Data Analytics in Statement of Work

How you can use consistent, detailed analytics to understand the value of outcome-based services.

With Chris Radvansky, Principal, Rad Consultants

00:05:30 - Using transactional data in understanding the extended workforce

00:08:45 - The problems with SOW data

00:15:00 - SOW data is complex but there are common threads

00:20:00 - Can SOW data be compared to broader staff-augmentation data?

00:26:30 - Regulatory confusion between staff-aug and SOW

00:32:00 - The drivers towards outcome-based SOW

00:37:00 - Adoption of procurement tech designed for SOW

00:42:00 - Hyperspecialisation and AI

00:48:00 - Using GPTs for SOW analytics

00:52:30 - How to get granular with outcome-based data

00:56:45 - The cross-over from SOW into contingent workforce

01:02:50 - Tighening up how SOW is managed

Episode Highlights

Transcript

Auto-generated. Please excuse any minor errors.

00;00;00;19 - 00;00;20;13
Jonny Dunning
Fantastic. Okay, Chris, thank you very much for joining me. I first the apologies. I've had all sorts of problems with broadband and wi fi and this, that and the other. We got here eventually. I really appreciate you joining me to have a chat on this podcast. Thank you very much for taking the time. As much appreciated, Jonny.

00;00;20;13 - 00;00;25;05
Chris Radvansky
Thank you so much for having me here and thrilled to dive into that. I think it's going to be a good time.

00;00;25;07 - 00;00;51;12
Jonny Dunning
Good stuff, good stuff. So, so we first kind of got into a conversation in Dallas, in Texas, when we were both there around the CWC Summit and we got talking about your love of data and your passion for for data and analytics and my passion and interest in the services procurement statement, well, statement work side of things and kind of look to the intersection of that.

00;00;51;15 - 00;01;14;19
Jonny Dunning
And we started out in a really kind of quite interesting conversation, a bit of a debate and we just, you know, following that, we just said we should get this onto a podcast and I'm really glad we're going to do that today. So to start things off, let me just give you a little bit of an introduction and then you can kind of maybe give people a bit of a flavor of your journey through the industry, what you've done, what you're doing now.

00;01;14;22 - 00;01;23;27
Jonny Dunning
But yeah, just to introduce you formally, Chris, my advance principal of Raj Consultants. So over to you now to give a bit of background.

00;01;24;00 - 00;01;39;29
Chris Radvansky
Absolutely. Jonny, Thank you so much. And that was a great conversation that we had down in Dallas. The CW was enjoying the high top tables on the first floor and seeing what we could see with all the people in the space. But yeah, no thanks again. Thank you so much for having me. Here I am now with Rad Consultants.

00;01;39;29 - 00;02;05;07
Chris Radvansky
After more than ten years with a larger VMs and MSP, you can do some math and some LinkedIn research yourself. But yeah, I for for the longest time I always enjoyed math. I enjoyed numbers. My dad with him was a math teacher. My it was a senior accountant within GlaxoSmithKline back in the day and it's just kind of been in my blood, you know, honors, math, the whole thing.

00;02;05;09 - 00;02;32;26
Chris Radvansky
And I went on to get my accounting degree to get my certified public accountant certification, which is now like Dusty, but that's okay. Essentially, it said that I have the ability to learn these complex subjects, whatever they might be. Right. And that's kind of what, you know, folks that attained some level of certification, whether it's a master's degree or a certification within the industry, showing that aptitude is something that's important.

00;02;32;26 - 00;03;06;12
Chris Radvansky
Mine was around numbers, data, finances, things like that. So when I started with Magnet, I'll say it now, Magnet Pro a little bit of back in the day, back in 2012, I was really the day to day analyst for one of our largest clients. What does that mean? Analyst What does that mean day to day? Well, I sat with our MSP team, I understand stood that the program contains all the different pieces of data from, you know, supplier performance and individual business units and rate trending and spend and you name it.

00;03;06;12 - 00;03;29;13
Chris Radvansky
It's some piece of data that's captured by the VMs. It was my job to digest that, to analyze it within Excel, within other dashboard tools, and then to tell the story to my program sponsors. So I have, you know, a lot of face time with our program sponsors, telling them what does the population look like and also what does the CW population look like?

00;03;29;15 - 00;04;04;11
Chris Radvansky
And it was during that time period from from going from one account to the next. And then ultimately achieving the rank of vice president of reporting and analytics. They're seeing all the different ways in which clients were engaging with non employee talent and seeing how well, yeah, we can tell a story, we can speak anecdotally, we can bring in qualitative insights that are coming from our hiring managers, that are coming from our suppliers, that are coming from workers, or we can augment that with hard real data that's being captured through these transactional systems.

00;04;04;13 - 00;04;27;01
Chris Radvansky
I really enjoyed understanding that this is another leg data, is another leg that companies need to stand on to make better decisions. That's just a fact. Everybody knows that. Everybody hears about it. It's just a matter of is everybody actually acting on it? And that's really where Rad Consultants is saying, hey, let's let's optimize the data that you have in your fingertips.

