How Enterprise Solutions Took Control of Labor Risk, Productivity, and Cost with SLM
Quick answer: Enterprise Solutions, LLC, a growing electrical contractor, replaced a fragmented, agency-by-agency approach to temp labor with Smart Labor Management (SLM), a single command center for requesting, tracking, and billing contingent workforce across every supplier. The result: better candidate quality, standardized rates, real-time productivity visibility by cost code, and a measurable reduction in labor risk, all without changing which staffing agencies the company works with.
The Challenge: What happens when every superintendent sources labor their own way?
For Enterprise Solutions, contingent labor was one of the biggest levers on both performance and risk and one of the least controlled. Superintendents sourced workers independently across multiple staffing agencies, which meant:
Inconsistent talent quality and a limited candidate pool, since no one agency could compete against the others in real time
No construction workforce visibility into how labor hours mapped to cost codes
Unpredictable pricing, with rates varying agency to agency and job to job
Heavy administrative load from manually reconciling invoices and compliance documentation
In an industry already strained by a construction labor shortage, this wasn't just inefficient it was a standing risk to margin and safety accountability.
The Solution: What did partnering with SLM change?
Enterprise Solutions centralized its entire contingent workforce program through SLM's platform. Rather than superintendents calling around to individual agencies, every labor request now routes through one system where approved staffing agencies compete for the work, which improved both candidate quality and rate competitiveness.
Three changes drove the shift:
Competitive bidding among approved suppliers , standardizing rates and contract terms instead of negotiating fresh with every agency, every time
Activity-based time tracking aligning labor hours directly to cost codes so leadership gets real-time visibility into productivity against budget
Consolidated invoicing and reporting replacing a stack of vendor invoices with one streamlined bill, plus weekly reporting and a dedicated account manager
Importantly, Enterprise Solutions didn't have to abandon existing agency relationships to get there SLM works with the suppliers a contractor already trusts; it changes how those relationships are managed, not who's in the pool.
The Results: What did Enterprise Solutions gain?
Improved candidate quality and availability, driven by agencies competing for the work rather than filling it in isolation
Increased rate competitiveness through standardized bidding
Precise, real-time control over labor costs, tracked down to the cost code
Reduced administrative complexity from consolidated invoicing and centralized reporting
Stronger forecasting and margin protection, based on accurate, real-time workforce data rather than after-the-fact reconciliation
"SLM has become an invaluable partner in mitigating labor risk and strengthening operational performance." - Reed Collins, COO, Enterprise Solutions, LLC
What was once a fragmented, reactive way of staffing jobs is now a scalable, predictable workforce strategy, one where operational leadership can see labor risk and productivity in real time instead of finding out about problems after the invoice arrives.
FAQ
What problem does SLM solve for construction operations leaders? SLM centralizes contingent labor management across every staffing agency a contractor uses, giving operations leadership real-time visibility into productivity, cost-code performance, and labor risk, without requiring them to drop existing agency relationships.
Does using SLM mean giving up current staffing agency relationships? No. SLM sits between the contractor and its approved suppliers, coordinating requests, timesheets, and invoicing across all of them. Contractors keep the agencies they already trust.
How does SLM improve labor cost control for contractors like Enterprise Solutions? By routing labor requests through a competitive bidding process among approved agencies and standardizing rates and contract terms, SLM reduces the pricing inconsistency that comes from negotiating with each agency separately.
How does SLM help with labor risk specifically? Centralized, activity-based time tracking tied to cost codes gives leadership real-time visibility into where labor is being deployed and how it's performing, surfacing risk before it becomes a budget or compliance problem, rather than after.
Want the full story?Download the Enterprise Solutions case study to see exactly how SLM helped this electrical contractor take control of labor risk, productivity, and cost.