The Contingent Workforce and Services (CW/S) Insiders’ Hot List: January 2021

Welcome to the January 2021 edition of Spend Matters Insiders’ Hot List, a monthly look at the contingent workforce and services (CW/S) space. For those new to the Hot List, each edition covers the month’s important or interesting CW/S technology and innovation developments.

Our last publication was a Special Edition — Hot List, published at the end of December 2020. It covered developments that occurred in December; it also provided an overview of all Hot List coverage over the course of 2020. The December 2020 developments included PRO Unlimited’s launch of RatePoint; Globality’s new SAP Ariba connector extensions; Turing.com’s $32 million Series B Round; Facebook’s possible entry into the contingent workforce space; the launch of gig worker neobank Unit Financial and its $18.6 million funding round; and more.

Turning to January, welcome to 2021. We’ve started the year in the midst of a surge in Covid-19 infections, the beginning of vaccinations, an attack on the US Capitol and the inauguration of a new US president. With lots of gears changing in the US and across the world, the CW/S space seemed to continue its moderate pace of new developments driven by or related to technology. How the industry will respond to these and new changes over the course of 2021 remains to be seen. So for now, let’s focus on what was happening in the first month of the year.