00;04;27;04 - 00;04;47;17
Chris Radvansky
Chances are if it's out there in some system and then maybe you download it into an Excel file, have the folks that are knowledgeable within data and within the contingent labor space to optimize that data. And if not, then that's where we're kind of swinging in here. So but yeah, thank you so much Jonny and my done now.

00;04;47;20 - 00;04;50;14
Chris Radvansky
Is it over to Kristaps. No, no, no, no.

00;04;50;16 - 00;04;55;26
Jonny Dunning
Yes, this is just the beginning. Your legendary energy must be tested.

00;04;55;29 - 00;04;57;00
Chris Radvansky
Let's give it a go.

00;04;57;02 - 00;05;26;19
Jonny Dunning
That's a great intro. You know, Makes a lot of sense. And you know, you're just your raw enthusiasm and energy for this topic and just meeting you. You've clearly got a very inquiring keen mind. You also got a lot of curiosity. I know we spoke about I had a really exciting chapter as well. We'll probably come on to that in the context of this a little bit later in the conversation.

00;05;26;21 - 00;06;04;08
Jonny Dunning
But it was it was quite interesting because I've got quite strong viewpoints around the differences between statement of work and services procurement and stock augmentation. And you've got quite strong views around, Hey, let's not mess around. You've got to have proper data. The more uniform it is, the better logical, straightforward clinical approach, which is exactly what's required. And I think the thing that for me makes that conversation particularly interesting is because it's an intersection where the staff augmentation or contingent workforce industry is trying to break ground in a new area that is significantly different.

00;06;04;11 - 00;06;33;12
Jonny Dunning
Ultimately, it all comes under the I wouldn't say it comes under the umbrella of Non-employee talent myself, because I'd be quite pedantic about it. I'd say if you're engaging, understating the work, it's not about the talent, it's about an outcome or an output. So for me, I always kind of think of it as like extended workforce, but organizations that are coming at it from a standpoint where they're their absolute bread and butter, their area of expertise is talent generally, not employee talent.

00;06;33;15 - 00;07;00;22
Jonny Dunning
There are gray areas. So there are organizations and organizations that would say, we need to look at our statement of work, consultants, things like that sometimes come up. And I'm kind of like, what even is that? You know, let's let's get a clear demarcation here. But there are gray areas. And I think with and so with regards to the data side of it, that throws up some really interesting questions in the sense that if you look at contingent workforce, it's going to be fairly clear to you.

00;07;00;22 - 00;07;16;24
Jonny Dunning
If you go into an organization and you run an assessment on an audit on what's going on, you're going to have a pretty clear idea of firstly whether they've got the right data. And secondly, what you can do with that data. Is that kind of pretty fair to say in terms of how you'd go about that type of audit?

00;07;16;27 - 00;07;33;18
Chris Radvansky
Yes, absolutely. I think that when you're you know, you've said a lot of things and you ask a very specific question. So let me try to just as specific a question, let you get back to it. But what will do is if you're doing that kind of an audit and an audit, when you're downloading data, you just okay, let's analyze this.

00;07;33;18 - 00;07;57;12
Chris Radvansky
What is this telling me? Where are our volumes when you see and historically what I've seen a breakdown of many different ways in which we can break down our staff augmentation, workforce spend, headcount fills, you name it, break it down by job category by job title by location, by supplier, by business unit, you name it. You can do that within step four.

00;07;57;14 - 00;08;36;07
Chris Radvansky
When you look for that same breakdown you're looking at very frequently with the NSA w one liner, it is not broken down and that's because the level of granularity in which the program governance is set up is historically not as stringent, not as many requirements or boxes that need to be populated when it comes to so W and therefore that audit you can maybe get to that high level number, but when you want to break that down, go a level deeper, go a level deeper, go a level deeper that's frequently impossible because the data is just not there.

00;08;36;10 - 00;09;03;20
Jonny Dunning
So you've kind of outlined from a from a from an audit point of view going into organization, looking at what they've got, the kind of the differences between the problems with what data they may have around statement of work and services versus staff augmentation and but if we drill a little bit deeper than that, what do you see as the other problems with the data around SOW?

00;09;03;23 - 00;09;08;08
Jonny Dunning
Maybe even if you could drill deeper, what what do you see as the issues there?

00;09;08;10 - 00;09;32;00
Chris Radvansky
Well, if you can drill deeper, that means that you have more questions that you can ask every good question. The answer will give you two more questions to ask. Right? And that's really where we want to be going. This new level of visibility that you might achieve as a first gen MSP program, whatever you do might be first gen VMs all of a sudden, Wow, we have all this data, This is terrific.

00;09;32;02 - 00;09;49;27
Chris Radvansky
Now I can start asking questions. Before it was, you don't know what you don't know, and that's always a big problem. You need to you don't know what questions you can start asking. If you have no idea the scope, you don't know if it's worth asking the questions, if you have no idea of the scope. So that's where the visibility is going to be coming in important.

00;09;50;00 - 00;10;10;26
Chris Radvansky
But if what's a you do have this level of data and you do as part of your governance structure, you mandate collecting certain pieces of data and you can do that, you know, and SOW program is what the end buyer deems is necessary. That's why all of these programs are configured in such a way that they're all pretty in unique snowflakes.

