Exploring the Visibility Gap in External Labor Spend
Whether partnering with a managed services provider (MSP) to source resources through its employee base or network of suppliers, or sourcing directly with a supplier for project work, most enterprises have little visibility into the day-to-day work activities contracted resources perform on their behalf. Without the data they need to verify timesheets and work time activities, enterprises are at a massive disadvantage. You need the ability to spot or substantiate invoicing discrepancies, negotiate future contracts effectively, or make decisions about supplier and external labor partnerships with confidence.
To understand how a workforce analytics solution for optimizing external labor capacity management can help businesses save money and improve decision-making, we interviewed our own Ashay Walambe, principal specialist, product management at Sapience Analytics. Walambe shed light on the lack of visibility in client-vendor partnerships, explaining how deploying an automated workforce analytics solution impacts the relationship. He also broke down some of the unique advantages of Sapience transparenSEE®, a contingent workforce solution that helps enterprises realize savings and/or rebates of 30-50% in as little as three months.
This is the second part of a two-part series. Click here to read our first Q&A with Walambe.
Q: What is the external labor capacity spend “visibility gap”?
Ashay: When you are in a knowledge-based industry and you hire a vendor for an output such as a piece of code, part of what you are paying for is the effort being put in. It’s different from a manufacturer producing thousands of soaps or 10 cars a day. You, the customer, want to understand the effort that was put in – but that is hard to measure..
Let’s take an example. You need to revamp your website. The vendor says, “We’ll do it in three months, with 10 full-time employees working eight hours a day.” After three months, the website is done, but how much effort has gone into it, really? Was the pricing accurate? Were resources used effectively? The gap between the work effort the supplier invoiced for and the actual work performed is the visibility gap.
Sapience transparenSEE allows you to understand whether the work provided in three months could have been done with five employees, or in two months instead of three. It all comes down to, “trust but verify.” If you are outsourcing something and paying based on effort, you want to know the actual effort going in.
Most enterprises have little if any visibility into the actual work being done by contracted resources making project management, planning and forecasting, and supplier negotiations incredibly challenging.
To learn how to solve the visibility challenge, request your free copy of “The Data Advantage: An Enterprise’s Guide to Improving External Labor Capacity Management with Workforce Analytics,” a white paper by Sapience.
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Q: How does using a workforce analytics solution like transparenSEE impact the supplier-client relationship?
Ashay: As the name says, it is all about transparency. The purpose of the platform is to strengthen the relationship so it’s a win-win for everyone and also to ensure the utilization of the right skills and resources. For example, if I reach out to a vendor because some piece of work needs to be done, the vendor will reply with their estimates. Now we can validate the estimates! Once you have this tool, there is no debate – it becomes a single source of truth.
We find that this clarity strengthens the relationship between our customers and their suppliers and leads companies to reward these suppliers with even more business. I have even seen vendors use Sapience data in their proposals to other clients as a way to validate their estimates and show they are transparent.
Q: What are common enterprise use cases for an automated workforce analytics platform for the contingent workforce?
Ashay: Timesheet integration is the big one. We take data from the timecard system and map it with the Sapience data. If there are any outliers, we identify that within the analysis and report it back to the customer so that they can use that data to understand the work patterns and the deviations and have more informed discussions with their vendors. Another big use case for workforce analytics is hybrid work. With workforces working globally, across geographies, it becomes really difficult to have a single source of truth. Sapience makes it simple.
Q: You have been with Sapience for nearly nine years. From your perspective, what makes the company unique?
Ashay: Our domain expertise. The average tenure of an employee here is more than eight years. We have seen how the workforce has changed, whether it is Covid or the new generation coming into the picture. Our turnaround time when adapting to a new use case is fast because we have strong skill sets within the organization. We adopt new technologies quickly, which excites the team. Technocrats love anything new. They like to play with codes and new systems, create prototypes, and quickly roll out capabilities into the environment so that we get quick feedback, and our customers get the benefit of the new technology as soon as possible.
Ready to modernize your approach to partnering with contingent workforces and suppliers? Request a demo today.
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