This October, the Future of Sourcing Awards will celebrate organizations and individuals that have shown innovation, leadership and transformation in categories that are critical to the sourcing industry. Interviews with the finalists provide helpful insight about their projects, the problem they sought to solve and the impact to their organizations.
Can you outline why your team embarked on this project and the problem that needed to be solved?
In our rapidly moving industry, our team needed a services procurement solution to help us tackle evolving needs and challenges. Our contingent workforce supports a number of our goals and we needed to implement the right technology to help us engage with external talent in a way that betters their experience and our organization as a whole. This was a driving force along with the growing importance of the contingent labor market to support workforce agility, business continuity, growth and innovation.
Additionally, with the labor shortage that peaked during the pandemic, hiring skilled IT, software development, and engineering professionals became a greater challenge than ever before. We needed a flexible, cost-effective way to strategically source the skills required at the right time, with the right quality, and at the right cost.
How were things done originally and what was the inspiration to innovate the process?
Prior to partnering with SAP to address our needs, we took a reactive approach when hiring our contingent workforce – which did not allow us to be as strategic as we needed when sourcing talent. We needed an agile and scalable technology solution that could evolve with the needs of the business. Seeing how vital the contingent workforce is to the work we do every day sparked the inspiration to improve the process and find an innovative solution to our problem.
Originally, we did not have the visibility into the success metrics that would allows us to optimize spend. Today, we have end-to-end visibility into our external talent sourcing which enables us to mitigate risk and make informed hiring decisions.
What KPIs did you use to measure success for this project? (For example: performance, customer satisfaction, revenue, sales or relevant financial gains?)
Working in tandem with our HR strategy focused on attracting the right permanent talent to deliver Capgemini’s full portfolio of services, our procurement team needed to optimize the contingent workforce strategy to deliver niche capabilities. Seeking to gain end-to-end visibility and control over every aspect of its external workforce, we wanted a single integrated solution to find, engage, manage, and pay continent workers. We also needed a solution that perfectly fit Capgemini’s global business structure and several legal entities, allowing us to deliver a simple process across the business.
The primary goals were to gain end-to-end visibility into the external workforce; mitigate business risk and meet current and future needs; improve business controls and optimize spend; and measure contingent labor spend against KPIs.
We also wanted to lessen the time needed to fill positions where there were gaps. Because of this project, we were able to make the sourcing process more efficient, ultimately reducing the time it takes to fill positions by 60%.
How do you plan to ensure that the new model remains relevant and adapts to the future needs of the market?
Global visibility on contingent workforce ensures business continuity during difficult times. While our ability to have full visibility into the existing workforce helped ensure business continuity during COVID 19, the pandemic has also highlighted the urgent need for establishing a remote global workforce.
Capgemini is now creating a gateway to attract freelancers and independent contractors combined with a trusted workforce program. Validating the experience and qualifications of this workforce, the new tool will help the firm deploy the right remote contractor services with the right capabilities and price around the world.
In addition, in partnership with SAP, we are forging ahead with a goal of creating a global rate card structure for Capgemini’s contingent workforce, classifying each skill and role level by country. With several years of data collection, the procurement team now has deep insights into pricing variances and is continuing to mine data to establish accurate pricing.
What advice do you have for those who may want to implement this innovative approach in their own organizations?
Today’s contingent workforce programs need to be agile to address complex and ever-changing market conditions. Innovative integrated technology and embedded specialized service provision from the market are key to enable such programs. KPIs like time to source and fulfillment rate are measures for the effectiveness and efficiency of the overall supply chain. If all these things are addressed in synchronization, contingent workforce programs are fit for the future.
What factors do you think are the most important to consider when innovating supplier performance?
What other companies can take away from this project is the importance of visibility, especially as the contingent workforce continues to gain traction and the workplace evolves. In order to truly adapt to the changing environment, organizations must also ensure their sourcing and management of their external workforce innovates to match. By using a solution that allows them to gain visibility into their external workforce sourcing, organizations can make data-informed decisions for their workforce and their company.
