The Services Procurement & Contingent Labor Category

It’s time for a Spend Matters PRO series to catch up on what happened to the gap that we identified several years ago between enterprise managers and independent/freelance workers.

In November 2015, we pointed out a barely noticed “white space” between the enterprise demand for independent/freelance workforce* and the supply of those workers. By that we meant that while enterprises, with the support of VMS technology and often MSPs, were able to source and manage contingent workforce from staffing suppliers and contracted services providers, they generally lacked the capabilities to systematically source and manage independent/freelance workers.

We also observed the emergence of FMS, the freelancer management system, at that time, but we were clear that it was just “a part of a much larger set of developments, encompassing a range of new —  and incumbent — solution and service providers that increasingly leverage advanced technology, digitized information and innovative approaches to sourcing and managing independent/freelance workers.” We further asserted that the independent/freelancer workforce white space would start filling with various providers of solutions and service providers.

We also speculated that — due to state-of-the-art cloud stack, APIs, services architecture and other technology that would be underlying their solutions — these providers would start to become components of a comprehensive digitally enabled and digitally connected ecosystem. By that we meant an ecosystem (and nested ecosystems) that could evolve and be reconfigured more rapidly to serve the unique needs and preferences of different enterprises and, just as importantly, the unmet preferences and needs of the independent/freelance workers whom enterprises would engage in many new ways (some previously not possible).

Now, three years later, we can ask what has actually happened and to what extent the white space between enterprise managers and independent/freelance workers has been filled to:

— Provide enterprises with the required capabilities to source, manage and maximize the value of this independent/freelance population.
— Provide independent/freelance workers with the access to the opportunity pathways and the support/services they require to function as viable “operators.”

In Part 1 of this PRO series, we assess the current state of the independent/freelancer workforce and whether it is overhyped. In Parts 2 and 3, we will focus on the extent to which digitally enabled sourcing channels and work intermediation platforms have effectively bridged the gaps. In other words, to what extent has the white space been filled? And what is the current state of the digitally enabled ecosystem?

Spend Matters today released its Q4 2018 SolutionMap, ranking 58 procurement software companies across 12 solution categories, including E-Procurement, Sourcing, Spend Analytics, Supplier Relationship Management and Contract Lifecycle Management — and we're adding Coupa, Wax Digital and other new providers to the SolutionMap ranks. Click on this article to see how to access rankings for free!

This SolutionMap scoring summary analyzes a select group of Independent Contract Worker solution providers. It is part of our Q4 2018 SolutionMap report series, also with coverage of Temp Staffing and Contract Services/Statement of Work providers.

This SolutionMap scoring summary analyzes a select group of Contract Services/Statement of Work solution providers. It is part of our Q4 2018 SolutionMap report series, also with coverage Independent Contract Worker and Temp Staffing solution providers.

This SolutionMap scoring summary analyzes a select group of temp staffing solution providers. It is part of our Q4 2018 SolutionMap report series, also with coverage Independent Contract Worker and Contract Services/Statement of Work providers.

What is Your Contract Services/SOW Persona? Understand Your Requirements and Mass Customize Your Vendor Shortlist.

Q4 2018 marks the second 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 Independent Contract Workers (ICW).

The providers in the Q4 2018 CW/S SolutionMap include Beeline, Coupa-DCR Workforce, Field Nation, Shortlist, SirionLabs, TalentNet, Talmix, TalonFMS, Upwork Enterprise, Vndly and WorkMarket (ADP).

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).

In this second CW/S research cycle, there was again limited participation in the Temp Staffing and Contract Services/SOW SolutionMap categories. However, a good number of key vendors have expressed interest in participating in upcoming cycles.

There continues to be vibrant interest in participation by vendors in the emergent Independent Contract Workers (ICW) SolutionMap category. There are two new participants, Shortlist and Talmix, in Q4, and there are several other vendors interested in participating in upcoming cycles.

We have gathered extensive business profile information, received well over 30 client reference surveys 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.

Welcome to the December 2018 edition of Spend Matters’ monthly feature, “The Contingent Workforce and Services (CW/S) Insider’s Hot List,” available to PLUS and PRO subscribers. If you missed previous Hot Lists, you can find them all here. For those new to the Hot List, each edition covers the prior month’s important (and sometimes just plain interesting) technology and innovation developments within the CW/S space, where change may be accelerating or at least becoming more pervasive.

Despite the change of seasons, November was hot enough, with a continuing warm, steady stream of new developments like Spend Matters prepping the second contingent workforce comparison for SolutionMap (coming Dec. 4), an update on Upwork's stock performance since its IPO, Appen's aplomb with language, FlexJobs' map of jobs by states, and helping freelance workers help themselves.

Organizations are increasingly being driven by market and competitive demands, new technology and other environmental factors to become more responsive to rapidly changing opportunities, challenges and threats — to become, in effect, more agile. The question of specifically how an organization can become agile is still being answered by executives, management consulting firms, framework creators and academic researchers. But what we do know is that how human capabilities are engaged, organized and used is a big part of the answer to the question. In this brief, we explore how workforce agility is connected to organizational agility, where most organizations actually are on the road to organizational agility and why the drive to agility is both urgent and incremental.

A recent report on the state of freelancing in the U.S. shows that about 4 million more people are freelancing than in 2014, with a steady increase each year — until now. About 600,000 fewer workers were in the freelance pool in 2018, according to the Edelman Intelligence report, which was commissioned by Upwork, an online freelancer marketplace and enterprise solution company, and the Freelancers Union. Five years ago, about 53 million Americans did freelance work, and the number climbed to 57.3 million last year before tapering off to 56.7 million this year, the report shows.

In Part 1 of this Spend Matters PRO series, we summarized ADP’s business characteristics, its market and financial strength, and its increased investment in innovation R&D as a backdrop and foundation for the pursuit of its future-of-work strategy. In Part 2, we examined the significant technology developments and recent strategic acquisitions that make up key execution components of the strategy. In Part 3, we offered an explanation of how we see ADP’s future-of-work strategy, providing additional context and zeroing in on essential features. In this fourth and final part of this series, we step back to assess the strategy and what it may mean in a broader industry context.

Editor's note: This Spend Matters Plus brief is a refresh of our 2015 series on engaging the independent workforce, which originally ran on Spend Matters PRO. 

Freelancer management system (FMS) is a vendor-driven term and concept that achieved buzzword status in staffing and contingent workforce management circles within just a year of its inception. It is a real and important technology solution development, one that has focused attention on an important expanding gap between talent-hungry enterprises and a fast growing, business-critical segment of the modern global workforce. While FMS is one catalyst of this focus and a way of beginning to bridge this gap — a procurement “white space,” if you will — it is also a part of a much larger set of developments, encompassing a range of incumbent and new services and solutions players as well as new technology infrastructures that will unfold and take shape in the coming years.

In Part 1 of this Spend Matters Plus series, we cover how a procurement white space has appeared between enterprises and an important growing labor population: the independent workforce. We also provide an understanding of what this independent workforce is and why it is important. In Part 2, we begin to identify the broad range of incumbent and new services and solutions players that are bringing together different approaches to connecting supply and demand in this emerging contingent workforce category.