How Cpl has unlocked €1M worth of business value with smarter processes.

Building a profitable business isn’t just about winning new clients. Leaders also need to ensure they make the best use of their resources. And that’s exactly what Cpl is doing.

By adopting new digital tools, the recruitment and talent solution specialist has laid the foundations it needs for efficient growth. Processes are faster. Costs are lower. And relationships are stronger. Cpl’s transformation has already:

• Delivered €1M worth of business value thanks to greater automation and integration 
• Improved the efficiency of some recruitment processes by 75%
• Contributed to a 45% increase in the number of permanent and contingent placements. 

“As skills shortages intensify, we need to scale our processes and teams quickly and cost-effectively to support more clients,” said Lorna Conn, CEO at Cpl. “With Salesforce, we can maximise productivity and source the right talent at the right time for hundreds of organisations around the globe.”

Let’s take a closer look at how Salesforce Customer 360 is helping Cpl transform its processes, empower its teams, and fast-track its growth goals.

Recruitment is a volatile market with global events and economies constantly impacting the demand for talent. Cpl has successfully navigated this complex and competitive market for more than 30 years, connecting hundreds of thousands of candidates with clients around the world.

Cpl has grown considerably since it was founded in Ireland in 1989, and now has 20+ brands and 40+ offices across 18 countries, including Germany, Poland, and the UK. With plans to break into new markets, Cpl needs to ensure it can scale efficiently and cost-effectively.

“We have big ambitions for international expansion and future acquisitions, and need digital tools that can grow with us,” said Rob Daly, Chief Customer Officer at Cpl. “With Salesforce, we can support multiple teams and brands on a single platform. It gives us amazing flexibility and scalability.”

Cpl started its Salesforce journey in 2010, and the platform is now at the heart of its business. From searching vacancies and matching candidates to onboarding clients and tracking opportunities, Salesforce helps Cpl operate smarter and adapt faster. “We are using technology and data to boost our competitive advantage,” said Conn. “We can now respond more quickly to changing talent trends and client needs.”

This agility has already helped Cpl power ahead with its growth goals. Cpl’s group talent network consists of 2.3 million candidates. Every month, its staffing and recruitment businesses source 35,000+ applications locally and internationally, which helps to ensure clients have access to the best talent. 

Cpl employs more than 16,500 people on client sites and has placed 29,000 people into employment across EMEA in 2022. As the largest recruitment staffing and talent solutions provider in Ireland with an annual turnover of more than €765 million, Cpl provides talent services to many of the world’s most high-profile organisations.

To support its expansion plans, Cpl migrated to Hyperforce in 2022. The cloud native architecture enables the group to scale more easily whilst also strengthening data security and regulatory compliance.

Speed is everything in recruitment – and Cpl needs to achieve it on a massive scale. In the average month, the group places 2,000+ candidates and receives 35,000+ applications. But recruitment can be very complicated – especially in specialist and regulated sectors such as healthcare. “We are constantly looking for ways to reduce the time to hire for our clients,” said Daly. “With digital tools, we can boost efficiency without compromising quality.”

The group’s internal IT team used Salesforce Platform to develop custom workflows that automate repetitive recruitment tasks, saving Cpl both time and money. For example, it has reduced the time taken to recruit new employees by 40% for one healthcare client by simplifying data capture and candidate evaluation. Cpl has also introduced a digitalised process to ensure the right checks are completed before an applicant starts a new job. This has reduced the onboarding compliance process for healthcare professionals from up to 16 weeks to less than four weeks – a time saving of 75%.

“We want to be smart with everyone’s time. Every click that we can remove from a task makes a big difference to productivity,” said Tom Brady, Associate Director of Projects at Cpl. “With Salesforce, we can simplify more processes and connect more systems.”

For example, Cpl has integrated Salesforce with two external communications platforms, which means its teams can now communicate with their candidates in a streamlined and efficient manner. “We can dial a candidate’s number with a single click and create tailored lists for sharing SMS updates,” added Brady. These integrations and other features have delivered business value worth around €1M in the space of 18 months.

*for some healthcare candidates.

