Growth LIes in Strategic Partnerships in Face of Fierce Competition

Founded in 2001, Populus Group staff possess 10 to 15 years in staffing experience from the president down. The major MBE client for Navistar credits its success to a beneficial partnership with the corporation and has grown with its mentor every step of the way.

“It’s an account that we’re very proud and honored to be a part of,” said Ed Herrera, director of workforce management solutions at Populus. “We hope to mentor and replicate what they’ve done in their industry within our industry as we grow, adapt and offer different items and change our product line as well. That’s a model that we would like to duplicate.”

The black and Hispanic-owned strategic staffing company offers a vendor-managed solution. In addition to its corporate office in Troy, Michigan, it also has locations in Chicago, Seattle and Baltimore. For Navistar, Populus handles the vendor-managed community that provides staffing.

Although it does not currently handle European or overseas markets, it is working on scaling up and expanding to the European side through a potential European opportunity based in London with its strategic partner Allegis Group, one of the largest staffing and vendor-managed companies in the world.

“It’s similar to the strategic partnership we have with Navistar. We have our own within the industry to allow us to grow,” said Herrera.

Herrera does not disguise the intensity of challenges facing the staffing industry.

“The competition is fierce in this industry, always has been and will be,” he said. “We are strategically partnering with our customers on their individual needs rather than trying to influence their needs with what we have to offer. We want to adapt and change with our customers. As Magic Johnson said, we’re nimble enough to do that and can scale up or down according to our customers’ needs very quickly.”

Annual revenue at the privately held company is in the $50 million to $100 million range. In terms of its work with Navistar, there are several projects through which it has assisted the company. It has provided more visibility to Navistar’s actual contractor spend and assisted in identifying where spend on contractors goes. Opportunities also exist for consulting services in terms of rate negotiations and alignment, where Navistar may have paid above market value for certain contractors.

“That’s what we do day in and day out,” said Herrera. “As all companies are these days, Navistar is looking for cost savings in every area. One of the areas is contractor spend, whether it’s aligning the right rates or putting other programs in place and monitoring and providing more visibility to overtime spend. By having this process in place, we can provide real-time data to Navistar for management to make those decisions. We assist with the manpower for them to be able to deliver on those contracts.”

Within workforce management, Herrera does not seek talent, but instead works with best-in-class suppliers for specific needs, such as engineering, accounting and finance or legal. Once the suppliers are on board providing consultants and contractors to Navistar, Herrera’s team monitors their performance on a quarterly basis. Currently, the staffing model provides customers such as Navistar flexibility to continue to seek additional projects or expand their own product lines while using the staffing model to either gather the talent they need so they can remain competitive or scale down if the project is lost or not funded.

“All staffing companies right now are being impacted by the economic conditions,” as Herrera put it. “Some companies prefer to increase their contractor spend at this point in time, while others have cut their contractor spend entirely. Navistar is balancing the need for the contractors and the special skill sets that they may not have internally. They’re balancing that with what they have internally right now.”

Spending U.S. dollars on U.S. talent is a big push by the current Obama Administration, reducing outsourcing, Herrera added.

“There will always be a need for outsourcing some needs and we understand that. We have to be nimble and ahead of the curve as far as identifying potential customers that are bringing that contractor base back to the U.S.,” he said. “We have to reach out and touch them as we have with Navistar.”

Populus works with suppliers both annually and quarterly to improve their performance and guide them in the right direction.

“If we have to, we will bring on specialty niche suppliers,” said Herrera. “We are always talking to new suppliers, new contract houses that are nimble and adapting to this environment and growing despite the economic conditions right now.”

Populus aspires to deliver the best quality individuals to each individual need through the competitive bid process and make its suppliers better, Herrera added.

“We understand that we are only as good as the supplier community providing the individuals, so we want that supplier community as strong as it can be and we want to work with it and grow their business as well. A lot of those suppliers are minority-owned businesses that are young and hungry and want to deliver or overdeliver. We are not only in a true partnership with Navistar, we are in a true partnership with our suppliers as well.” Populus strives to partner customers with other MBEs that provide a different skill set that it may not, said Herrera. Moving forward, Populus is working on offering more services that fellow MBE competitors do not, such as H-1B visa services, which it developed in-house. In turn, other MBE partners bring it new accounts because they do not provide the service offering.

Despite not having previously worked on programs as large as the scale of the one at Navistar, Navistar trusted Populus and allowed it to expand and grow together.

“We have grown immensely internally from a knowledge and delivery perspective,” said Herrera. “We are able to consult Navistar on items that we may pick up from the data we’re collecting for them and provide them a true consultative suggestion. Early on, we were not equipped to do that.”

Despite its own internal tools, at Navistar, Populus utilizes Navistar’s internal PeopleSoft services procurement tool. Populus is mindful of Navistar’s unorthodox path to success.

“It is a company with a long, rich history. If you look at their history and their product offerings, they’ve changed along the way, from being in the farming industry to being involved with smaller and bigger vehicles,” said Herrera. “Now they’ve branched out into the defense and military arenas. Navistar is unique in that it has changed, grown, survived and even continued to grow even during the tough times that the country is facing.” Above all else, Herrera encourages MBEs to prepare for any and all opportunities.

“We have to be prepared as an MBE company in case they come,” he emphasized. “As we’re knocking on people’s doors, we have to be prepared for the $100 million contract and not just the $10 million contract. In the past, MBEs - not all - went after the smaller projects. We’re now growing as a community to handle the large contracts out there that other companies and corporations win. We’re going to win those awards and we have to be ready for them. We are prepared.”

 

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