MSP (managed service provider).

A managed service provider (MSP) is a firm that manages a client's external-workforce programme end to end: publishing requisitions, steering suppliers, policing rates and contracts, consolidating invoices and safeguarding compliance. The client decides what is needed; the MSP organises how it gets delivered.

How it works

An MSP programme pools all contingent labour — interim professionals, agency workers, often statement-of-work engagements as well — into one process and usually one system (a VMS, vendor management system). Typical responsibilities:

• Supplier management: selecting and measuring staffing suppliers and other channels.
• Process and speed: standardised requisition, selection and onboarding steps.
• Rate and margin transparency: visibility of what the professional costs and what the chain charges.
• Compliance: worker classification (for example under the Dutch DBA rules or the US W-2/1099 distinction), identity checks and audit-ready files.
• Reporting: a single source of truth on spend, utilisation and risk.

Remuneration is usually a percentage of managed spend, occasionally a fixed fee per engagement.

MSP at Hero

At Hero, MSP service is the top tier, Platinum, priced at 1.5–3% of managed spend. Hero then acts as the director of the client's entire flexible workforce, including workers not sourced by Hero itself. The lower tiers build towards it: Silver (€79 per contract per month) covers contract & pay with classification checks and pay-when-paid; Gold (2.5–4% of spend) adds indemnification and benefits; Platinum takes over the whole. The Perfect Match philosophy remains the substantive compass throughout. Because Hero also supplies talent itself, the separation of roles is explicit: as MSP, Hero measures every channel — its own network of more than 30,000 professionals included — against the same criteria, in line with the house rule that everything the company says is 100% true.

Boundaries

An MSP is not the same as:

• A broker — which contracts and pays per engagement but does not run the programme; see brokering.
• An EOR or AOR — which carries legal employment or agent-of-record duties for specific workers; see the EOR and AOR entry.
• RPO (recruitment process outsourcing) — which outsources permanent hiring; at Hero, permanent roles run through hero.jobs.

Large programmes combine these roles in practice; the MSP is the party conducting the orchestra.