People are an invaluable resource to any company, as it is their performance that helps enterprises grow, innovate and achieve success, fueled by their dedication and sincerity. Thus, HR invariably becomes the backbone of any company as it not only acquires and retains the required personnel that adds value to the company’s growth and development goals but also works to keep employees in top form and their minds focused.
HR Tech solutions have been witnessing widespread demand and recognition as they can help enterprises become more productive and agile while giving them the ability to outsource their work, which in turn helps them achieve their objectives through cost-efficient and personalized solutions.
Quess Corp Limited (Quess) is one of the most promising HR Tech solution providers in 2021 and among the top 10 players in the space. Their client-oriented services and consistent support services make them a premier company, offering a wide range of solutions and one of the most acclaimed in the field. Their long list of satisfied clients not only boasts of their highly specialized, genuine, and committed team but also their exceptional service standards and accuracy.
The Company, the Journey: Quess Corp Limited
Ranked amongst the 50 largest staffing firms globally by Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA), Quess is India’s largest private-sector employer and a leading business services provider, leveraging extensive domain knowledge and future-ready digital platforms to drive client productivity through outsourced solutions. Their passion for delivering exceptional services, augmented by proprietary digital platforms, has firmly established their credentials as the biggest integrated business services provider in the country.
A core value driving their business is consistent efforts towards making the workforce more productive.
Their business strategy is aligned to this as well, and includes training and skill development for better employability, helping job seekers find employment opportunities with ease, digitising workflows, and providing social security benefits to a wider employable population.
Established in 2007 and headquartered in Bengaluru, Quess today has an unmatched geographic presence and scale with many locations across India, Southeast Asia, and North America, backed by technology and domain specialisation to create exceptional service experiences across their clientele. They are also certified as ‘A Great Place to Work’ – a testament to its outstanding culture, people, and processes.
Effective Performance is Preceded by Painstaking Preparation
Brian Tracy
Over the years, Quess has evolved as an integrated business service provider. And, propelled by their people-driven business solutions and world-class tech-enabled services, the company is today the largest private-sector employer in India and amongst the top 50 largest staffing firms in the world.
However, every business faces its own set of challenges, be it limited resources or lack of brand awareness, to name a few. It has not been different for Quess in their journey to where they are today.
Convincing clients to consider outsourcing their people-related processes, considered highly confidential and sensitive, was challenging. A decade ago, the concept of technology-enabled employee and manager self-service portals, the use of interfaces and API services to collect inputs and post outputs was not prevalent, and processes were manual and people dependent.
Primarily known for its extensive experience in staffing, with an intrinsic DNA of technology-led innovation, Quess has been able to build end-to-end digital hire-to-retire solutions and overcome this business challenge. The acquisition of Allsec Technologies, a global leader in HRO outsourcing and Tech solutions, helped further strengthen their portfolio. They achieved their primary goal of providing outsourced payroll services using in-house developed Oracle-based payroll software called Smart when Allsec came on board.
Services Offered by Quess:
Quess provides a host of technology-enabled staffing and managed outsourcing services across processes such as sales and marketing, customer care, aftersales service, back-office operations, manufacturing operations, facilities and security management, HR and F&A operations, IT and mobility services, etc.
With in-house digital capabilities across hiring platforms, Quess works with new-age technologies to enhance operational efficiencies and productivity for its clients. Quess has the most comprehensive suite of digital hire-to-retire HR platforms in the market. Quess, through their various group companies, works with clients from several industries (Retail, Security, Logistics, IT, Facility Management, BFSI) at different levels of maturity (Small, Medium, and Large).
This unmatched exposure to the varied needs of the market has helped Quess develop one of the most effective end-to-end Hire-to-Retire solutions that help drive efficiency and agility through the complete process. Quess has been hiring ~20000 associates every month in recent times for its clients, and it has been possible only because of its efficient process and technology platforms from sourcing, on-boarding and payroll processing, statutory compliance management to employee engagement and benefits programs.
1. Candidate Sourcing, Selection, & Onboarding:
Quess has created an efficient suite of applications that helps organisations run candidate search, selection, and tracking processes efficiently. Our agile Applicant Tracking System (ATS), ReQruit, helps companies manage their hiring process seamlessly. Our two distinct talent marketplace ensures faster and verified availability of talent pool.
You were born to win. But to be a winner, you must plan to win. And expect to win.
