UNITING AMBITION

“We had an idea of what we wanted; Salesforce is now making it a reality.”

ADAM SHAW, FOUNDER & MANAGING DIRECTOR OF UNITING AMBITION

Recruitment gets connected with Salesforce

Uniting Ambition has turned recruitment on its head. Instead of selling to its clients, Uniting Ambition collaborates with them via online communities. Instead of reacting to skills and staffing requirements, it pre-empts them with on-demand talent banks and custom apps.

The company’s pioneering approach has spawned a wave of success. In 2012, the volume of vacancies, placements and prospect calls handled by Uniting Ambition all soared by 200 per cent. 2012 was the very same year Uniting Ambition deployed Salesforce.

“We had an idea of what we wanted; Salesforce is now making it a reality,” says Uniting Ambition’s Founder and Managing Director Adam Shaw. The idea was to forge deeper connections with clients across the entire business. Social technology helped the company make this idea a reality.

“With social technology, we can bring our clients together in a community and interact with them more effectively and frequently,” says Shaw. “And the more we know about our clients, the more we can improve our services to meet their recruitment needs.”

To support its vision for a more collaborative approach to recruitment, Uniting Ambition deployed Salesforce Communities powered by Salesforce Chatter and Sales Cloud. It also went one step further and began building business apps with the Salesforce Platform. David Axon, Uniting Ambition’s CIO, comments: “Salesforce was the only solution that could provide an end-to-end solution for our business and deliver the social technology that we needed.”

“Salesforce united our internal teams and processes, improving both productivity and efficiency. Now we're helping our clients tap into the same benefits.”

ADAM SHAW, FOUNDER & MANAGING DIRECTOR OF UNITING AMBITION

A community of talent

Business development, account management, client relationships and business intelligence are all channelled through Salesforce with every member of the company’s 80-plus team now a user. “With Salesforce, everything and everyone is connected,” comments Shaw.

Salesforce Chatter, an enterprise social networking solution, is fundamental to enabling these connections – both with colleagues and with clients. It pulls and publishes information from Sales Cloud and Uniting Ambition’s Salesforce Platform apps to provide central visibility – whether it involves vacancies, candidates or client meetings.

“We used to have weekly business development meetings, but there’s no need for these now we have Sales Cloud and Chatter. For example, everyone in the company is aware if a consultant has a meeting booked with a client and can flag additional opportunities or information that might be helpful,” explains Shaw.

Uniting Ambition also became an early adopter of Chatter Communities, which allows its employees to collaborate with partners and clients within the Chatter social apps. Quickly long and inefficient email chains were replaced by social groups where employees could leave posts, share files and collaborate all in one place.

Apps get hired

Salesforce Platform is also a key component of Uniting Ambition’s ground-breaking talent banks. Powered by Talent on Demand - an app built on Salesforce Platform - the banks make it faster and easier for clients to match the right candidates to the right vacancies.

Talent on Demand is one of 20 apps that the company plans to release to its clients via its new cloud-based model. The first app has already been a resounding success, generating a six-figure revenue return during the second quarter of 2013 alone.

“Sales Cloud united our internal teams and processes, improving both productivity and efficiency. Now with Salesforce Platform and the AppExchange, we are helping our clients tap into the same benefits,” explains Shaw.

By enabling its clients to achieve their ambitions, the recruitment company will be able to achieve its own ambitions too. “Salesforce has unified the business in its quest to create 10,000 opportunities with 300 clients by 2016. We’re already working with 96 per cent of our target client base, and have increased our activity levels by 149 percent in the last year,” says Shaw.