Two sagas concerning world trade — Brexit and a U.S.-China trade deal — saw major developments that give clarity to months of uncertainty. In other news: Qwil, a San Francisco-based startup that provides financing to freelancers and small businesses, has raised $24.4 million in equity and $200 million in debt funding, Reuters has reported. Bill.com has a strong IPO on day one, indicating that AP automation and payments are a hot area. Afternoon Coffee brings you the latest in procurement and supply chain news.
In October, Spend Matters reported on Workforce Logiq’s acquisition of the workforce data and analytics firm ENGAGE Talent. The acquisition of ENGAGE capped a big year for a company that, under the leadership of staffing industry outsider Jim Burke, has been innovating beyond the boundaries of the traditional — some would say commoditized — MSP model.
This Spend Matters PRO brief analyzes the acquisition of ENGAGE Talent as a key milestone in the execution of Workforce Logiq’s innovation and transformation strategy. Taking a closer look at ENGAGE Talent (and what it does) is important, but it is at least as important to put the acquisition in the broader context of where Workforce Logiq is heading. Consequently, much of the brief will focus on that context.
This brief should provide a useful update for contingent workforce and HR executives who are thinking about where to go next with their existing MSP/VMS vendors.
Congress announced its plans to vote on the USMCA next week. Payments platform Payoneer nabbed optile, a Munich-based tech company "that streamlines payment acceptance processes for merchants worldwide, to boost merchant control of payments." And in the workforce tech platform space, Degreed acquired Adepto. Afternoon Coffee: your source for procurement and supply chain news.
U.S. House Democrats have worked out a USMCA trade deal with the White House that could lead to the NAFTA replacement moving forward. In other trade news, the WTO's Appellate Body, which acts as the highest court for international trade, will in effect be paralyzed by losing more panel members. Also, new U.S. tariffs against China could be delayed from taking effect Sunday, the WSJ reports. In contingent workforce news, Upwork names a new CEO. In logistics news, SAP today announced a partnership with project44, which provides visibility for shippers and service providers. And former Boeing manager Ed Pierson told NBC News that he had warned the company about problems at its main factory in Washington state, prior to two of its 737 MAX airplanes crashing in separate incidents that killed 350 people. Afternoon Coffee: Stay safe out there.
Specialist providers of contingent workforce rate benchmarking/analytics services have emerged over the past several years. Based on our market scan, we have identified three such standalone, vendor-neutral providers — PeopleTicker, Brightfield Talent Data Exchange (TDX) and HCM Strategies. All three will be profiled at a high level in this Spend Matters PRO brief. A secondary goal of this brief is to begin to explore a broader, systematic research approach to understanding and comparing different rate benchmarking and analytics capabilities.
The estimation, or benchmarking, of contingent workforce “market” labor rates by job category is certainly not new, and rate benchmarking is widely used — or made available as a service — in practically every part of the contingent workforce supply chain (e.g., staffing suppliers, MSPs, VMS solutions, et al). But rate benchmarking data sources and methodologies have remained somewhat in the shadows for years.
Rate benchmarking produced within — and as just a part of — those contingent workforce supply chain providers has not made it easy to assess what lies behind the many different benchmarking approaches that are in use today. However, the emergence of third-party, vendor-neutral rate benchmarking and analytics service/solution specialists may help in doing so.
To compound the problem, there is currently no established framework that would allow for a comparison of different providers’ rate benchmarking approaches and allied capabilities (e.g., self-service, scenario-building and other capabilities). And, as “advanced analytics” (based on techniques such as data/text mining, machine learning, pattern matching, semantic analysis, simulations, etc.) provide a new foundation for rate benchmarking, the differentiation of approaches becomes more important over time.
Now, let’s take a look at PeopleTicker, Brightfield Talent Data Exchange (TDX) and HCM Strategies and then make some high-level observations about the group.
In most businesses, their millions of dollars in leasing spend represent a hidden opportunity for procurement and finance departments to find savings and create strategic value.
With every department in a business juggling leasing terms, financing and renewals for things like warehouses, offices, computers, supplies, furniture and fleets, it’s a daunting task to think any single department could manage it all. These are some reasons why lease spend isn’t managed well. But technology has developed to the point that it would be unthinkable to leave all of that spend unmanaged.
So it's clear that lease spend should be its own category, but why is that becoming apparent now?
Spend Matters today released its Q4 2019 SolutionMap today, ranking 59 procurement software companies across 12 tech solution categories. SIG (Sourcing Industry Group) announced a new partnership with PeopleTicker, a real-time salary and labor rate data provider. A new study by A.T. Kearney has revealed that external procurement spending was the single-largest cost element for most companies and a crucial component of their value chains. And Mintec won a neat digital tech award at an EU ceremony recently. Afternoon Coffee: keeping it real in procurement and supply chain news since 2010.
Deloitte's 2019 Global CPO Survey shows that many procurement leaders are finding it hard to balance a variety of competing demands for their limited resources. One common theme expressed was the challenge of how to find, recruit and retain the talent required to implement and optimize a more digitally complex and increasingly sophisticated procurement function. Many organizations are using this opportunity to challenge the traditional operating model, including the roles, responsibilities and skill sets required for this new digital world.
Demand for top talent in the global procurement space continues to outpace supply, even as the expectations from the corporations they serve continue to increase. While investment in training in both technical and softer skills appears to be rising, the CPOs surveyed felt the negative impact of a “talent drain” on their ability to keep pace with the increasing complexity of reducing costs and risks while implementing digitally-enabled procurement functions.
Spend Matters today released its Q4 2019 SolutionMap, ranking 59 procurement software companies across 12 solution categories, including E-Procurement, Sourcing, Spend Analytics, Supplier Relationship Management, Contract Lifecycle Management and Contingent Workforce & Services. Click on this article to see which new providers joined the rankings this quarter — and to see how to access the rankings for free!
This SolutionMap scoring summary analyzes a select group of Contract Services/Statement of Work solution providers. It is part of our Q4 2019 SolutionMap report series, also with coverage Direct Sourcing of Workforce/Services and Temp Staffing solution providers.
This SolutionMap scoring summary analyzes a select group of solution providers for Direct Sourcing of Workforce/Services. It is part of our Q4 2019 SolutionMap report series, also with coverage of Temp Staffing and Contract Services/Statement of Work providers.
Q4 2019 marks the sixth research cycle for Spend Matters’ Contingent Workforce & Services (CW/S) “enterprise technology” SolutionMap, the sourcing and management of three underlying spend categories: Temp Staffing, Contract Services/Statement of Work and Direct Sourcing of Workforce/Services (formerly Independent Contract Workers, or ICW).
Beginning in Q3 2019, Spend Matters changed the name of the Independent Contract Workers (ICW) category to Direct Sourcing of Workforce/Services, primarily to express the proper scope of the category’s coverage of those solution providers that enterprises use to source and manage both workers and small services firms in a relatively direct manner. (At the very least, a traditional supplier’s role is more limited and the technology solution enables more direct sourcing and talent management by an end-client.)
The full list of providers in the Q4 2019 CW/S SolutionMap includes:
Given Spend Matters’ procurement orientation, we evaluate “enterprise technology” vendors within a source-to-pay (S2P) reference model. In other words, we look at vendors in terms of their capabilities that address some or all enterprise requirements that arise within an S2P lifecycle (i.e., from supplier sourcing to worker or supplier payment).
We have gathered extensive business profile information, have more than 100 active customer survey references and have assigned scores to specific solution capabilities (RFI line items) ranging from well over 100 to about 300, depending upon how many SolutionMap categories a particular vendor participated in.
