|
|
Acro Service Corp. Steps Up to Support Clients, Suppliers and Employees Affected by Axium International Bankruptcy
XRM Solutions Set: Customizes Web-based Managed Service Provider Programs
Acro wins deal to coordinate temps for CMS Energy (Crain's Detroit Business)
Acro Service Corp. Steps Up to Support Clients, Suppliers and Employees Affected by Axium International Bankruptcy
Full Service Human Capital Management Firm Offers Seamless Transition
Livonia, MI - January 14,2008: Acro Service Corporation (www.acrocorp.com), one of nation’s top firms in the Human Capital Management space area has geared up to provide support to the clients, suppliers and employees affected by the operational shut down of Ensemble Chimes Global (ECG), an Axium International company and former leader in contingent labor management.
“Given its 25+ years of history of providing the types of services that were offered by Axium, and its spotless financial record, Acro offers peace of mind to those companies and individual affected by this event” said Ron Shahani, President and Founder of Acro. “Acro is ready to transition Axium’s clients using its staffing, payrolling and vendor management solutions in a seamless and effective manner with minimum disruption and maximum speed” added Mr. Shahani. “Also, being a staffing firm, we understand the needs of other staffing suppliers and can work with them in a more constructive manner” he further stated.
In addition to being one of the leading staffing firms in the nation supplying critical resources to many Fortune 500 firms in various labor categories, Acro has also developed a number of innovative offerings to help clients reduce costs and increase effectiveness of contingent worker procurement and management processes. Acro’s XRMSM division (www.xrmsolutions.com) specializes in providing Vendor Management Service (VMS), Payrolling Service and Time-Expense Management through web based solutions hosted by Acro. VMS and Payrolling clients of ECG will benefit greatly by migrating to XRMSM solutions provided by Acro.
Contact:
R.V. Rao
Division President
Acro Service Corporation
Tel: (734) 591-1100 ext 4318
rvrao@acrocorp.com
XRM Solutions Set: Customizes Web-based Managed Service Provider Programs
Livonia, MI - When the Jet Propulsion Lab, Boeing Aircraft or one of the Big Three automakers needs a team of specialized engineers. When a Fortune 500 firm is searching for an interim COO or CFO. When a manufacturer requires industrial workers to ramp up production or support for a hot moving item. Who do they call?
Increasingly, industry and service companies rely on a sophisticated group of contract staffing firms, whose expertise extends to the recruitment, evaluation and comprehensive management of workers. These services also include many time-consuming "book work" tasks traditionally done in-house by human resources departments such as payroll or administration of benefit programs. Now, these workers, who can range from generalized industrial laborers to some of the nation's best and brightest engineers and scientists, are officially employees of the contract staffing firms-while working under the direction of their assigned companies.
The advantages for businesses from these newer systems of human capital management (HCM) have proven themselves well over time, notes Ron Shahani, President and Founder of Livonia, Michigan-based Acro Service Corporation (Acro). Acro is one of the nation's largest suppliers of specialized resources in the areas of Information Technology, Engineering and Design, Industrial, Manufacturing, Professional and Office staffing.
Companies save many of the fixed costs attendant to full-time labor forces. They can respond more quickly to fluctuating employment needs or to staff fixed-term programs, a regular feature of modern "just-in-time" product development cycles, and they can free human resource departments for more intensive strategic planning, career development and continuing education programs within their companies.
Acro's range of services and programs includes consulting; outsourcing, which allows a client to transfer ownership of an entire business process (e.g., accounting, desktop support) or project to Acro; external resource management, where Acro assumes responsibility for managing all contract staffing firms allied with a company; and staff augmentation. The firm's market strength and reputation for quality, Shahani emphasizes, derive from its long-term partnerships with clients.
"We are a trusted partner to clients; this is where Acro has distinguished itself from other firms, by its very long-term, close business relationships with clients," Shahani says. "We act as a creative facilitator, relieving clients of the difficult, often troublesome and expensive tasks between identifying staff needs and fulfilling and managing them. Our efficiency, speed and attentiveness to client needs allow clients to concentrate on their core competencies - that's what wins the day."
Acro also emphasizes its services to its long-term group of contract employees. In addition to comprehensive benefit programs, Acro views the professional development of its employees as a competitive advantage and as a key ingredient of its continuing success. As an example, Acro recently made a substantial investment in web-based learning; its staff members have immediate, web-based access to over 500 technical and business courses, wherever they are located.
