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The 2018 Beeline Conference: What Lies Ahead in a Changing World of Work

04/16/2018 By

The 2018 Beeline Conference kicks off Monday in Amelia Island, Florida, the company’s second annual event since its merger with IQNavigator in December 2016. The conference will provide a good opportunity to review Beeline’s technology and product strategies, to be sure, but we at Spend Matters are also interested in the broader picture. In particular, we are eager to gauge Beeline’s progress along its post-merger integration path and its evolution as a technology solution that can no longer be regarded as simply a VMS.  

Over the past 10 years, what had fit neatly into a category called contingent workforce management has become something bigger and much more complex. Organizations–operating in increasingly demanding market, competitive and talent sourcing environments–are beginning to require more efficient and effective ways of sourcing and engaging talent (whether in the form of contract/SOW services, independent contract workers, online freelancers or even crowdsourcing).

And just as organizations will need these various channels for sourcing talent, they will also need technology that goes far beyond what was sufficient just 10 years ago. Transactional, workhorse contingent workforce management solutions will no longer cut it. Accordingly, longstanding VMS providers have been challenged to evolve and expand their solutions, remaking their offerings to maintain their relevance.

Spend Matters has covered this trend with increasing interest over the past year. In one research brief, “The Venerable VMS: A Situation and SWOT Analysis of the VMS Solution Category,” we conducted a critical assessment of the technology solution category heretofore known as VMS, reviewing its current competitive prospects and how those could change in the near future. More recently, we expanded that perspective to specific VMS providers. In “Beeline and SAP Fieldglass: The VMS Gets a Second (and Third) Act,” we provided our take on the broader developments shaping the competitive strategies of the “Big 2” VMS providers. In addition, we also published a Vendor Snapshot brief on Beeline specifically:

These and other analyses establish the perspective we bring to understanding Beeline and its evolution — and what we will be considering in particular during our coverage of the 2018 Beeline Conference.

Stay tuned for more Spend Matters dispatches Tuesday once the event gets fully underway.