Staffing Industry Spotlight: Taren Dube, Founder of Murmur

Mickey Pelletier:

What is Murmur?

Taren Dube:

So Murmur is an open vendor platform that helps contingent workforce programs attract emerging staffing suppliers, engage them through official channels, graduate top performers, and then retire suppliers who are no longer material to an organization. So we help workforce programs move their staffing program from being very static to dynamic.

Mickey Pelletier:

So, what inspired you to start Murmur?

Taren Dube:

We felt like contingent workforce leaders needed a sidekick similar to, you know, Batman needed Robin. And this was a sidekick to help contingent workforce programs, you know, better manage better engage their vendor community, and I think most contingent workforce programs have a supply chain problem rather than a talent attraction problem. And so Murmur really was that company that I felt needed to be in the market to help connect staffing suppliers and contingent workforce programs.

Mickey Pelletier:

Explain a little more about that supply chain problem versus the talent attraction problem.

Taren Dube:

Well, I think what's happening is the average contingent workforce program or leader is running an outdated playbook around how they engage their vendor and staffing supplier community, and what happens is the contingent workforce ends up creating these walls and barriers that are actually preventing the talent from flowing into the organization because they end up by creating a fence around their contingent workforce suppliers and they stop vendors from coming in and they try to bolster the vendors that they have. And what what happens is that the talent will always find its way into the organization. Always will, but the supply chain function is actually becoming an inhibitor. It's not actually enabling what the program with the organization needs.

Mickey Pelletier:

Why the name Murmur?

Taren Dube:

It was a fun journey. I can still remember exactly where I was. I was with my wife. When we sort of came up with that name we wanted something that allowed people to visualize. The concept and what it was all about, and this idea of, you know, starlings, for example, forming a Murmur in the sky. To me, it was something that we all have experience with, either through photographs or in person, with starlings of birds forming a Murmur. But it also represented organization and collaboration, and that was a visual that I thought was important for our industry. Our industries become staffing industries become too competitive, and not only are we hurting talent, but we're also burning people out in the process. And so the concept of sort of Murmur as a visualization is a brand was about sort of organization is more important than control and collaboration is more important than isolation.

And so, I think what Murmur is attempting to do is make this small step toward a more collaborative or more organized contingent workforce staffing industry.

Mickey Pelletier:

What kind of clients are you servicing? What type of clients are you looking for?

Taren Dube:

There are really two clients that we target our service towards. The first would be self-managed programs. I talk to many programs that are managed in-house and they're looking for ways to advance or elevate how they engage suppliers or how they open up challenge channels to talent. And those are the folks that I think don't want to continue to use the old playbook. They're looking for a new playbook, and so Murmur is here to help the self-managed programs with a new playbook around supplier engagement and supplier management. The second client is the MSP, the MSPs who are looking to provide innovative, creative, custom-built solutions for their end clients. And so we work with a number of MSPs to really provide white-labeled custom solutions for their broader client offerings.

Mickey Pelletier:

So with the services you offer, what are some of the benefits?

Taren Dube:

I mean, there are a few things that we do that are really standing out are meeting our clients where they are. What I would say is the first is helping clients, be it self-managed or MSPs, manage their long-tail vendor spend. If you look at most programs, 80% of the program value in the contingent workforce world, we're talking 80% of the program value comes from usually around 20% of the vendor community. And so what Murmur does is we help either that self-managed program or the MSP manage the 80% of vendors who provide 20% of the value. In other words, the long tail, and so by consolidating that long tail spend under Murmur, you know, the program is able to really focus in on where the majority of the value by way of placements and talent is coming, which is oftentimes, I've been told 20% of the vendor community and in some cases have been told it's actually 10% of the vendor community. The remaining 80% of the vendors are still an important piece of the overall contingent workforce ecosystem. What we were referred to as the "useful many", so still important, they're still valuable to the program, but just on a volume basis and contribution basis, they're not the biggest focus for any program to manage. The second thing that we do is we help our clients create a vendor farm team. So a farm team is those emerging vendors that are in your ecosystem, but you don't know what to do with them. So we help our clients build a farm team that's gonna allow them to, you know, weather disruptions or prepare for the next suppliers that you're going to want to pull into your system for. If there are vendors that are now representing a talent community that you now need access to, you can do all that work proactively by creating a vendor farm team from Murmur and then it anytime if you need to tap into that community or graduate. That community, Murmur's the place to do that.

The third thing I'd say is that we're helping organizations increase vendor diversity and really promote vendor diversity within their programs and we do that through our diverse vendor network where we partner with certified diverse vendors and we basically organize those vendors under the Murmur umbrella. So now that the client can say hey, here's our diverse vendor pool, let's say engage them, let's launch them. Let's really utilize our diverse vendor pool so that we're increasing the contribution, the spend that our program has with diverse members.

The last thing I'll say is that with the MSPs we're in the process right now of building a number of white-labeled, custom solutions for MSPs. The MSPs are intricate, and they're essential to a large population of the contingent workforce world, and so we're working with a number of MSPs to actually launch what would be ultimately their solution around vendor pooling or building a marketplace; there are lots of different ways that we're currently engaged with the semi MSPs.

Mickey Pelletier:

The last question I had was just any other information people should know about Murmur.

Taren Dube:

I just say two things. One is just a double click on the sidekick. We're here to help promote your program. Enhance it. We don't have an affiliation with a staffing firm or staffing firms. We're here to work with you to create your ideal vendor ecosystem, which is not a one-time thing. It's an ongoing process of you know, how do we always ensure that our clients are working with the best vendors at the right time. The second thing I would say is that we sometimes get confused about being or get called an MSP – “Oh, Murmur is just another MSP.”  And that's really not true either. You know the MSPs play a role in an important role, and as I've said, Murmur can support MSPs in various ways.

Murmur’s not an MSP. We're not here for control. We're not here to run a program.

We're not interested in that. We're here to enable and equip and really meet our clients where they are in terms of needing support from a vendor community.

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