Avionté: Digital Edge

Staffing sales has become harder. Market shifts, tight talent pools, and changing buyer expectations are making it tougher to win new business, while AI and other emerging technologies promise to give sales teams an edge. But with margins under pressure, staffing firms need to look beyond the latest shiny tool and ask a more practical question: Which technology investments can actually improve sales performance and deliver a return? And how do you know which tools to invest in and when?

In this episode of Avionté: Digital Edge, host Casey Wagenfeld, Strategic Partnerships at SimpleVMS, a division of Avionté, speaks with Mark Winter, Principal and CEO of The WinSource Group and a staffing industry veteran with more than 25 years of experience. Together, they explore where technology can truly strengthen staffing sales, which tools are worth the investment, and when the timing is right to make a move.

Mark shares practical insights on building stronger pipelines, improving sales execution, and evaluating technology through the lens of what will actually move the business forward.

Artificial intelligence is making candidate sourcing faster, cheaper, and more accessible than ever. If every agency can source talent at the same speed and cost, the question becomes: Why would talent choose to work with you? The future of recruiting may have less to do with finding candidates and more to do with keeping them. But how?

In the final episode of this four-part series, host Chris Ryan sits down with David Folwell, President of Staffing Referrals and Founder of Staffing Hub, to explore how AI is redefining recruiter value and how staffing firms can use it to drive measurable business results. Together, they discuss why talent loyalty is becoming a lasting competitive advantage, how agencies are responding with new talent incentives and role-based specialization to stand out in a crowded market, how AI empowers recruiters to spend more time building meaningful candidate relationships, and how strategic use of AI can improve profitability, increase redeployment, and create long-term growth.

Any staffing agency can walk into a sales call with a pitch and a box of donuts. But in today's market, that's not enough. Employers want proof. What if the most powerful thing you could bring through the door was data that shows exactly how your talent stacks up against the competition?

In this episode of Avionté Digital Edge, host Chris Ryan is joined by David Folwell, President of Staffing Referrals and Founder of Staffing Hub, for a conversation on turning talent data into a competitive sales advantage. Building on past episodes about lifetime talent value and loyalty programs, this episode gets more practical, breaking down how staffing firms can use the data they already have to differentiate their agencies and drive real revenue growth.

Everyone talks about employee retention and talent loyalty, but few staffing agencies have a clear, repeatable strategy for making it real. In an industry where fill rates, show rates, and redeployment define success, loyalty isn’t a slogan. It’s a competitive advantage that directly impacts client satisfaction and revenue growth.

On this episode of Avionté Digital Edge, host Christopher Ryan is joined by David Folwell, Founder of Staffing Hub and President of Staffing Referrals. Together, they break down how leading staffing agencies are building talent loyalty in practice, how they are measuring it to drive sales success, and how to turn it into a sustainable, repeatable operating discipline. The conversation also explores how emerging AI technologies are reshaping the way agencies engage, retain, and grow their talent pools to drive long-term value.

Most businesses focus heavily on customer lifetime value. Companies like Amazon analyze years of purchasing data to predict how profitable a customer will be long before the next transaction occurs. They know who to invest in, who to keep, and where to direct their resources. However, in staffing, where the product is people, and relationships generate revenue, few organizations apply the same level of analysis to the individuals who actually produce their profit: the candidates they place.

In this episode of Avionté: Digital Edge, host Chris Ryan interviews David Folwell, President of Staffing Referrals and Founder of Staffing Hub. David has dedicated years to studying referral-driven sourcing and the long-term value candidates provide to agencies. Together, they discuss the idea of talent lifetime value, why different sourcing channels yield vastly different profit results, and how agencies can start leveraging talent data to make smarter decisions about recruiting, redeployment, and long-term growth.

Most staffing operations are swimming in data but starving for insight. They track placements, maybe margins, and call it a day, while having little idea which candidate sources produce long-term value or which workers actually drive profitable growth.

In this episode of Avionté: Digital Edge, host Chris Ryan sits down with Dan Mori, CEO of Staffing Mastery and Staffing Dashboard, to break down four analytics use cases that directly connect talent data to revenue – not just activity – translating analytics into practical actions staffing leaders can execute to drive more ROI from their talent database.

From measuring the lifetime value of talent to identifying which recruiting channels deserve more investment, to understanding which talent sources drive better results, and more, this episode helps agencies make smarter investments, improve both customer and recruiter success, and stop guessing while revenue slips through the cracks.

What happens when the gap between what software vendors promise and what they actually deliver finally starts to close? Everyone says they offer world-class service—but most agencies will tell you that’s not what they’re getting.

In this episode of Avionté: Digital Edge, host Chris Ryan sits down with Varun Nath, Chief Operating Officer at Avionté, to talk about how his team is rethinking the customer experience. It’s not about more features or faster transactions—it’s about building genuine partnerships that actually drive results. The rising NPS scores tell part of the story, but as you’ll hear, the real change runs much deeper.

The staffing industry is facing a shift unlike anything we’ve seen before. Productivity is growing, but companies are relying on fewer workers—especially temporary staff. What may seem like a temporary market dip is actually the result of bigger forces at play: policy reform, immigration shifts, and rapid advances in technology. And temporary staffing, long viewed as a lead indicator for the economy and its strength, is now in a decades-long slump, even as overall employment remains strong. With these changes unfolding for the foreseeable future, the runway for forward-thinking agencies to build more resilient businesses has never been greater.

In this episode of Avionté: Digital Edge, host Chris Ryan, Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer at Avionté, unpacks these trends with Gad Levanon, Chief Economist at The Burning Glass Institute. Together, they explore why these shifts create as many opportunities as they do challenges—and why staffing companies that move beyond temp placements into broader workforce solutions, with a focus on AI-driven efficiency, will be the ones that thrive.

Two years ago, Avionté made headlines by launching the staffing industry’s first-ever integration between an ATS and a VMS—connecting Avionté and SimpleVMS to create a seamless, end-to-end workflow between employers, agencies, and talent. It was an ambitious, high-stakes move that delivered wins, revealed blind spots, and proved just how much untapped opportunity exists when systems work together.

In this episode of Avionté: Digital Edge, Christopher Ryan, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at Avionté, is joined by Joe Hiber, Director of Product Management at SimpleVMS, to unpack what they’ve learned since launching the integration, the real-world impact it’s having on agencies and clients, and why this kind of tech alignment is the future of contingent labor management.

AI and automation are changing the way we live, shop, and work—and the staffing industry is no exception. Historically slow to adopt new technology, the world of recruiting is now experiencing a wave of change.

So, how exactly will AI and automation impact recruiters' roles in the near future? And how is Avionté using these advancements to streamline the daily challenges recruiters face? In this episode, we are joined by Joe Hiber, Avionté’s former Director of Product and current Director of Product Management for SimpleVMS.