Making Connections That Work

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Acro Service Corporation supplies organizations with top tier talent while helping them reach their Tier One diversity workforce goals

Acro Service Corporation has crafted distinctive staffing solutions for some of the world's leading organizations for over 40 years. Initially a modest family business with grand ambitions, Acro has transformed into a pioneering comprehensive talent management solutions provider. Today, it redefines hiring practices and challenges conventional wisdom for both multinational private enterprises and public institutions. Founded in 1982 by Ron Shahani in Livonia, Mich., this leading minority-owned talent acquisition firm has been certified by the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC) since 1985. Acro ranks among the top staffing companies in the U.S.  NMSDC has honored Acro as a Corporate Plus® Member, a distinction granted to certified MBEs with demonstrated proficiency in handling extensive contracts spanning multiple regions.

The Shahani family has a dynamic role in the business, ensuring it delivers “better than best-in-class” solutions and services to its client stakeholders, suppliers, and contingent workforce. Through multiple specialized divisions, Acro offers a complete line of total workforce management solutions that include staff augmentation, payroll, managed services, vendor management systems, direct hire, direct sourcing, recruitment process outsourcing (RPO), employer of record (EOR), agent of record (AOR), and an array of other customized outsource management of contingent labor.

Sean Trimble

“Larger, privately held companies don’t have the flexibility and opportunity to customize that a smaller, minority owned company has,” said company COO Sean Trimble. “Larger companies become complacent with their clients, at Acro, we are constantly striving to be on the lookout for what’s next, and how we can assist our clients with their upcoming external talent needs.”

Acro’s Chief Operating Officer, Sean Trimble, named one of the top staffing leaders to watch in 2024 by candidate.ly’s World Staffing Awards, leverages his passion for leadership and over 30 years of industry expertise to keep Acro on the leading edge of service provision – and industry change.

When it comes to developing tailored solutions that deliver optimal outcomes for their clients and their internal organization, the former President of DCR, a multinational MSP and VMS provider, stresses that courageous leadership is one of Acro’s aspects that he and his team feel are the keys to a company’s success. “(To say), ‘Hey, wait a minute, why are we doing that? Is that really the right solution?’ Having the courage to sit down with our customers and ask those questions is a major differentiator.”

He added, “This analogy gets overused, but we have over 110 years of experience. Everyone on our executive team has an average of 20 years of experience in the talent acquisition industry.” With a cadre of subject matter experts with experience, Acro brings that expertise to improve their own operations as well as bringing it to their clients. Technologically, Acro is vendor agnostic and uses its proprietary vendor management technology, XRM System, to help meet client expectations. “We work with customers to understand their needs, but we can also customize our technology and processes and procedures to fit within the organization.”

When it comes to direct staffing, Acro’s Technical Professional Staffing Group (ATPGS) focuses on white-collar roles in finance, accounting, pharma, engineering, and others that have a pay rate of $22-$25 an hour or higher. Acro Blue, their blue-collar division, focuses on commercial and light industrial staffing.

“We pride ourselves in our very unique on-premises vendor, master vendor, primary vendor type of solution where we place a team onsite within the client’s facility, usually a manufacturing, production or distribution facility, and we manage a client’s entire population of temporary resources,” he explained. “This solution is provided to our clients with as few as 50 temporary resources to over 1,000.”

Acro’s Workforce Solutions Division is split between providing services in the public and private sectors. The private sector division is Advanta, an Acro Group Entity, and serves North America, the UK and surrounding EMEA markets, in addition to APAC. Acro’s workforce solutions manage a customer’s entire contingent labor, external staff, and supply base. “That could be your temporary administrative assistance, contractors working on a large IT project, or a couple of engineers needed for six months to work on different designs.”

The Billion Dollar Roundtable Awaits

With over 25 offices in the U.S., as well as offices in Canada, Europe, and Asia and employing over 1,500 people and hosting over 2,500 suppliers in its global network, Acro ranks as one of the largest staffing firms in the U.S. committed to supplier diversity by Staffing Industry Analysts. Acro has developed strong relationships with companies qualified as socially and economically disadvantaged businesses. Tier One diversity spending has become increasingly important for corporations, the communities they serve, and the U.S. economy. “Our company is as diverse as the country, if we’re not leveraging diverse suppliers, those folks that have pulled themselves up by the bootstraps, what are we doing as an organization? So, we push that Tier One diverse spend.”

Trimble pointed out that while many customers may be using non-diverse labor suppliers, being part of the Billion Dollar Roundtable (BDR) may still be one of their goals. According to the BDR, “Member companies commit annually to documented supply chain spend of $1 billion or more on a first-tier basis with diverse suppliers whose majority owners identify as minorities, women, veterans, disabled, and LGBTQ.”

In some companies, labor is the most significant capital outlay, and those organizations may be reluctant to rethink their existing management choices. Acro helps those firms navigate to high-quality, diverse companies that can manage their labor. Trimble posited an example of a company managing a $300 million labor spend.

“If you took even 10% of that $300 million and put that through a company where every single dollar that goes through is counted as Tier One, imagine what that can do for your organization. For communities, if you hire diverse candidates, you're also being helpful. You’re able to leverage your D&I strategies along with that. That’s where we’re loud and proud regarding Tier One diverse spends.”

When one of the world's largest snack food companies required managed services for their supply base, they sought Acro for their foray into supplier diversity. “They’d never had an MSP and needed to build a business case from a global perspective,” he recalled. “They also were very, very interested in the Billion Dollar Roundtable. … The business case started to get traction.”

The customer can now capture every dollar spent on a temporary resource as a Tier One diverse spend, and every dollar gets them closer to the BDR. “They're coming back to us saying, ‘Wow, even though you're a minority-owned company, smaller compared to the gigantic global companies out there, you're able to do the things that we need you to do, and we can also capture that Tier One.’” With 70% of Acro’s spending going to diverse suppliers, he added, “It’s a win-win for everybody.”