What if I said to you, Service Procurement / Statement of Work (SOW) could be managed by a Vendor Management System (VMS)? You may think I’m crazy, but I speak the truth. I have lived to see the result! The sales brochure can match your solution!

Imagine a seamless, fully end to end solution that manages your requestors entire SOW Journey. All actors have access and full visibility into the project, including the Suppliers.

Putting this is place is no easy feat. There is a lot of alignment and work required to bring all the moving parts together. Luckily, I know the best VMS SOW technical expert in the industry.

Richard Wanless has been working with VMS since the mid 2000’s. He is extremely knowledgeable on all technical implementation things to do with VMS. However, what sets him apart from many is his ability to get the SOW part of a Flexible Workforce Program live. Richard has offered to share some of his knowledge and experiences which hopefully can help you in getting your SOW program of the ground. 

1.      Why focus on SOW?

“Two key reasons. SOW spend is many times greater than Contingent, and has less controls, creating significantly more opportunities for savings. Secondly, most companies have very little visibility to resources linked to SOWs and this presents a huge compliance risk around correct classification, and security. Who are all these people roaming around the buildings!?”

 2.      Where do you see the biggest challenges in relation to implementing SOW?

“You see more variance of processes across the categories within a company. Its harder to create a truly standardised process. If the expectation is to have a rigid standard process, then that can be too difficult to implement.

The buyers are also more demanding than the average Hiring Manager who engages a Contingent worker. They know what they want, and they are the buying experts in their field. They want the process to follow their logic which supports how they operate. How a marketing category operates versus IT, Management Consultancy, or R&D, for example, is quite different, and the solution needs to be flexible enough to adapt to these differences.”

3.      How do you ensure you meet the Stakeholders and Buyers expectations?

“Often, with some difficulty! It’s generally challenging but it’s about making sure we satisfy most of their respective key objectives and give them, at least some, immediate benefits. In the end, it’s one process, but the points you highlight may be different based on the individual stakeholder’s goals. Paint a picture that everyone likes to look at, but different elements of the painting capture the eye of different people!”

4.      What are your thoughts regarding whether to integrate the VMS to a financial system or have it as a standalone solution?

“Ultimately a well-integrated solution is going to provide benefits to all parties involved. Having said that, sometimes the work involved to integrate a solution can slow down the implementation. It can often make sense to start the program with a semi-automated solution. This can allow you to accelerate the roll out and, at the same time, validate the structure of integrations before spending time and money developing them. Things always change at some point so the other strong recommendation is to use standard connectors that can be more easily adapted as things evolve.”

5.      What is the hardest part of your job?

“Perhaps telling people that the way they want to do it is not the right way!”

6.      What is your favourite part of the job?

“Convincing people that there is a better way! In general, I find it very satisfying to paint that picture that everyone likes to look at, and then implement it.”

7.      What could make your job easier?

“If every stakeholder in every organisation had the same point of view and objectives regarding their workforce strategy J That would not make my job more satisfying though, and it’s certainly not the reality.”

8.      Do you see SOW or Contingent as more important?

“SOW has the greatest potential for compliance and savings, so from that perspective, you could argue that it’s more important. Honestly though, I see them together as one and, when we start, they are all mixed together. You need one channel to engage external workers and you need to support both contingent and SOW to ensure classification compliance.”

9.      What is the fundamental difference between the Buyer of Contingent Workforce compared to SOW?

“A hiring Manager who wants to engage a Contingent Worker is focused on finding the right person and accepts that it takes time to find people. A SOW Buyer could be managing a multi- million-euro project and cares mainly about what’s delivered, not who delivers it. It’s generally more time critical and they demand more.”

10.  Where do you think the future is heading in relation to SOW programs?

“In a positive direction. SOW spend is rapidly getting the attention that it deserves and becoming part of an external workforce program from the beginning. As I mentioned earlier, you need to create a single channel to engage external workers and companies are moving in this direction more and more.”

11.  What advice would you give to someone considering implementing a SOW program?

“Don’t treat it as a separate to your contingent program. Regardless of how you ultimately roll your program out, as it will always be in stages, but present it as 1 unified program from the beginning!”

The visibility, controls, process automation, savings and many other benefits you could receive by correctly implementing a SOW program is fully worth the effort! Adding onto what Richard has highlighted, internal alignment, investment and key sponsorship is essential to be able to deliver such a transformation. If you don’t have this buy in for change, you will struggle to deliver a program.

Both Richard and I will be at the Contingent Workforce Summit in London between the 25th and 29th of March 2019. I look forward to asking these same questions of stakeholders on both sides of the process. If you would like to catch-up with Richard or Myself at the conference, make sure to message us on LinkedIn.

“Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.”  (Winston Churchill)