In this episode, I'm talking with Simon Lupica from Provenio People around their unique Education support for schools needing short term people placements for IT and Business Support.  Keep things running smoothly with skilled technical resources available for a day, a week or month by month engagements. Welcome to Tech Talks with Taylor, the podcast where we explore how the right technology can create better business outcomes, everytime. I'm Leanne Taylor, founder of Taylor Made Sales, and I'm passionate about helping Australian businesses connect with the tech solutions that drive success. For more details contact [email protected] or visit www.taylormadesales.com.au  Full Episode Transcript: Leanne Taylor: Welcome to Tech Talks with Taylor. I'm Leanne Taylor, your host of 10-minute Tech Talks where we cut straight to the heart of tech for Australian businesses. In each session, we'll spend only 10 minutes with an industry expert unpacking the latest products, services, and solutions to help your business achieve great technical outcomes. Let's get started. Leanne Taylor: Hi everyone. Thanks for joining today. My name's Leanne Taylor from Taylormade Sales and welcome to our tech talk with Provideo on human services. Today I've got Simon with me and super excited to be working with Simon on a hot topic across education which is human resources, i.e. IT recruitment. Simon, I might hit over to you to explain who you are and what you do. Simon: Yeah, sure. Thanks, Leanne. My name is Simon Lupica. I'm one of the founders of Provenio partners. Just to kind of take a step back, Provenio partners is a group of companies. We've got three core offerings in what we do, but today we'll be talking specifically about Provenio people and what we trade under Provenio people as. So, separate to that we've got an AI solutions business and an automation professional services business. But in Provenio people, we are a fully-fledged head hunting firm that does both, I guess, gun for high head hunting, but then also we do a little bit of people advisory around recruitment processes and and depending on the the stage and and the size of the company, we run specific projects as well, specifically in the education sector. We have worked across a number of different education organisations across New South Wales and Victoria. In New South Wales, we do a lot with the Catholic Education Office across multiple large dioceses. We've run straight-up head hunting recruitment for them for infrastructure staff, database orientated staff, software engineering, project delivery, but then we've also run special projects where we need to stand up full teams and do capability assessments across those teams. For example, for a federated model across Catholic Education, Archdiocese of Sydney, Broken Bay and Wager, we ran a three-month project to pull NEC out from the organisation who was managing their Peoplesoft function to bring Peoplesoft in house, stand up a team, build a capability framework around what they needed for Peoplesoft development and customisation as well as project delivery. and we ran that end-to-end over the three-month period giving them an entire team by the end of it. Across Victoria at the moment, we've had a little bit of a demand for synergetics consultants. We've been able to provide a range of synergetics people depending on the organisation's needs, but that ranges from SQL developers, first level support through to business analysts who can help some of the schools plan to transition away from synergetic which seems to be a little bit of a recurring theme at the moment. Leanne Taylor: It is. And this is one of the cool things, Simon, that I love uh having these conversations with you because I hear it often across multiple schools that I work with around resourcing and resourcing as we know post Covid is can be quite a challenge. One of the things that I'm hearing a lot of is, you know, perhaps traditional ways of of finding people is to advertise through seek and go through your your normal HR processes, but it's really hard to advertise for a spot for as you say a synergetic skilled person but you only need them one day a week or for a set project. So that's where I think the gap in the market is and you guys fill it beautifully is that you not only do the short-term placements, you can also do the long-term team planning as well. But today I think it was really focusing on you know, what you can offer schools in that short-term placement and I know with some of the engagements we're working on, it's cases when you know, you've got a staff member, a sys admin or the printer managers is going on leave for four weeks and there's a gap within that team and we know most of the the education IT teams run quite lean most of the time. So to have a man down or out of a particular seat for a period of time can add a lot of extra work for the other team members there but also maybe have some gaps in skill set as well. So maybe touch on some of those short-term engagements and skills that you can provide. I know you touched on synergetics and the BA, you know, what other things are you able to to offer schools on a short-term basis? Simon: So, you make a good point at the end, the hiring in general can be quite challenging. We we don't suggest we replace entire capability for hiring for schools. I think it's important for branding to always have a direct channel to the market. Unfortunately, the reality of that is it often creates more work than outcome. So you put up an ad, your reputation then stems on being able to get back to every single applicant and unfortunately history has taught us that general applicants you you're looking at luck of the draw and you've probably got less than 1% of actually relevant talent that you need. So more often than not organisations are creating a little bit of risk when they do do that and while we encourage to have