Co-creation and crowdsourcing are high on the agenda of the majority of today’s marketers. They are seen as quick ways to experiment with a new way of working and connect closer with the people that matter the most for your company: your clients. In a double interview in Randstad’s magazine Blauw, our CEO Kristof De Wulf and  Robin Keeris, Marketing Manager at Randstad the Netherlands, talk about the ‘wisdom of the crowds’, or why crowdsourcing is a valuable method for companies to better connect with their clients and how the collaboration between InSites Consulting and Randstad the Netherlands resulted in a successful crowdsourcing project.
By using crowdsourcing in an online research community (or a Consumer Consulting Board as we like to call it), Randstad wanted to build up a relationship with their clients, better connect with them and let them contribute to the innovation of the services they provide. Like Robin stated in the article, Randstad wanted to gain ground in the world of SME’s and get insights in how they arrange their human resources. Moreover, they wanted to present them a new concept: an online database where companies can select applicants for their vacancies themselves. In this context, it’s important to know which decision criteria entrepreneurs manage, how much money they would like to spend on the search for the perfect candidate and how they manage the whole searching process.

To get an answer to all these questions, 75 people from different SME’s were gathered in a 3-week online research community. This not only enabled Randstad to enter into a dialogue with their clients, they made them feel part of the company because they gave them the opportunity to think along with the company.  And according to Robin, the project was a successful one: “Now, we know better what the perception of SME’s is about us as a temping agency, which responsibilities HR employees have and how big their workload is. At the same time, we noticed a huge insecurity amongst HR employees because they have the feeling they have to do it all by themselves, which is why they have a strong need for knowledge. And that’s what Randstad possesses, knowledge.”
So there’s work to be done! Randstad is now looking further into the ‘database’ idea and into other ways to share all the knowledge they possess with their SME clients in a better and more effective way. Like our CEO Kristof De Wulf stated in the article: Marketing is moving from validation towards inspiration: create interactivity and dialogues with your clients to evaluate towards situations where solutions can be co-created.