In good times, businesses can be successful while glossing over some weak spots. After all, a hot market is always more forgiving than a cold market.
And for the better part of a decade, circa 2010-2020, markets around the globe were hot. But we all know what happened next: the COVID-19 pandemic cooled everything down real fast, and businesses around the globe had to face their weak spots and find solutions that could at the very least neutralize those weaknesses.
Some businesses were even able to turn weak spots into strengths. BPS World, a recruitment outsourcing company led by founder Simon Conington, did it by realizing that they had been slacking a bit on an important part of their operations.
“In the recruitment outsourcing industry, I see three key areas to master: people, process, and technology. We’ve always been pretty good at people and process. But for almost 20 years, technology was never our strong suit. When we got smashed by COVID, the firm had to change drastically to survive, and all of a sudden technology was critical. Before we could succeed in spite of our technological problems; with the pandemic, it became clear that we needed to get much smarter about how we dealt with technology.”
To digitize the company and boost efficiency, Simon took the lead in revamping the technologies that went into the firm’s operations. He knew that there was a lot to learn, and his evenings became devoted to understanding their tech needs and hunting for solutions. Relatively quickly, he centered on one key issue: data.
“We had lots of internal systems and tons of data, but we couldn’t do anything with it! It was inaccurate, unreliable, unsearchable since it wasn’t indexed properly… Really, the whole deal of messy data.”
He first started working with an organization that promised a range of database services, from data acquisition to data cleansing. Given a lack of readily available internal resources, outsourcing seemed to make the most sense.
“But as I got a bit further in our data journey, I started to feel like I still wasn’t reaching that conviction of excellence in terms of people, process and technology. We needed to own more of our technology, especially because I was seeing that outside organizations weren’t, quite frankly, delivering on what they’d promised.”
He started tracking results vs. what was being promised. In some ways, though, he already had a very clear view of how things were coming up short.
“Just as an example, one provider said their data was 97% accurate. But when I’d put it into Hubspot, our first outreach campaign stopped in under three minutes because we were only getting 50% hit rates. That really drove home for me the importance of owning our data operations.”
He decided to focus on owning their data health & cleansing and data indexing. That’s where he started working with Captain Data, both himself and with an internal team that could handle workflow management and API structures. With their combined efforts, they were able to start building more robust data operations on the Captain Data platform.
“I always say that it’s a continuous learning process. Sometimes we have to take a step back, put things on hold and say, ‘Wait, we have the structure wrong’ or ‘Our indexing needs to be rethought’. We sort things out and start again. The good thing is that we’re restarting each time with better and better information.”
Today BPS World has its own data warehouse, connected via API to other software tools including Hubspot and Vincere (a popular tracking system in the staffing industry). The key for Simon is ensuring that they don’t rely on black box providers anymore.
“I never want to be reliant on a single tool, a one-stop shop. First because that one-stop shop is never best-in-class, and second because when it comes time to renegotiate the contract, you’re in a terrible position. I’ve had providers try to increase our bill by 500%, and they could have done it if that was the place holding all of our data! Now, by taking the time with Captain Data and connecting together all of our tools, I own my data warehouse. And so now I have the upper hand in negotiating those prices.”
Having invested the resources necessary to catch up in terms of technology, BPS World can now race ahead by focusing on optimizing the ROI of their data setup. From a very basic level – such as scraping LinkedIn to find jobs and talent –, Simon and his team can now de results in to find more details and have better unique identifiers.
“Captain Data’s enhanced features have let us go from having cleaned data that would reach 92% accuracy to having 98% accuracy, even 99-100% at times. No black box provider can even come close to that. And while Captain Data isn’t the only step you’ll need to take to get that kind of accuracy, it’s a really big part of the equation.”
One feature that they’ve been very happy with is Captain Data’s work with Make.com. Using the two services together has let them create USPs that are tailored for each of their target areas, meaning that each of their staffing consultants has a list of new jobs in their specialist area each morning. That’s the kind of data specificity that has the ability to directly boost ROI.
“If you have some technical capabilities and are thinking about how you can manage data better than the competition, then Captain Data is what you need. It takes a bit of commitment, but by going through their onboarding and getting your structure up and running, once you’re using it properly and adapting to market changes, you’ll have a real competitive advantage.”
The process BPS World used to automate lead generation
