Transforming Client and Candidate Relationships

“Everything we do is centered on speed and efficiency. We needed a software platform that matches this drive and Invenias kept coming out on top as the solution of choice.”

With continual growth being a key part of The Mattran Group strategy, the company depends on its executive search platform to scale as the business expands. “We’d been using the same product to manage our client and candidate base for around 20 years,” says Director of Operations, Heather Yates. “It’s been a good product that has served us well, but we realised we needed to look for a replacement.

“The company behind it had stopped innovating and we were no longer getting software updates. It was becoming too clunky for our purposes and this was slowing us down. In this day and age, one of the most important attributes for a business like ours is speed. We have to be able to get to information quickly without wading through data.”

Heather explains that the need to deliver results quickly for clients and candidates is an important differentiator. “We’d realised for a number of years that we weren’t getting this speed, so we began the process of assessing the options available to us on the market.”

One of those options was Invenias. The platform was recommended to The Mattran Group by a company using Invenias in the UK, but they wondered would it be suitable for a US-based business? “We had whittled down the number of potential solutions to around eight and Invenias kept coming to the top of the list as we assessed the different components,” says Heather.

These components included integration with Outlook, a relational database, mobile capability from a variety of devices, mass emailing capability, and reliable support both during and after deployment. “We also wanted a product that integrated with LinkedIn,” says Heather. “Invenias gave us this capability and I have to say it’s mind-blowing.”

While Invenias met all the company’s requirements, there was still one reservation: would the product receive the level of support in the US that it did in the UK? The simple answer to this was yes. “From the outset there has been great support,” continues Heather. “In fact I described the Invenias conversion team working on our transition from the old product as ‘geniuses’. We’d been worried that there might be a disconnect between the US and Europe, but the local Invenias team was on hand any time we needed them.

“It was a true partnership. Both parties understood what needed to be done, the importance of doing it right, and the business value it would ultimately deliver to us. We anticipated a downturn in productivity during the transition as we learned how to use the new product, but this simply didn’t happen. In fact productivity actually went up due to the intuitive user interface of Invenias, which ensured quick adoption.”

The Mattran Group took a train the trainer approach. Heather was responsible for the interface with Invenias and says the training was highly informative. She then passed on her learning to the Mattran Group team. “We were all familiar with Microsoft so training on the platform was relatively straightforward.

“It didn’t take much convincing for our team to start using it. I’ve heard many times since how easy they’re finding it to maneuver through the platform. Invenias has now become the one place where we can find everything we need to transform our candidate and client relationships. The customisable views make searches so much easier than before. Being able to get the meat of what we’re looking for quickly and easily is simply brilliant.”

She adds that Invenias has also given them robust reporting capabilities, all from within the product. “And as we start the process of hiring additional team members, I’m confident that the platform will make it easy for them to get up and running quickly.”

There’s another aspect of The Mattran Group’s relationship with Invenias that Heather values. “Having experienced a drop off in support and innovation with our previous product, we really like that fact that the Invenias Ideas Portal is open for us to make suggestions,” she says. “We feel as if we can make a direct impact on product development and, importantly, that our ideas are listened to.”