How Leading UK Organisations Achieve Substantial MSP Savings: Five Proven Strategies
HR & Talent leaders across the UK face an undeniable reality: traditional recruitment approaches are failing to deliver the speed, cost efficiency, and compliance organisations demand.
According to Staffing Industry Analysts, most large enterprises now leverage a Managed Service Provider (MSP) to secure a competitive advantage, while their competitors struggle with outdated hiring models.
Evidence for the impact of an MSP is compelling:
- MSPs typically deliver circa 15% across the contract lifecycle, often significantly more, by increasing hiring efficiency and dramatically reducing fill times.
- MSPs can significantly reduce time to hire – our clients typically see reductions up to 40% depending on maturity.
- MSPs streamline repetitive administrative tasks and eliminate inefficiencies, achieving an average 30% better operational efficiency.
The message is clear – in today’s economic climate, an MSP is no longer optional; it’s your competitive advantage. But how does an effective MSP achieve these outcomes?
Read this analysis to understand the top business benefits in action, with real examples of how Pontoon powered by Adecco delivers for clients across the UK.
MSPs Reduce Costs
Why this matters:
45% of employers expect their financial situation to worsen over the next 12 months.
With businesses under pressure to navigate increasing cost pressures, the burden often falls on HR and procurement teams to reduce the cost of hiring. Achieving more with your recruitment investment is essential.
Business outcomes:
MSPs can reduce hiring costs through improved rate negotiation, supplier performance tracking, identifying and capturing spend leakage, streamlining processes, getting the most out of technology, and lowering costly time-to-hire.
How we deliver:
London Borough of Barking & Dagenham needed to evolve their recruitment offering to meet critical flexible staffing needs at the best possible value. Our hybrid MSP offered a strategic and efficient approach, utilising direct hiring for most categories combined with a fully managed supply chain (77 active suppliers) for niche roles.
This approach achieved 100% fulfilment, reduced attrition, and lowered time to hire. We also reduced off-contract spend and improved cost control through the retention of 94% of the supply chain at negotiated rates – ongoing average savings of £2 million a year allow the client to reinvest in critical frontline services.
They said: “The MSP is greatly reducing complexity, providing savings and efficiencies as well as ensuring a faster service.”
MSPs Help You Hire Faster and Better
Why this matters:
The average time to hire is 4.9 weeks across all industries, regions, and job functions.
When hiring at volume, even small inefficiencies can extend this timeline. Lengthy hiring timelines don’t just increase costs – they can decrease overall business output as teams become stretched and productivity falls.
Business outcomes:
MSPs can achieve 30% better operational efficiency through aligned processes.
MSPs streamline recruitment, drawing on data, tech, and human expertise to reduce time-to-hire and improve talent quality, offering scalability and flexibility through centralised workflows and better-aligned processes.
How we deliver:
BlueLight Commercial needed a recruitment partner who could seamlessly transfer large numbers of contingent workers from a previous supplier and fulfil critical roles across 25+ public sector clients.
After successfully onboarding over 700 contingent workers, our centralised, data-driven sourcing model delivered 1,400+ skilled hires – enabling frontline services to maintain operational continuity during peak demand periods.
They said: “The framework has helped to simplify processes and create efficiencies, ensuring a fast, simple, and cost-effective service.”
MSPs Minimise Risk
Why this matters:
IR35 misclassification affects 43% of contractors.HMRC penalties for misclassified contractors can run into the millions of pounds. One government body was fined £36 million in 2023.
Business outcomes:
A structured MSP approach reduces misclassification, audit risk, and compliance concerns through comprehensive compliance reviews and an understanding of current regulations. Our structured compliance framework has achieved zero IR35 challenges across our client portfolio over the past 24 months.
How we deliver:
When a major global bank needed a flexible and cost-effective way to hire contingent workers, Pontoon and Adecco stepped in. The client sought to streamline the hiring process for contingent workers while ensuring compliance with all relevant rules.
Our unified approach brought together experts in design, sales, pricing, and finance, offering a flexible MSP that improves the hiring process and ensures compliance through unified governance and centralised management. The client is now considering expansion into new regions – with an MSP programme built on reliable governance, we can support their growth ambitions.
MSPs Help You Gain Insights
Why this matters:
Businesses can see a 25% improvement in hiring outcomes when integrating technology and supplier performance data. Our internal research also shows 90% of MSP users cite analytics as a key capability, while 71% are moving toward predictive insights.
Business outcomes:
Real-time data insights can elevate businesses, allowing better decision-making across workforce, spend, and performance. This could include better forecasting of future hiring demand and the impact of market trends on talent availability.
How we deliver:
Our client had a large and decentralised reporting suite that was causing confusion and taking time away from critical activities. To address this, we streamlined their reporting process by consolidating redundant and unnecessary reports, introducing new operational and management dashboards, and implementing a business intelligence tool.
This overhaul reduced the number of reports by 70% and significantly enhanced their reporting efficiency and access to data – ultimately facilitating better decision-making and strategic direction across the whole organisation.
MSPs Help You Scale Up Easily
Why this matters:
72% of HR leaders say they struggle to keep up with workforce agility demands.
When demand spikes, businesses need teams who can quickly access the right talent, fast. They also need to be equipped to scale back without losing capability.
Business outcomes:
MSPs are designed to flex to workforce demand, drawing on talented teams that can leverage both national and local resources, combined with established tech. By utilising the full power of an MSP, businesses can see quicker results and prepare for hiring surges more tactically.
How we deliver:
Bentley Motors faced a critical need for an agile recruitment partner who could quickly scale to fluctuating hiring needs across niche, skilled roles.
By combining a national approach with an on-site presence, our MSP can quickly adapt to meet the client’s needs, including unique skills assessments and training to widen the talent pool. Our effective MSP solution has successfully maintained 950 workers at peak – we also made a key contribution to the client’s business goals by growing the workforce by 300% to manage their new SUV launch.
From Operational Challenge to Strategic Advantage
The traditional approach to hiring is no longer fit for purpose. Businesses today need to flex with market demands, remain compliant amid tightening regulations, and deliver better outcomes with fewer resources.
You’ve seen how the right MSP can help by slashing costs, speeding up hiring, mitigating risk, and providing the insights to stay ahead.
Now’s the time to take control of your contingent workforce and discover its full potential with Pontoon powered by Adecco.
Not Your Ordinary MSP
Pontoon powered by Adecco delivers what standalone MSPs cannot: the combined strength of global MSP technology leadership and the UK’s most established staffing network.
This dual capability means faster talent access, deeper market insights, and proven scalability that pure play MSPs cannot match.
From financial services to healthcare, manufacturing to engineering, and local government to IT – we’ve delivered MSP excellence across all the key sectors that drive the UK economy.
Take Your Next Step
Secure your competitive advantage. Book a strategic workforce assessment with our MSP specialists to discover specific opportunities for cost reductions and your personalised implementation timeline.
Most clients identify an average of 20% in potential annual savings from their first consultation.
Book Your ConsultationTake Your Next Step
As the recognised industry leader in MSP solutions, we’ve created a comprehensive MSP playbook to share:
- Our proven 10-component framework for MSP excellence
- Implementation strategies based on successful global deployments
- Industry-leading technology partnerships that enhance our AI and innovation capabilities
- ROI measurement methodologies validated across industries
- Next-generation workforce innovations already delivering results