Zig Ziglar
- QJobs is India’s most effective blue-collar auto-hiring technology platform. The app currently has over half a million downloads, ~1,100 third-party customers, and 186,000+ jobs.
- Monster.com is one of the leading talent marketplaces in India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. It bridges the gap between job seekers and employers by providing end-to-end online employment solutions, including systematic services for managing job seekers, career management, and recruitment and talent management services.
- PoP is India’s largest paperless candidate onboarding platform helping companies onboard employees digitally.
2. HRMS & Employee productivity and Workforce Management platform
WorQ is a comprehensive workforce management platform helping companies improve the productivity of their blue-collar workforce with over 200,000 MAU (Monthly Average Users). The tool helps employees improve their productivity through:
- Robust employee self-service modules (attendance, leave, claims, HR documents, policies, etc.)
- Online training modules on demand as well as at planned interval
- Digital workflow management and industry-specific productivity tools like task allocation for facilities management staff, tracking task completion, and digital supervision for security staff.
- The platform also offers state-of-the-art employee engagement features with a dedicated employee benefits module – Dash. The curated employee benefits and wellness modules bring exclusive offers for associates through 100+ partnerships across financial well-being products, accommodation solutions, daily needs, and lifestyle products.
- SuperHR is a robust end-to-end HR solution that elevates the employee experience and business value across any organisation and industry vertical. The unique payroll and statutory compliance solutions seamlessly integrate with ERPs to augment existing roles of human resource systems and deliver productivity, scalability, agility, and technology advantages.
3. Payroll
Allsec™ Payroll is a single, integrated, fully automated payroll platform that handles functions from payroll input collection, statutory compliance to the dissemination of post payroll outputs. With over two decades of experience, the platform offers a powerful, error-free, and low-touch Payroll Management System globally.
4. Compliance
Simpliance™ is India’s largest digital platform for automated Statutory Compliance Management, providing technology-based governance, risk, and compliance solutions to businesses to help them comply with Indian Labour laws. The platform offers a cloud-based real-time dashboard, access to India’s largest curated labour law library, real-time tracking of notices, inspections, and licenses, and automated audit modules that help optimise business performance.
Quess is working relentlessly towards providing its clients best-in-class services through continuous innovation. Aspiring to set the benchmark for the entire industry, their commitment to customer satisfaction makes them one of the best in the field and most sought-after companies in their domain.
Factors that put Quess a Mile Ahead of the Competition in the Market and how it plans to stay Ahead of the Curve
Quess believes that there will be a greater emphasis on technology, automation, and experience, and businesses will start focusing on them as a prerequisite for service evaluation. They believe that their HR Tech products, across multiple business units, can drive efficient and effective outcomes for their clients. Some key examples, QJobs and Monster, are discussed below.
There are risk and costs to action. But they are far less than the long-range risks of comfortable inaction.
John F. Kennedy
QJobs is a talent marketplace for blue-collar/entry-level jobs, enabling companies to hire verified candidates with matching skill sets faster by automating the process of screening and skill verification. Job postings on QJobs can be customised using specific screening criteria/questions along with skill verification requirements. QJobs automatically screens candidates based on the set criteria, which helps eliminate the redundant and time-consuming screening process.
Qjobs will soon be launching ‘Interview from Home’, a remote video interview module embedded in the app that helps candidates attend interviews from home. It will also help speed up the interview process.
Monster.com, a Quess company, helps recruiters source candidates based on job descriptions using a feature called auto-match. It enables recruiters to get the best-suited candidates for a particular job requirement.
Along with this, Monster will be shortly rolling out a slew of new functionalities:
- Ranking applications for job postings
- Automating the first round of interviews for mandatory requirements
- Connecting the recruiter and seeker for video interviews via the platform
Quess has been evolving to become an operationally fitter, financially stronger, and technology-intense organisation. They have been closely working with their clients and incubating innovation Hub internally to innovate and deliver industry-relevant and future-ready solutions. With business models and client needs changing rapidly, Quess is focusing heavily on the need to keep innovating and reinventing its services to stay ahead of the curve and relevant.
Quess has always been driven by powerful goals, shared behaviours, and a consistent focus on their clients’ needs. Through the years, they have been able to establish a pole position in the domestic market in most of their businesses and are now well poised to strengthen their global footprints. As they transition into a globally competitive business service provider, they are discovering new ways of expanding and enhancing business value and efficiency for their clients.
