Today, as much as 30-50% of an organization’s workforce is considered external. Manufacturing companies use contingent labor and services to quickly meet demand, technology companies to find workers for positions with unique skill sets, and oil and gas companies to combat labor shortages. Behind the scenes, they need total visibility in order to optimize all areas of services procurement including complex spend, workforce quality, regulatory compliance and labor program efficiencies. Fieldglass' Vendor Management System (VMS) can help companies achieve this and more, all while easily integrating with other internal systems to enable a holistic view of both talent and spend.
The Total workforce should be looked at in two dimensions: The first segment are those direct workers that companies use a dedicated payroll system or an HRIS to track and manage them. For the most part, many organizations already have that problem solved.
The second segment are external workers. Managing them is the challenge. From a workforce perspective, commonly the external workers represents between 30 and 50 percent of the total direct workforce. And from a finance and procurement perspective, the external workforce can represent between two to ten percent of revenue.
External labor is often poorly managed.
Non-payroll labor is the largest spend category.
55% of external labor is unaccounted for, yielding:
Higher labor costs
Increased regulatory and compliance risk
Fragmented, inefficient labor spend and performance controls
Source: SIA via USAToday http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/07/temporary-jobs-becoming-permanent-fixture/2496585/
For hiring manager’s there are a lot of steps involved in engaging an external worker or service: requesting a resource, to onboarding a worker, to tracking them, to reporting on them.
Fieldglass’ market-leading cloud Vendor Management System (VMS) automates the complete SOW labor lifecycle -- from initial discovery and qualification through performance management and complex invoicing and payment.
Fieldglass is a recognized leader for managing all categories of non-payroll labor spend:
Statement of Work (SOW) projects and services
Independent contractors
Specialized talent pools, such as retirees and alumni
Scope of market:
Contingent $400 Billion
Statement of Work: $1,400 Billion
Project-based Services
Fixed scope
Defined beginning and end
Often deliverables based
Team usually known
Calls for rigidity in SOW
Outsourced/Offshore
Can be offshore or just a remote location
Similar to IT Project but more fluidity in the team
Calls for some flexibility in SOW
Invoice not typically driven by location
You see, a VMS-Fieldglass delivers a tremendous amount of value.
The most immediate is cost savings. Through competition, rate cards, and higher visibility, a company is able to significantly reduce hard costs savings. Our customers typically see a 15-20% decrease in cost in the first year alone.
Soft costs can also be driven down through efficiency gains - With Fieldglass a company can standard processes which improves workflow and shortens cycle times – not only time to fill positions, but also invoice cycle time. Many customers are able to take advantage of quick pay discounts.
Fieldglass ensures compliance to regulatory requirements by requiring the staffing company to upload proof of certifications, or credentials. Another recent example of this is Rio Tinto, a mining company in Australia. The Fieldglass application has been integrated into Rio Tinto’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. This close integration ensures a successful deployment of its global framework and helps the company to maintain Health, Safety, and Environment compliance training during onboarding.
Visibility – A VMS provides visibility into all aspects of the workforce, How much is being paid, how are suppliers performing. Increased visibility allows for analysis to identify further optimization and cost savings.
Goals of the program:
simplify and improve its contracting process across its global labor by standardizing rates and leveraging spend by volume.
minimize its exposure to legal and financial risk while allowing managers to focus on finding labor with the right skill sets. Mitigate risk by ensuring compliance to regulations, classification, tenure and other requirements.
Provide visibility into contingent workforce and services data. This increased visibility into spend would also enable managers to make informed, data-driven hiring decisions.