GREAT RECOVERY IN STAFFING HAS STALLED AND FLATTENED

Nelson Family of Companies (NFC) had flat revenue of $108M in Q3; equal to last year.  Although hours increased 5.5% over the same period in 2010, we continued to invest in staff and technology increasing operating expenses by 8.3%. 2011 YTD revenue for NFC was $331M.   Increases in WorkforceLogic (WFL) and all our staffing divisions contributed to the growth. All good news aside, the business recovery and major revenue/gross profit increases we experienced over the past 18 months have stalled.

Early signs in October continue to indicate a slowing in the hiring of contingent workers.  Our business is extremely sensitive to the economy. In my experience, it is clearly the lack of meaningful policies and government leadership that has contributed to the erosion of corporate confidence and new job creation. I expect the NFC business and our financial performance will remain flat for the remainder of the year. The addition of significant new customers in Q4 could change that in a positive way very quickly, however.

NFC STAFFING ADDS SOLID CUSTOMERS IN Q3

Congratulations to Lisa Crossett and her East Bay Nelson Staffing team for landing Contra Costa County as a new customer. Congratulations also to Tony Rado for bringing in Lego Universe for Nelson Interactive. Melanie Quandt and her Nelson Technology (NT) team continue to build volume, significantly exceeding last year’s numbers! NT is up 65% on temp GP YOY and is at 90% of their 2011 direct hire goal. Driving this growth are new Nelson Technology opportunities, including Stanford Hospital, Callidus, Plum District, Thomas Keller, Intrexon, and BNBuilders.  There continues to be “great demand” for talent in mobile, open source, and automation development.

Nelson Interactive has experienced terrific momentum as well, adding four significant new clients this year. Recently returning from the Game Developers Conference in Austin, Texas, this division experienced  a great deal of interest from both potential clients and job candidates. Kudos to Holly Bravenec, Leesa Dreo, Chris Chrisley and Tony Rado for their work at the conference.

This month, Nelson Staffing, our commercial division, had its highest weekly hours billed in years… longer than I can remember! The Fairfield team surpassed their 2011 annual budget in August.  Congratulations!

Nelson & Associates continues to experience high demand for finance and accounting professionals!  The Direct Hire performance has been outstanding… up 82% in YTD Revenue in 2011 compared to the same period last year.

UP AND COMING… EDUCATION AND NETWORKING EVENTS IN OCTOBER

Nelson Technology is hosting an event at District Wine Bar in SOMA on October 20th. We have an interesting “Tech Talk” planned titled “Ruthless Collaboration – Agile & Extreme,” featuring the Vice President of Technology from Truecar and demonstrations by Do.com, a subsidiary of Salesforce.com. The second networking event is Nelson Staffing’s final seminar of the year, “Trending Up,” in Palo Alto on October 26th.  To learn more or to RSVP, please visit our Nelson Company events page.

WORKFORCELOGIC FEATURED AT SIA’S CWS AND RISK MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE

The combined Contingent Workforce Summit and Risk Management conference was held  in Las Vegas early October. Scott Brewer hosted the SOW panel that also featured Cyndi Scallion from Cox Communications. Cathy Wingate chaired the Global Risk panel and Grace Soriano-Abad from NetApp provided solid insights. Melissa Oliva and Glen Tolleson both led very successful roundtable sessions that highlighted WFL capabilities and differentiators in both MSP and compliance. WorkforceLogic’s panels and break-out sessions at the conference were well attended. Traffic and customer interest at theWorkforceLogic conference booth was “exceptional” this year… New business opportunities for MSP/VMS and compliance exceeded expectations!!!   Thanks to the WFL team/staff for this success!

WORKFORCELOGIC 7.1 ESSENTIAL (VMS) WILL BE RELEASED IN NOVEMBER 

This highly anticipated release highlights our enhanced user-friendly interface and our global timekeeping capabilities.  Details to follow next month.

WORKFORCELOGIC CHANNEL PROGRAM TAKING OFF

Under the leadership of Dale Yoger, the WFL Channel program is expanding as a result of continued interest from strong regional staffing firms. Opportunities for the MSP/VMS offering have been traditionally focused on $5M to $35M annual spend customers but are now expanding to even larger spend prospects. There is significant interest in the WFL sales training offering that is designed to improve the knowledge base and skill set of the Channel partner sales force. This has received rave reviews and interest from current partners.

iWORKGLOBAL.com

The US and UK based partners of iWorkGlobal.com have made tremendous strides in the past few  months…resulting in soon-to-be ten end user customers in over 16 countries. The provision of employer of record, compliance, recruitment and payroll services by iWorkGlobal will soon be expanded to include comprehensive Expat consulting services.

GARY’S RECOMMENDATIONS

50/50 was a solid and entertaining film with great performances by all…. a story that tugs at the heart and underscores the importance of good supportive friends during the struggle with cancer. MUST see!

Ides of March, a movie with a star-studded cast, Clooney and Gosling, was very interesting, yet slow at times. Worth the ticket on a rainy day.

Watch the SF 49ers as they continue their march to the NFC West Division championship.  The win over the Buccaneers and Lions was worth watching!

More Later…

Gary