the 100+ suppliers in the market.
Whilst most did little more than my existing CRM, Voyager Infinity had the technical edge, it was feature rich, had a focus on automation and promised a smooth migration process, I was doubtful, but trusted my research and placed the order.
HOW OUR CANDIDATES AND CLIENTS HAVE BENEFITED
We can now track relationships from cradle to grave – first contact to placement. With the best candidates typically employed, Infinity allows me to map the market and ensure yesterday’s applicants are not overlooked for tomorrows opportunities. Scheduled management reports cover many things, but I’ve ensured compliance, deadlines, conversion ratios and activity levels are tracked and shared without the need to run reports manually. We can now spot problems before they happen. Voyager Infinity SaaS facilitates a complete service. Staff can now work from anywhere with all the information they need in one place. They have access to the latest notes and communications meaning we’re much more joined up than before.
My Recruiters now focus on delivering their service, rather than logging their notes and activities from one system to another. Voyager Infinity has given back my Recruiters at least 90 minutes of their day.
THE TRANSITION
Voyager’s migration team ensured the transition was simple, painless and that support was on hand each stages of the process. We had the choice of face to face or online training. I staged the implementation of Voyager so we opted for bite-sized online training. It was professional, concise and tailored to our needs.
My people LOVE using Infinity SaaS, and use it fully. The database is no longer something to update when we have time or after the event, it’s something we ‘Live in’. The Voyager Infinity platform allows us to post jobs to job-boards, review applicants, format CVs, arrange meetings, send Outlook invites, SMS, run reports and send placements to finance all from one place – we don’t leave Voyager – everything is tracked and logged.
Bond was a professional business before we were introduced to Voyager Software and the Infinity SaaS platform, now we’re doing it faster, cheaper and with less pain.
FIVE FEATURES I JUST CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT…
- iResearch – Allows me to search multiple sources in one go. Now I search LinkedIn, Job-Boards, Online CV databases and X-ray Search the web from one place. When I find someone I like, I add them to Voyager with one click.
- iCapture – All CV’s, and online profiles are reviewed, matched to jobs, checked for duplicates and turned into candidate records in seconds.
- CV Builder – Is amazing, and does what is says on the tin. It pulls information from the candidate record building my Bespoke CV template in seconds. With a click I can add a coversheet, terms of business and select an email template for my clients. I can now get professionally written, formatted CV’s from candidate to multiple clients in less than 5 mins.
- Automatic Follow-ups – I can schedule an automatic follow-up against any emails I send. E.g. CV’s sent to clients automatically get tagged with a follow-up in my diary for 48 hours later, adding a read receipt works well too, you can even schedule the email to be sent at a time when you know the client is at their desk!
- Searching – It’s brilliant, you just need to see it. Skills, attributes, text – all ordered into a ‘best match’ – think Google search for people.
Voyager Infinity and Voyager Mid-Office are software solutions that make Recruiter’s lives easier. Voyager Infinity is a CRM used be thousands of Recruiters globally to source, nurture and maintain the relationships of tomorrow placements, and Mid-Office manages the entire Pay and Bill process.
