Raise your hand if you have Zoom fatigue. (*me, raising my hand through the computer*). Raise your hand if you feel like you’ve attended too many webinars that have a catchy title, but don’t leave you with any tangible takeaways.
Okay, last one. Raise your hand if you think anyone who presents a Powerpoint deck should have a maximum of ten slides. (…just me?)
While I can’t promise that SAP Fieldglass’ Cost Control Lab series has a maximum of ten slides, I can promise that listeners will leave the webinar with practical, tactical takeaways of how to better control costs at their organization.
In their two-part adoption lab series, “Value-Based Outcomes: Controlling Costs with SAP Fieldglass”, Brian Cicirello and Priya Dronamraju do a standup job of providing listeners with concrete steps they can take to control costs within their external workforce program. They hone in on eight outcomes that, if done correctly, will help an organization run leaner and more efficiently. The goal of the series is to talk through outcomes you can achieve with SAP Fieldglass and how to realize the maximum potential out of the system. While you’ll have to watch the full two-part series yourself to see all the valuable guidance they provide, here are some takeaways on two of the outcomes that are highlighted.
Improve savings through competitive bidding. Even though this seems straightforward, there are several ways that SAP Fieldglass can influence a more competitive process through simple configuration. In one example, they talk about setting up automated distribution lists to help reduce vendor monopoly and ensure competitive rates. Automated vendor lists also improve cycle times because there is no delay in getting a new sourcing request out to a vendor. Based on the job, location, and skillsets required, customers can configure the right permutation of suppliers to automatically receive the new opening once it’s been approved. Faster cycle times = money saved.
Another small piece of insight they give is how to leverage the “Show Lowest Submitted Bill Rate” feature. When enabled, each vendor has insight into what the current lowest submitted rate is for candidates that have been sent over to the customer to review. The feature maintains the integrity of anonymity – vendors cannot see which of their competitors has submitted the lowest rate or who the candidate is. This will help influence a more competitive process amongst vendors as they submit resources over for a job opening.
The bidding process is not just limited to the Contingent Labor side of SAP Fieldglass – there are options on the Services side of the platform as well. In fact, Brian and Priya cite that customers who chose to bid out a Statement of Work (instead of sole sourcing a project to one vendor) in Q4 of 2021 committed an average of 5.5% less budget to their projects. This is money that can be saved or allocated elsewhere in the business.
Reduce budget and forecasting cost via data and analytics. It is no secret that organizations are sitting on a massive amount of data and information. In addition, many companies have various, sometimes disjointed, systems they are using for different business processes. Reporting and analytics are like an all you can eat buffet; I’d like a little information from this system, a little bit of information from another system. But I’d like for it all to come together on one nice, unified plate.
Brian and Priya talk through how SAP Fieldglass can be an integral part of informing a company’s enterprise data operations. Nearly every field in the platform is auditable and reportable. The Data Dictionary in SAP Fieldglass shows customers’ the laundry list of everything they can report on, including custom fields. But how does this help control cost?
Well, as customers craft a data strategy, SAP Fieldglass can aggregate spend data into their corporate language and pull it into a unified view. Native language in SAP Fieldglass can easily be changed to fit a client’s own language without the need for technical intervention from our teams. Summary data (such as program highlights – spend by region, supplier, job category, etc.) can be easily viewed in Visualizer, one of SAP Fieldglass’ reporting tools. Operational data can be pulled together via the reporting tool in Fieldglass or exported via a web services call to a customer’s enterprise data system.
To better control costs, customers first must be able to easily access and report on spend data. This series talks through the buffet of options that SAP Fieldglass provides to do this.
In summary, SAP Fieldglass’ Cost Control Lab Series leaves listeners with both quick wins as well as strategic items that can be tackled to help better control cost within a customer’s external workforce program. It is worth the listen, and well worth the fact that there are more than ten Powerpoint slides. Each slide offers actionable guidance to help organizations run leaner while also preserving the important relationships they have with their vendors.
