Driving Change: Transforming T&M Resource Procurement

It is generally acknowledged amongst contingent workforce professionals, that Time and Materials (T&M), resources procured under a Statement of Work, is considered sub optimum buying.  Perhaps even worse, “rogue” buying. But few organisations have the appetite, knowledge, or experience to understand how to address and change buying behaviour within their business operations.  The consequence of this is that organisations with a critical mass of “non-permanent workers”, are overspending to the tune of millions, for what are essentially commodity-based skills. 

It's not only T&M SoWs where costs can be highly inflated. Having many multiple T&M resources on one SoW means there are no defined outcomes or deliverables or consequences of non-delivery which should be a key feature of any Statement of Work service.  Moving these multiple T&M arrangements to fixed price should be a key consideration. 

On 16^th November, AMS hosted a roundtable session bringing together procurement leaders who are on the journey to change the dial on their organisation’s improper usage of T&M resource under Statement of Work.  The discussion and insights provided enabled them to work through several challenges and the options available to enable them to drive the change through their business. Amongst other things we discussed how to:

• simplify contingent worker classifications
• identify optimum fulfilment channels
• utilise fixed price SoWs
• put in place processes to support the change including decision trees, resource desks, process automation as well as, comms and education programs within their business. 

In our support of these clients, here at AMS, we have a tried and tested methodology that can be applied across any organisation. With our extensive contingent workforce experience, we can confidently support any organisation with a business case to change and incorporate services procurement into their overall non-employee talent strategy.