your own direct channels, you've just got to be mindful about the amount of work you're committing to when you do set that up. When we kind of separate ourselves and call ourselves a head hunting firm, we typically don't advertise any of the roles we source for. So for schools, it comes down to the specific problem that they have. Like, you know, synergetics we knew was a specific problem, so we built a virtual bench in that in that regard to go, okay, well when can we call on people, how many of these people are open to working full-time or how many days can they contribute a week and we just share that transparently. So with with one of the schools we're dealing with at the moment, we have somebody who's deployed two days a week who can do up to four and that's kind of on the school to to utilise that as they see fit but then we can also Leanne Taylor: I think that's actually a really good use case as well, Simon because there's a lot of schools uh with that requirement for a synergetic skill set and you know, what we're really excited to be able to share with with our customers is that that resource can become a known person through, you know, three or four different schools and has that education experience and can then not be on call so to speak, but be available as schools have that requirement come up. So, I'm really excited to be working with you on that shared resource model as well where a school can can engage uh with that resource and have them, you know, come in and and solve a few problems if it's two days a week or or for a set project and then disappear and and go and add value to another school and then can come back down the track when that that school has another requirement and that person's now familiar and known. So that's an exciting thing. Simon: The point is, no assignment for us, when I want assignment is typically the same. So where we kind of add the most value is it really depends on on the outcome that the the school's seeking. And every scenario is different, every budget is different, every time frame is different and you know, sense of urgency around what they need to do and when they need to get it done by. in the current case that we're talking about, they've had a backlog of of requirements that haven't been able to be touched while also trying to plan for something for the future. So it's a very specific resource to find, you know, they asked for a unicorn and low and behold we delivered one. Uh had to find a synergetics person who can do the SQL development but then also run the BRDs for for a plan to move away from from that uh you know, having the combination of data analytics but then also business analysis skills to to have as much impact as they're going to need there. The point is look that these people exist out there, it's just a, you know, it's a it's a very specific data driven approach to find these people and know that they're good which for us is is really our differentiator. So as head hunters first and foremost, it doesn't start with with searching for people, it starts with understanding the problem with the school and and what their specific challenges and and what a solution could look like. Then we seek to find the right level of talent to contribute to that. In some instances, we might have an answer for 90% of the problem. but if you put up an ad, you're probably going to get an answer for maybe 5% of the problem and invest a significant amount of time to work that out. So we always advise organisations to use us in conjunction with their direct methods. Don't come to us once you've failed in the direct method because the best person for the job needs to be explored at the same time as when you when you're doing your own direct search if that makes sense. Leanne Taylor: Which leads us into how does a typical engagement work with Provenio. So a customer comes and says I've got a a gap or I've got a resource I need to fill or a seat that I need to fill for a certain amount of time. What does a typical engagement look like with you Simon and how does that commercially sort of unfold? Simon: Yeah, look it it depends on the how that school buys. So we we run a few different models. Some schools prefer to manage to have an existing contingent labour higher pool that they they practice where they they want contractors in there. In those scenarios we set up a service agreement specifically around labour high staff under direct management but then we absorb all of the employment liability for those staff. So any fair work issues and workplace injury if they ever existed, they don't have to worry about that. They kind of we we cover all the insurances. The other mode is down a services agreement in terms of professional services. So where we we've had a master services agreement but then we can toggle people on and off on a statement of work basis as opposed to, you know, a six-month contractor agreement. It's kind of minute differences between them in the in the scheme of things but it really comes down to their back office and how procurement want to want to buy those things. So we can be flexible to make it easier for the hiring manager. Some organisations we find have headcount restrictions at times so they don't want to hire a contractor but then when we frame it up as services and go down the statement of work path, they've got discretionaryx responsibility or permission to to spend money viax if it's pure services. So we set that up according to how they want to buy and how urgent it is. Leanne Taylor: Fantastic. And so what are some fun things coming up? Are you have you got some people on the bench so the education guys can use. I know we've spoken about BAs in the past, we spoke about sys admins. what's some of the pool of people that you can offer our education customers at the moment? Simon: Yeah, so we we constantly sit people in in buckets and that's basically on demand. So