Founded in 1982 by Shahani, a former financial analyst with Ford Motor Company, as a privately-held staffing firm servicing clients in the Detroit, Michigan area, Acro Service Corporation has grown to include regional centers in four States and more than 25 offices worldwide. It has been recognized as the 5th largest staff augmentation firm and the 13th largest technology company in the Detroit area (Crain's Detroit Business) as well as the 22nd fastest growing Michigan-based private company (The Detroit News).
Acro's clients span many diverse industries and include NASA, General Motors, Ford, Delphi, Visteon, CMS Energy, ExxonMobil, Pfizer, Pharmacia, Wyeth, Lockheed Martin, Siemens, General Electric, DaimlerChrysler, Bank One, Delco Electronics and numerous State governments among others.
Acro wins deal to coordinate temps for CMS Energy (Crain's Detroit Business)
Detroit, MI - Acro Service Corp. is overseeing all of CMS Energy Corp.’s temporary employees in Michigan now, thanks in part to Web-based software that the Livonia staffing company recently developed.
The arrangement, called a master vendor contract, puts Acro in charge of coordinating temporary staffing provided to CMS Energy by about 40 companies, including Acro.
At any given time, CMS Energy has 250-300 contract or temporary employees and an estimated annual contract labor payroll of $15 million to $20 million, said Quentin Guinn, senior contract manager at CMS Energy’s purchasing department.
CMS “has always been a major client of ours,” said Acro President Ron Shahani. “But this contract certainly escalates that-it doubles our volume of business, at least.”
Acro was selected partly because it was able to custom develop an online staffing system, said Cindy Westerhof, executive director of CMS Energy’s human resources department.
The Web-based software automates the staffing process from bidding to electronic invoicing and payment. Acro began developing the system in 2000 and put it in place in March.
CMS Energy and Acro declined to disclose terms of the agreement.
Outsourcing the management of staffing services became a trend in the mid- 1990s, said Jeffrey Silber, a staffing industry expert and managing director of equity research for the New York City-based investment bank Gerard Klauer Mathson.
However , Silber said it is unusual for a medium size staf fing company, such as Acro, to develop the technology and land large contracts.
With $88 million in revenue in 2002, Acro is metro Detroit’s fifth-largest staffing company. Silber said master- vendor contracts typically are provided by bigger staffing companies such as Troy-based Kelly Services Inc., which reported $4.3 billion in 2002 sales.
Other companies in the Detroit area that provide similar services are Manpower Inc., MSX International Inc. and Bartech Group Inc. Detroit-based Strategic Staffing Solutions Inc. has a similar agreement with DTE Energy Co. in Detroit. “To provide master -vendor relationships and services, you do have to have a good technology solution, a strong team and access to a lot of resources,” said Pam Berklich, vice president of Resource Consulting Group, a subsidiary of Manpower.
Companies that oversee a client’s staffing needs benefit in two ways: First, they get compensated for providing the service, typically by collecting a percentage of the staffing fees. Second, the management company is the first to see job requests, giving it an advantage in bidding. However, Acro does not get a preference to fill staffing jobs at CMS Energy Corp. by virtue of its staffing management contract with CMS, and receives notification of CMS staffing opportunities at the same time as competitors.
Besides management responsibility, Acro also will continue to supply employees but will have to bid on the work along with the other staffing suppliers.
Major corporations like to farm out the management of their staffing needs because it saves money and removes a time consuming task.
“Prior to this, we had individual time sheets coming from each one of our suppliers,” CMS’ Guinn said. “We like this process because we just pay a single invoice.”
Although 30 percent of Acro’s annual sales come from clients in the automotive industry, Shahani said his company also gets a significant amount of sales from aerospace and government, including several states.That strategy, along with Acro’s software, helped the company land a second master-vendor contract with another longtime client, Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp. Acro began managing Northrop Grumman’s staffing at its space system division in Azusa, Calif., in April.
Acro also has a verbal agreement to provide similar services to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Shahani hopes this is the beginning for Acro’s master-vendor business.
“We plan to market this to all Fortune 500 companies, as well as several government entities that would benefit from such services,” Shahani said.
Brent Snavely: (313) 446 0405, bsnavely@crain.com
|
|
What our customers are saying...
|
XRM is an excellent tracking system that provides a bigger picture of all of our contracted work that needs to be done and how much we are spending. We have certainly benefited from it in terms of being able to track the body of work and having the ability to produce reports on a quarterly basis.
Paulette Boggs
Director of Staffing and Diversity
Consumers Energy
|
|
|
|
News...
|
|
|
|
|