EncoreNZ shift from paper-based recruitment to the cloud
EncoreNZ specialise in all aspects of Industrial Talent Sourcing and Consultancy, for both temporary and permanent placements. Present in recruitment since she was 17, Teisha Pihama established the business 6 years ago with a strong vision to create change in the industry via a more sustainable workforce. Although candidates may be on casual & seasonal agreements, EncoreNZ are all about the long game where they ensure placements are suited to the role, work with like-minded businesses that share the EncoreNZ vision where they can advance, and the majority either work Monday to Friday or on rotational rosters, rather than waiting to be notified on whether there’s work on a daily or weekly basis.
A view to grow
Looking to expand her business, Teisha understood that “with growth, you’ve got to take a technological approach to everything to ensure that all your systems are working as efficiently as possible.”
Through an industry body, Teisha discovered FastTrack. “I met with Jamie Killmier 3 years ago in Melbourne, pondered it, went away and thought ‘FastTrack is extremely adaptable to our model and process. It’s tailored to our business, we have to use this.’”
“I ran a demo, and I thought ‘how’s this going to work in the scheme of our business. Everything that’s in the system was going to benefit us, so for me it was an easy decision to make.”
“I knew this was what I wanted.”
The implementation
In 2018, EncoreNZ went live with Access FastTrack’s front office platform.
“We had a lot of data from the previous 5 years that we had to upload. Suzanne was absolutely amazing! Her patience and her tenacity for what it is that she does, honestly, I couldn’t have gone through that process with anyone else. Salespeople can have short attention spans as far as education goes but with all our team, her training, the transition and the setup of everything was extremely comprehensive. She really absorbed what I was saying, listened and pushed to accommodate where I was going with the system.”
“Everything was amazing to the point where I said if we’re dealing with anyone going forward for training, for support, whatever, it has to be you!”
“My top advice is to ask for Suzanne!”
The results
Prior to seeking software, “80% of the business was paper-based. Recruitment was all paper. We had Dropbox to put our files, but that’s it. It required loads of administration time. We weren’t able to make any recordings of activity within placement and client relationships, so it was really off the top of our heads.”
“FastTrack saves us a lot of time in marketing with the BroadBean component, plus referencing back when managing the recruitment process, in and around candidates. Their information is already there for us. When you’re emailing or talking to a client, there’s a profile and a file for that candidate. It’s created a lot of efficiency.”
‘It just speeds things up. Before we had piles of paper everywhere, and it was like ‘where’s this candidate’s file’.
“Now, boom, next second, it’s there. Everything’s in front of you.”
“We’ve also just started using the workflow capability which we’re doing internal team training on. Vanessa from our team has taken charge of FastTrack because she loves the system. She spends that time with Suzanne and educates everyone else on incremental pieces that will help us move forward and use as much capability within FastTrack as we can.”
What’s next
As the owner, Teisha’s decision to trust FastTrack is a particularly important one for achieving her vision for sustainable employment. “What you see is what you get, and we say we can do what we can do. We won’t overpromise or underdeliver. That’s why I got into it for myself. There is an array of different businesses that we work with and we’re pretty proud of the brands we’re aligned with. A lot of them have been with us since the start and have taken a chance on us. They’re not going anywhere, where we’re quite small in comparison to a lot of our competitors.”
For the first 5 years, EncoreNZ was run by 3 people and now their team have doubled in size and are in the final stages of franchising throughout New Zealand. As they grow, the business is working with a local digital company to take the business completely paperless, where integrated with FastTrack will mean “we won’t have any paperwork lying around our office, it’s straight into our system.”
“We want to eliminate tax, application forms, inductions and all that sort of thing.”
“Once we’re up to date with that then it’ll be timesheeting and we’ll use the full 360.”
“To be honest, I can’t wait to see where this journey using FastTrack takes us.”