for education specific, we do have a specific synergetic bucket where we've got people on on that bench per se but generally as well we go by discipline so there's software engineering, project delivery, project delivery covers both project management and business analysis, change management as well. And then we have specific areas like cyber. Cyber is quite broad actually. We've got some good people on the bench that's specifically around cloud security assessment but then we've got some that do more strategy consulting. That doesn't span just across education. It spans quite corporate. I think there's similar challenges everywhere. Education specifically has its own challenges, you know, you've got vulnerable people, you know, minors and then the data is has a whole another level of of requirements. So the point is we understand the differences of those things. So the cyber people that we have available for our banking clients versus our education clients, we understand the difference in data requirements per se. Leanne Taylor: And Simon, you mentioned budget before and I know we touched on earlier in the in the call about the two different ways that you can work these projects and one of them being a service, professional services engagement which has a different sort of OPEX spend as opposed to the head hunting kind of traditional procurement. A lot of people and we hear this often as well when you go to to HR and go, oh no, they're going to go through their traditional seek processes and what have you because they don't want to pay the fee, the head hunting fee. Can you put some light on that and and have some conversation around, is that a misconception that a lot of people think, oh recruit a head hunter, I'm going to have to pay exorbitant fees for that person? What can we be educating our IT teams that we're talking to now to position that with HR? So, while with Provenio people it's not necessarily a huge price tag and and things like that. So that's a common misconception I think I find with a lot of people in procurement is that people placement comes with a big price tag. So can you explain or elaborate on that for us? Simon: Yeah, absolutely. I think... Leanne Taylor: I know you're very expensive, you're so expensive like you know, you're worth your weight in gold Simon so you know. Not diluting that, but you know. Simon: No, no, it's a fair comment. I think for us we we're actually, you know, one we're not expensive in the consulting space. We're reasonable and and there's a specific reason for that and and my personal preference, I've run relationships with organisations for 10 years plus. If you're too expensive, then there's always going to be a better option out there. That's one aspect. So we always try to be reasonable but also sustainable as a business to be able to provide that service. That's one aspect. But you you asked a good question around how do you communicate that to your internal staff, to your HR departments and whatnot. I think the biggest difference and what a lot of people don't put value on that I see day in day out is the fact that we are outcome only. So you're only paying when you're happy with the person and you're happy with the skill set you're getting in front of you. And I think that's probably the biggest differentiator in terms of what happens when you try and do something yourself. If you had to put a cost on every person's time in reading CVs, speaking to candidates that have applied, getting back to them, and then the hiring manager's involvement in reviewing or interviewing, we condense that whole piece down. So we take away all the application element, we take away all the initial assessing. If we send through three profiles to look at, one might be from our bench, two might be from the market, we've considered 30 other applicants and we do all that for free. And we do that all at no risk. No one has to pay for that until they're actually happy with who they've interviewed, who they've seen in front of them. That in my mind has always justified a price tag that comes with the recruitment. We operate, you know, somewhere between, depending on volumes, we operate somewhere between 12 and 20% margins. Now that's always manageable. But then also what we have is the ability to negotiate with these people. So if you speak to someone direct from market, they're always going to, you get a higher uptake on applications for an advertised rate and their expectations are always at the upper end of the advertised rate. We are master negotiators. So we know what's going to get them over the line, what's also going to make them a flight risk. We know what the market's paying. So there's no point in paying someone 20% below market because they're desperate for a job if they're going to leave in three months when the market picks up because then you're back to square one and you've got all the time to train and all those sorts of things. So we consider all those aspects, but it comes back down to the fact that we are a success-only business. We don't charge retainer fees anymore because we back our delivery. Leanne Taylor: Well, thank you for your time today. It's always a good chat, Simon, with you and I'm really excited to be working with Provenio partners and I think you guys have a lot of work to do with our education customers and we look forward to sharing this with the wider community and we're available anytime if anyone would like to have a chat. So, thank you very much and we'll see you on the next Tech Talk. Leanne Taylor: Thank you for listening to Tech Talks with Taylor. I'm Leanne Taylor and here at Taylormade Sales, our mission is to keep you, our valued customers, up-to-date and informed about the latest technology innovations that can support and elevate your business. Stay curious, stay connected, and we'll see you next time.  

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