**taken for completing some candidate checks.

Great relationships are built on great experiences. And relationships are critical in recruitment. Cpl has worked with some of its clients for more than 15 years and is increasing the delivery of rolling talent programmes instead of individual job placements. “We want to ensure that we always put customers first – whether it’s our clients, candidates, or our own consultants,” said Daly.

To deliver connected journeys and personalised experiences at scale, Cpl needs 360-degree visibility of its relationships. With Salesforce, it can unify client and candidate information – from CVs and interview outcomes to sales opportunities and contract renewals.

To create a single source of the truth, Cpl has integrated the platform with 90+ internal and external sources, including job websites, finance tools, and applicant tracking systems. These integrations not only improve visibility but also efficiency. For example, Cpl can automatically update candidate profiles and send reference requests.

Cpl’s IT team is continuously adding new features to personalise the recruitment lifecycle. For example, consultants can now create their own candidate shortlists and send tailored newsletters to clients to showcase new talent. “With Salesforce, we can make recruitment more proactive instead of reactive,” said Brady.

The IT team uses Trailhead to learn about new Salesforce capabilities and explore new ideas. “We’ve set up a Salesforce Academy to encourage people to expand their skills and complete formal certifications with on-demand learning trails,” explained Brady. “By upskilling our team, we can unlock more efficiencies for the business.”

The competition for talent is getting tougher. And that means organisations need the inside track on recruitment and employment trends. Meeting this increased demand for data was becoming increasingly difficult for Cpl’s Talent Evolution Group (TEG), which provides managed solutions to help clients address skill shortages and source temporary workers. “We were living off spreadsheets, which meant information had to be re-entered into other systems,” said Aine Fanning, Managing Director at TEG. “We needed to find an easier and better way to share reports and insights with our clients.”

Cpl’s internal developers used Trailhead to find new ways to customise Salesforce workflows to meet the needs of TEG and its clients. As a result, TEG can now capture and analyse data at every step of the recruitment journey, which means it can spot and share trends that are shaping the future of work. For example, it can track how skill sets, salaries, and diversity strategies are evolving in a specific sector, which helps clients compete more effectively for the best talent. “We can see if clients are attracting candidates from specific geographies or universities and help them rethink their graduate programmes and job descriptions,” said Fanning.

TEG also shares insights that enable clients to continuously improve the recruitment experience. It uses Salesforce to automatically send surveys to candidates and to identify potential process improvements. “It helps us spot the red flags; for example, if there’s a common drop-out point for candidates,” said Fanning. “With Salesforce, we can have more informed conversations with our clients and get more value from our data.”

Using Salesforce AI Einstein, for example, Cpl can predict which jobs are more likely to be filled. “If no interviews have been set up within the first 20 days of a vacancy being advertised, we now know that the client is unlikely to ever find the perfect candidate,” added Fanning.

To unlock even more business intelligence, the group has started using CRM Analytics, which will enable leaders to better understand candidate turnover rates, placement volumes, and budgets.

To ensure data privacy, the group uses Salesforce Shield, which means it can encrypt fields and sensitive candidate and client information from malicious API attacks. Cpl also uses the solution to create transaction policies for log-in events and reports.

To maximise growth, business leaders need 360-degree visibility of the sales pipeline. But this can be difficult to achieve when opportunities are split across multiple brands and regions. Cpl uses Sales Cloud to connect new business leads and insights across its global operations. “For the first time, we have a group-wide view of our sales pipeline and performance,” said Daly.

Better pipeline visibility means Cpl can be more targeted with upselling conversations, marketing campaigns, and resource planning. Sales leaders can assess how long tenders take and the effort required to close deals. “We can see which members of the team contributed to a win and celebrate their success,” explained Daly.

As the group targets new markets and develops new client solutions, it will be able to use Sales Cloud to understand which strategies are the most successful and prioritise future digital investments.

Cpl is already looking at using Experience Cloud to create personalised recruitment portals for clients and to provide candidates with more self-service options. “With Salesforce, we don’t just have a great platform, we have a great partnership. And that makes transformation and innovation easier and faster,” said Brady.

By fast-tracking growth and boosting efficiency, Cpl will be able to help more organisations around the world access the talent they need to thrive. “We want to set everyone up for success and that means tackling skills gaps and staff shortages,” said Conn. “With Salesforce, we can help more clients and candidates face the future of work with confidence.”