In previous blogs, I’ve touched on the fact that, in any given program, only 6% of spend is currently being captured in a Vendor Management System (VMS). Most sourcing and hiring decisions occur outside of it, either bringing in workers buried under a statement of work (SOW) or other processes that sit outside a VMS/MSP program. The biggest culprit as to why program adoption remains low (even though the traditional VMS and managed programs began back in 1999) is poor user experience. It’s a fundamental reason why we’ve decided to transform the VMS.
Legacy systems were designed to control users and vendors. They were born out of necessity because organizations used too many suppliers charging too much with little visibility into their spend. The VMS was meant to create friction, initiate process, capture cost, and save money.
Today, organizations are hurting for talent and are trying to quickly adapt to a changing market and workforce. The business just needs to get work done. Our focus is to make it easy for the business to do the right thing and difficult to do the wrong thing.
But how do you go from only capturing around 6% of non-employee labor to 100%? The key is providing visibility that enables better decision-making, so companies can plan the right workforce mix that makes sense for them. Utmost does this by allowing the hiring manager to spend as little time in the system as possible while offering a superior user experience.
Why is adoption important?
You’d never question the importance of, say, a badging system, so you know who is walking around your building or an expense system that enables you to get reimbursed for travel. But companies are complacent when it comes to a system that manages their non-employee labor (this includes SOW-based workers, IC’s, contractors, gig workers, freelancers, and more), a segment of workers that now makes up almost half of an organization's total workforce (and can account for hundreds of millions of dollars of spend every year). This is your talent – your competitive advantage, your revenue makers, your ability to track and manage how work is getting done. You can’t manage what you can’t see.
We understand in order to gain adoption, technology must be easy to use. This is only possible with a modern, intuitive system that is built with adoption rather than restriction in mind. It must be flexible, configurable with little support needed. It needs to be purpose-built for all types of labor and scalable to account for global growth.
Why Utmost?
We believe Utmost enables unmatched user adoption. Here’s why:
-
- With Front Door, all work comes into the organization in one central place, so the work can be assessed based on location, source, and other considerations, enabling workforce planning and proper classification of workers
- All categories of labor in a single module vs. siloed modules (e.g., contingent workers, SOW, etc.), so there is no segmentation of workers. That’s one system, one single source of truth to give full control and visibility of individuals, skills, and of course, spend
- A network of enterprises, workers, and suppliers to ensure speed of sourcing and deployment
- Self-service configurability for CW program teams, MSPs, and suppliers that enables flexibility when changing complex internal processes is required. Our fields, workflows, and flows are all customizable, editable, and can be added to our UI in a self-service manner. You have control over where it is added and what it’s called -- and every single field and object is reportable.
- Transformative invoicing, which drives SOW adoption, global deployments
If you are an extended workforce program owner, adoption is the key to your success. Bringing in a technology that enables all of the data you need in one user-friendly system means you’ve not only achieved compliance, you’ve created one unified way to come into the organization. One single place for workers, sourcing, and spend to occur for a critical and growing part of your company’s workforce. This enables you to provide a valuable dataset to your executive team on the work being done, who is doing the work, and how much it costs.
Stay tuned for my next blog on how to level up your extended workforce program and drive even more value to the enterprise.
