Although the world of work is changing at a rapid clip, with the Future of Work and agile workforce both revolutionizing how businesses manage their talent and projects, there is an oft-overlooked aspect related to both contingent workforce management (CWM) and supply management that, when tackled effectively, can drive tremendous value: services procurement and statement-of-work (SOW) management. Ardent’s research pegs these outlets to comprise anywhere between 55% and 65% of the average business’ overall contingent workforce spend. To boot, 81% of companies today state SOW/services procurement as a major priority for 2019 and beyond.

The Ardent Partners analyst team recently had the opportunity to meet with leaders from Scopeworker, a New York-based technology platform focused on “digitizing service supply chains.” On the call were CEO Justin Duval and Associate Michael Freid. Below are three takeaways from the discussion:

1. At its core, the Scopeworker platform leverages functionality to address risk management, SOW/services automation, workforce management, and the procurement of services. The solution is an interesting mix of e-procurement, Vendor Management System (VMS), financial automation, and workforce management. Scopeworker CEO, Justin Duval, told us that the platform was designed to eliminate the “human friction” inherent with disconnected platforms that traditionally address the key elements of services and SOW management.
2. The platform seeks to digitize the connections, communications, and collaboration for three key partners: buyers, suppliers, and workers. The Scopeworker solution includes several major modules: Risk, Plan, Procure, Workforce, Deliver, Pay, and Analytics, all of which seamlessly work together to help procurement and supply chain executives not only digitize the engagement of key professional services, but also manage the multi-layered components inherent in SOW and services procurement, including security, milestone/delivery date management, task guidance, real-time analytics, etc.
3. The agile enabled by Scopeworker Workforce is a key element in boosting the productivity of services. Via the Scopeworker Workforce module, users have the ability to communicate in real-time with the services and vendors out in the field to ensure health and safety and manage on-demand change orders, but, more importantly, can provide step-by-step guidance and live support. This can eliminate the costs and risks of missed delivery dates and mismanaged milestones; via auto-engaged IoT nodes, users can tap into the capabilities of Scopeworker Workforce and initiate on-demand collaboration with vendors.

“The most common mistake we see enterprises making is their approach of digitizing individual silos and then using human friction to connect them,” said Duval. “A true digitization flows end-to-end with a ‘golden thread’ that seamlessly weaves together all stakeholder silos across the ecosystem. Hence our saying, ‘Procure, Deliver, Govern.’”

Managing professional services, especially for large-scale organizations, can be a daunting task in the face of the Gig Economy and desire for true business agility, especially as “complex” non-employee talent and labor continued to rise in prominence and scale. Ardent is excited to see how Scopeworker continues to build out its platform to address these critical enterprise needs in the months and years ahead.

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Tagged in: Christopher Dwyer, Complex Categories, Contingent Workforce, Innovation, Lists, People, Process, Solution Providers, Strategy, Technology