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Jump-Starting
Your External Workforce
Management Strategy

Expert insights and
recommendations to
help ensure your success

Download
Download the e-book

Creating an external
workforce management
strategy: Why now?

The external workforce is increasingly essential to businesses today, and it is growing – but so are the risks and costs of undermanaging them.
73% of executives say the external workforce is “important” or “extremely important” to operating at full capacity and meeting market demands, but only 35% say they have the technology to adequately manage them.*
Without a rigorous and strategic external workforce management program, companies risk:
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Digital and physical security breaches:
Workers given access to sensitive information, systems, and high-risk operations without proper controls in place
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Rate and billing issues:
Overbilling, making duplicate payments, and paying external workers more than the current market rate
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Compliance and safety risks:
Failure to verify workers have required certifications to perform work correctly and safely
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Overspending:
Lack of monitoring and managing total spend against the budget for external workers
Read the e-book for the full list of potential risks and costs to your business.
*Source: “Agility Isn’t Always on the Payroll: Gain Full Visibility of Your External Workforce to Help You Drive Better Business Outcomes,” Agile Procurement Insights Research by SAP in collaboration with Oxford Economics, 2021.

Addressing these challenges is simpler than you think – Why?

If you’re feeling this task is daunting, you’re not alone. Because it involves so many people and departments – all doing their own thing – getting started on your external workforce strategy can feel like trying to tame the Wild West.

But it doesn’t have to be — here’s why:

1. Business functions have many shared needs and goals

Whether you’re in HR, procurement, operations, finance, or IT, business functions have many shared challenges and goals when it comes to the external workforce: efficient, automated processes for selecting, engaging, and managing external workers; quality work at a fair price; adherence to service-level agreements; and accomplishing it all while meeting safety, security, and compliance requirements.

Focusing on these commonalities makes it easier to start the conversation with your stakeholders and gain buy-in for change.
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Manage uncertainty across workforces and mitigate business continuity issues

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Build more accurate budgets for external worker spend

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Accurately monitor actual spend against budget

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Assess service quality and timeliness against project plans to make better vendor choices

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Reduce project costs

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Streamline work
processes – from
sourcing to onboarding
and offboarding

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Get as much value
as possible from their
external workers

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Reduce compliance,
safety, environmental,
operational, and
financial risks

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Increase agility to meet
evolving business needs

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Help external
workers be more
productive faster

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Find ways to help
external workers feel
included and valued

Discover a more complete list of the shared needs and goals of stakeholders when you download the complete e-book.

2. The right vendor management solution (VMS) can address these needs

A comprehensive, cloud-based VMS guides users step-by-step through the process of procuring external talent and services. From creating a requisition with just a few clicks to offboarding a worker, a VMS can handle each step in the process and integrate with your existing technology.
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3. You are uniquely qualified to take the lead

It’s time to apply your procurement knowledge and expertise to external workforce management. You can achieve win-win goals by helping your stakeholders:
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Rein in rogue and noncompliant spend
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Rein in rogue and noncompliant spend that drives up costs and creates risk

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Use competitive
bidding mechanisms
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Use competitive bidding mechanisms that make it easy to find new quality suppliers at a lower cost

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Use performance
and quality insights
to strategically
redirect spend
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Use performance and quality insights to strategically redirect spend toward the highest-performing, best-priced vendors to get more value from external workforce spend

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Closely monitor
spend against budget
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Closely monitor spend against budget to prevent budget overruns, identify unused workforce spend, and redirect it to new or important “back-burner” projects

These are all areas of expertise for procurement – and why you are uniquely positioned to take the lead on creating and operationalizing an external workforce strategy. Doing so will make procurement a strategic partner to the business and its C-suite.

So where do you begin?
Right here.

Of course, you’ll need more than shared goals and the right technology, you’ll need the right strategy.

In our comprehensive e-book, “Jump-Starting Your External Workforce Management Strategy,” we lay out four steps to defining your external workforce strategy. With expert insights and recommendations, we walk you step-by-step through the process of realizing a holistic, effective, and successful external workforce management program.
In this e-book, you’ll find advice from the long-standing industry experts on how to:
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Step 1: Start the conversation with your key stakeholders.
Step 2: Understand and focus on the shared needs and goals of key functional areas when it comes to external workforce management.
Step 3: Investigate the value drivers underlying the business case for investing in holistic external workforce management.
Step 4: Explore how to operationalize your strategy by investing in a VMS and building out or outsourcing a program management office (PMO).

Download e-book

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Ready for the next step?

Ask yourself: Which VMS is
best for my business?
Read the e-book, “Eight Common Pitfalls When Selecting a Vendor Management System – And How to Avoid Them,” and learn about the eight most common misinformed assumptions that can lead to the wrong choice in technology – and derail your external workforce strategy.

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