The first two articles in this series explored the facts regarding SOW
workers, suppliers and the opportunities afforded by bringing them
into a Managed Services Program (MSP). In this final installment, we'll
look at creating a business case to integrate SOW into your MSP.
statement of work (SOW) talent management:
the business case for MSP control
To begin, let's focus briefly on defining SOW and the
role it plays within your organization. The obvious
question to start with is, "How much do you know
about the use of SOW workers within your company?"
In many larger companies, the acquisition and
management of SOW workers is often decentralized
and controlled by the business units or the functional
departments that utilize them. In fact, the use of
SOW workers is a classic ploy used to hide external
staff headcounts and avoid approval workflows or
tenure policies. Often, business leaders that use SOW
contractors don't consider these as talent but rather
an external service and, therefore, fail to consider the
compliance aspects of this type of labor.
So if you feel that you lack visibility into SOW spend,
you probably do. Fortunately, that's good news in
terms of building the business case for bringing SOW
under proper spend control.
SOW under the MSP model
Before you can make a concerted effort to create
your business case, you need an idea of how much
uncontrolled tail spend is incurred through the
unmanaged use of SOW workers. This is rarely an
easy task, because tail spend flies under the radar of
procurement and is seldom properly documented, let
alone identified by data that can easily be reported on
or visualized.
Therefore, understanding the potential value of
shifting SOW workers to your MSP will require a
deep-dive exercise involving all hiring managers in your
organization. As an indication of where to look for
value, it might be found in:
• Eliminating over-the-top billing practices by suppliers
• Reducing security threats caused by incomplete
offboarding processes
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