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How Procurement Can Participate in Platform Sourcing Initiatives: There Are More Ways Than One (Part 2)

01/04/2018 By

Image by luckybusiness sourced from Adobe Stock

As we observed in the Part 1 of this Spend Matters PRO series, five years ago, “online work/services platforms were off the radar for large enterprises and most certainly off the radar for all but a few CW/S procurement organizations. But much has changed since then. Not only has awareness increased significantly but an increasing number of enterprises have piloted or have moved further up the adoption curve. Moreover, traditional staffing-related providers (e.g., MSPs, VMS) have begun to incorporate platform sourcing into their services and technology solution models, creating another way for enterprises to move along an adoption path.

We argued that, in this context, it was not only the time for procurement functions to take platform sourcing initiatives seriously but also to participate in positive ways. To do that, we argued that a different kind of mindset would be required: one where procurement could very well be a member of a team of equals that all had contributions to make to the initiative. In addition, by understanding that most procurement functions may not have the level of resources and maturity to assume a full-time leadership role, we showed how those procurement functions could participate in other ways, allowing them to both move up the learning curve and have an increasingly positive impact on the initiatives.

In Part 2 of this series, we turn our focus to how CW/S procurement can leverage its functional expertise and skills to make specific, concrete contributions to the advancement and success of direct sourcing initiatives. We also discuss how CW/S procurement may change over time to be much better aligned to supporting enterprise needs for new, increasingly digitally enabled sources and forms of work and services beyond the current focus on traditional contingent workforce and SOW management.

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