Designed to streamline the management of multiple staffing agencies, Agency Manager simplifies the process of finding the best staff and ensuring compliance.
Why we built Agency Manager
The inspiration behind Agency Manager is rooted in our mission to remove the pain points of filling shifts with multiple agencies. Our recent customer survey revealed that care providers spend nearly two full days (45 hours) a month filling an average of 27 shifts using agencies, contacting at least two agencies per shift. Additionally, providers face challenges such as comparing prices, managing different invoicing schedules, and hiring compliant staff.
Agency Manager addresses these issues by matching qualified candidates to open shifts instantly, ensuring compliance, and simplifying the invoicing process. Providers can invite their favourite staff from different agencies back again, enhancing continuity of care for service users.
In this article, we take you behind the scenes to meet some of the Florence team members who brought Agency Manager to life, featuring:
- Dan Blake, Co-Founder & COO
- Andy Wood, Regional Manager, Northern Ireland
- Tom Vance, Principle Engineer
- Karen Ko, CFO
Q: Dan, you started Florence in 2017 – what inspired you to create Agency Manager?
Dan: For me, this is just a natural evolution. We’ve always been about solving problems. Initially, we focused on making staffing agencies more efficient. Now, with Agency Manager, we’re taking it a step further. It’s all about making the management of multiple agencies seamless, finding the best staff, and ensuring transparency.
Q: What kind of insights did we get from customers?
Dan: Customers want to manage their costs, they want great staff, they want to support their service users, and ultimately they want to help their stretched teams with time burdens. This was really the guiding principle for us.
Q: Tell us a bit about building Agency Manager…
Tom: Most importantly, this product was built with our customers. They showed us the flaws in old-school neutral vendor platforms. Our goal was to create something simpler.
Modern software and design patterns make it easier to change things in the future, so not only are we solving problems for today, we’re making it easier to solve new ones tomorrow. We’re lifting the industry out of heavy archaic software – we’re competing against software from the 80s, which means we can move faster.
Andy: The feedback has been fantastic – seeing customers use Agency Manager has been the icing on the cake for me! It’s not just about the technology; it’s about improving how we manage staffing across agencies and support real people. Our customers love the simplicity and efficiency it brings.
Q: Karen, you are a CFO – what’s the value of Agency Manager for care groups and their finance teams?
Karen: Agency Manager isn’t just about quick wins or saving money with one agency. It offers a comprehensive approach to managing multiple agencies. Any CFO will tell you that dealing with various providers, each with different payment methods, billing schedules, and reporting capabilities (sometimes none), makes tracking spending a major challenge. For care groups, managing costs related to staffing agencies, which is one of the largest expenses, is essential. Agency Manager ultimately puts you back in control.
To learn more about Agency Manager, read more here.