Allsec, a Quess company, is positioned to be the extended arm of Quess for all HR process outsourcing activities, including compliance. It is investing heavily in technology to provide superior value to end customers and is in the process of building a highly automated, cloud-based, state-of-the-art integrated HR platform using cutting-edge technology that spans the entire HR process from onboarding, payrolling, compliances to exits of employees.
They are also working on extending their platform offerings to multiple regions, including the US, UK, Europe, Australia, and Latin America. Currently, their Smart Pay platform processes payroll across 34 countries in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
Leadership at Quess
Charismatic and visionary serial entrepreneur Ajit Isaac founded Quess in 2007 and has been instrumental in building Quess Corp into India’s largest business services provider and private-sector employer. Under his leadership, Quess accelerated the transition of informal jobs to formal platforms, thereby helping bring predictable incomes, social security, healthcare, and other benefits to many across India.
His expertise in identifying value-accretive and transformative deals combined with his focus on operational efficiency and business development has helped Quess scale itself rapidly and ranked amongst the top 50 global Staffing firms within a span of 13 years.
Quess found an equally gifted and competent leader in Suraj Moraje, MD and Group CEO. Suraj is a tenured professional with over 20 years of global business experience. An engineering graduate from the National Institute of Technology in Surat, and a PGDM holder from the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, he spent two decades working at McKinsey & Company before joining Quess.
During his tenure at McKinsey, he played an instrumental role in establishing the firm’s African Tech Media and Telecom practice and transforming the Philippines Office as the Managing Partner for the country. He was presented the Young Alumni Achiever Awards 2019-20 for Corporate Leadership by IIM Ahmedabad. Suraj is also a passionate photographer and vinyl collector.
CEO’s take on how HR Tech Solutions Play a Vital Role in Every Business Landscape
As we witnessed during the pandemic, HR Tech went through a digital revolution, and companies realised that new tools and technologies are essential to keep people productive and engaged in a remote work environment. As a new generation joins the workforce, companies need to understand and bridge the gap between their aspirations and a seamless and tech-driven work environment.
For a mobile-first generation, the HR tech platforms available to them would determine their relationship with the organisation. It includes a focus on the following aspects:
- Seamless experience in terms of DX, UI, and UX for desktop and mobile
- Digitally-enabled solutions for traditionally offline experiences
- Self-service solutions with instantaneous response actions
- De-centralised back-end controls for the solutions
- Advanced data analytics for informed decision-making and control
- Flexibility and scalability
Given the critical focus of companies on their employees and the employee expectations for quick and easy access to information, HR tech solution providers have to measure up their technology to address these expectations and offer incredible value to their clients.
The use of chatbots, AI & ML tools, RPA, predictive analytics, detailed dashboard and reporting, mobile-first solutions, etc., are some of the key components driving technology solutions today.
CEO’s Views on How the HR Sector has Changed with Advancing Technology
HR solutions are going through a transformative change. The first generation of HR solutions axed their analog counterparts and enabled HR teams to replace their legacy processes with a digital medium. However, next-gen solutions go beyond digital registers and are focused on empowering employees with solutions that make them more effective at their work, enhance productivity, and improve their overall quality of work life.
At Quess, our HR tech solutions aim to make employees empowered and productive. From automated hiring solutions that reduce redundant work, productivity enhancement tools that measure and track work, to benefits platforms that help employees unlock more value for their hard-earned money, our HR solutions help unleash the full potential of employees.
Some examples of how next-gen tech can unlock value for organisations are given below:
- Onboarding of new joinees is completely digital today without any paperwork, called POB (Paperless Onboarding). It results in greater process efficiency and a reduction of onboarding time. Handling onboarding volumes of new joinees has become easy, thus helping organisations scale up and have greater TAT and lower cost.
- Attendance marking using mobile with geo-fencing and face recognition software ensures that the location, entry, and exit times of employees are available to the management at any time.
- Input sanitisation tools for payroll ensure that inputs are collected from the source and multiple SPOCs of the client and sanitised at the pre payroll stage before being ported into the software without human intervention. It results in continuous zero error deliverables.
- Digital submission of year-end tax proof process results in improved accuracy of vouching and reduced queries and noise from employees.
- Use of fully digital workflow-based exit module to capture the entire resignation process including all stakeholders, namely employees, managers, admin, finance, IT, and HR, resulting in the processing of full and final settlements for the resigned employee within two days of leaving the company.
Overall, HR solutions across the entire life cycle of an employee within the organisation, right from hire to exit, have been greatly impacted by technology solutions.
