As a member of the talent acquisition team at AstraZeneca, External Resource Manager Kathy Edwards is responsible for the performance of the company’s external MSPs on a global basis. Her role involves operational management of their performance against key performance indicators and ensuring they are adding value to the organization. The program has a headcount of 3,000, encompassing the UK, US and Sweden, and all business units across AstraZeneca.

Edwards has worked in the MSP space since 2012 but has been in recruitment for 20 years, initially working within staffing agencies before moving to the enterprise side of the ecosystem. Her continued drive for process improvements and contingent labor led her to manage an EMEA-based MSP program that had around 1,000 contingent workers, first ensuring the right processes were in place and ultimately providing value to the end client.

A recent accomplishment within AstraZeneca’s program involved taking an underperforming supplier through a journey of service evolution, which Edwards describes as focusing on four main pillars — people, stakeholder engagement, process and technology, and supply chain enablement — that would help achieve a best-in-class MSP. As a result, it is now a solid-performing supplier and seen as a valuable partner to AstraZeneca.

Edwards feels the program has significantly benefited the company by providing one centralized source for contingent labor, visibility of spend, and management of requisitions to a maximum of 12 months at a time. Future plans include adopting the service evolution across all locations to ensure they are best in class, and also focusing on the human cloud element.