Matrix SCM were recently directly awarded the managed service contract for the provision of agency staff to the London Borough of Redbridge. The Council’s main drivers for this change were; the choice of candidates coming through, they wanted to take control of their agency costs, and the need for a more intuitive process and online system.

Insight into Implementation Process with Redbridge:

The implementation process of a Neutral Vendor Managed Service starts with agreeing on timescales for the launch, beginning in March we agreed with Redbridge that we would go live early May. Both Matrix SCM and Redbridge worked in a close partnership throughout this time period to ensure delivery on time.

Below we have provided insight into some of the Implementation processes with Redbridge:

Transferring Placements:

Over 160 placements were transitioned from Redbridge’s previous system to Matrix CR along with just over 250 system users from the Council’s side.

Training Staff at Redbridge Council:

The training was provided through a combination of dedicated training sessions and direct face to face meetings with the dedicated, on-site Account Manager.

Building the Supply Chain:

A robust and strong supply chain was also built with a focus on the local and regional area ensuring that local candidates were being submitted to their local area

Tailoring Implementation and overcoming obstacles:

Every Implementation we run at Matrix SCM is tailored to the organisation that is being on-boarded. During the Implementation with Redbridge, we were also successful in eradicating a time consuming and long-winded paper-based approval process by replacing this with an online approval mode.

Relevant approvers are notified when they need to review and approve a request to appoint an agency worker with the process cascading down through the relevant hierarchy. This has given Redbridge staff more visibility of where their request is in terms of the overall process and has saved them time in physically sending and chasing up a paper approval.