Founder and CEO, ACI HR Solutions
ACI HR Solutions
From start-up to award-winning niche recruitment firm in 3 markets.
Having moved over from another Recruitment CRM a few years ago, ACI HR Solutions has been using Recruitment Boost for its three locations in Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia. We caught up with Founder and CEO Andrew Chan to find out how the platform is helping the company achieve its goals.
ABOUT ACI HR SOLUTIONS
ACI HR was founded in 2012 when I was looking for a new challenge after completing my seven-and-a-half-year stint as CEO of TMS APAC and the company was sold. Based on my years of experience in the recruitment and tourism industries, I quickly identified the need for a specialist firm dedicated to this specific sector. ACI HR was born and together with a team of 6 industry experts, we set up the offices in Hong Kong and Singapore, followed by Sydney. Today, we are known as an award-winning boutique Recruitment, Executive Search and Professional Training firm for the Travel, Tourism, Hospitality and Lifestyle sectors and the team has doubled in size.
HOW IS ACI HR SOLUTIONS DIFFERENT?
What makes ACI HR unique is our niche focus and also the fact that all our consultants are recruited from within the industries they represent, meaning they have excellent domain knowledge and a comprehensive understanding of the roles they are recruiting for. Our goal is to grow the team to about 20 people over the next months and to become synonymous with recruitment for this sector, effectively owning this space in our markets. Having Recruitment Boost as our CRM platform as part of this journey is handy, as it can easily grow with us and adapt to our evolving needs.
WHAT MADE YOU CHANGE TO RECRUITMENT BOOST?
Our previous CRM was with a company based in the UK. They were competitive on price but being based abroad, the time difference meant service delays which impacted our business. We wanted to find a solution closer to home. Of course, location wasn’t the only thing we looked at. We also wanted a system that is cost-effective and simple to use, whilst still providing all the features we need – such as complete integration with our new website. Recruitment Boost was a perfect fit.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE FEATURE?
Probably the ease of integration with our website, which is built on Volcanic. The migration from our previous system to Recruitment Boost was so seamless. We have actually won awards and accolades for the cross-device experience of our website. Besides this, I really applaud Recruitment Boost for their customer support. It’s excellent! At the end of the day, many CRMs are pretty similar, but what makes Recruitment Boost different is the people that work with us to optimise the system to suit our needs. We’re very particular about simplifying the system and really tailoring it around the ACI HR experience. The team have been very accommodating to make the system work for us.
HOW HAS RECRUITMENT BOOST HELPED YOUR BUSINESS?
Most consultants hate data entry. It’s a tedious and time-consuming process. Through the end-to-end integration with our website everything is automated. The team hardly spends time on data entry. I would say this alone saves us 30 to 40% of time, making us more effective and efficient and, as everything is available for everyone to access at the same time, we can deliver a better experience to candidates and our clients.
WAS IT DIFFICULT TO GET
YOUR TEAM TO USE
RECRUITMENT BOOST?
No, because it’s so simple and because it integrates so well with our site, it was easy to get the whole team onboard and to make it part of our daily processes. Everyone uses it. The simplicity also helps us achieve our growth plans as new team members are on-boarded fast and can get used to our processes quite quickly. All this at a price that’s probably half of what we’d pay for other leading CRM solutions.