00;10;10;28 - 00;10;27;25
Chris Radvansky
However, a lot of the SOW volume sits kind of at a very high level in terms of what is being captured. What if you do capture it? Then you can start asking, okay, well, how long did this project take place? How how many different workers were associated with it in and out within the project? Do you want to do that?

00;10;27;25 - 00;10;44;02
Chris Radvansky
Some of the strategic decision, sometimes the answer is yes. I want to know. Sometimes the answer is no. I'll just leave that to the vendor. And that's that's okay. It's just a matter of recognize that that's a decision that you need to make. It's not just something that you should avoid. You don't know that. You should be asking that to begin with.

00;10;44;05 - 00;11;05;09
Chris Radvansky
No, these regular questions that should be coming up when you're governing, when you're implementing your program. So understanding all the different pieces within the CW at the sourcing process, are there multiple different bids that are being captured? Are we capturing worker, are we capturing rates? Are we capturing the type of skills that are going to be assigned to this?

00;11;05;16 - 00;11;33;01
Chris Radvansky
And again, timelines and exact deliverables, if you capture all that information, you have a treasure trove. It might be a little bit, you know, case by case by case. Well, you roll up the cases, you know, you don't get to insights looking at granular level, requisition level information. You get to insights by finding that happy medium between we have a $300 million program to we have Sally Jones that has worked for the last five, you know, five weeks on our on our job.

00;11;33;04 - 00;11;51;20
Chris Radvansky
Neither of those provide a level of insight that you need. There's a happy medium, that gray zone that's in between granularity and a macro level. That is really where you can start finding out how should we change the program, how should we make different decisions so that we can improve cost savings and efficiency down the line?

00;11;51;22 - 00;12;17;05
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, I think one of the interesting things for me is looking at the difference between a staff org scenario contractors, temps versus statement of work, because I would always describe the two things very simply as staff augmentation is paying an individual for their time, whereas getting something done under a statement of work is paying an organization to deliver an output or an outcome.

00;12;17;08 - 00;12;32;07
Jonny Dunning
Do you think that within organizations and customer organizations at the moment and within the MSP environment, do you think it's as clear as that, or is the am I kind of missing out the grace scale stuff that kind of sits in the middle?

00;12;32;10 - 00;12;52;11
Chris Radvansky
Well, fortunately, you and I are different countries, and therefore I can say it depends. And because it does, it is going to depend a lot on the regulations of the certain location that you're in, the nature of the business that you have yourself as an end, as an inviolate their end user, whatever you might want to say. What type of business are you in?

00;12;52;14 - 00;13;11;27
Chris Radvansky
Is that work that's being done, whether it's staff, all your project? Is that in direct alignment with what you're doing or is that something that kind of you also need to get done? However, it's not part of your own value proposition. So the answer is it depends. Everyone hate that answer, but it's also generally the right answer. Almost understand that.

00;13;11;29 - 00;13;39;17
Chris Radvansky
So you really need to understand all the ins and outs and the requirements from a regulatory and governmental state to then answer that question. So unfortunately that is the case. But that's where you need specialists, that's where you need to lean on the people, whether it's within your organization or outside of it, that have the answers to these resources to understand, okay, are we going to be in trouble if we conduct business in this way or are we good to go?

00;13;39;19 - 00;13;58;00
Chris Radvansky
And even within the United States, let's say they have the IRS has all these are great questions in which they need to determine, is this a valid business type business? The business relationship and the IRS publishes these questions. And generally we're supposed to go through each of them and say this is a fully arm's length type of a relationship.

00;13;58;02 - 00;14;25;29
Chris Radvansky
It's appropriate. This person has no co employment risk. We're good to go. However, there's times where the actual core cases that are assessing total employment will counter the assumed answers from this IRS questionnaire. So therefore there was a talking the talk, but not walking the walk, as we say here. So how can we really be certain that we are compliant?

00;14;26;01 - 00;14;39;02
Chris Radvansky
You need to make sure that you're up to date on all the rules of the land and the latest rules as well. And that's why there's all these different white papers and podcasts such as this to make sure people understand how important that is.

00;14;39;04 - 00;15;01;24
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, I mean, although obviously for me, being in the UK and you being in the US, there are differences. I think there are also great similarities in the sense that there's some gray areas and there's also some slightly less than less than 100% persuasive government guidance on it that gets questioned by the common kind of lawsuits. So, so fairly similar.

00;15;01;26 - 00;15;42;29
Jonny Dunning
I mean, obviously both modes of operation are about getting work done. That is, extended workforce is how an organization utilizes external capacity and capability, whether it's Jane and Bob doing some work on an hourly basis or whether it's Supplier X delivering a service, whatever that may be. And I guess one of the interesting things I found I've thought about our conversation originally was clearly for somebody who's focused on the data, you ideally want consistency and you want to have common denominators that you can use across the areas that you're assessing to basically be able to carry out, you know, comparative analytics in some sort of meaningful way.

00;15;43;01 - 00;16;07;20
Jonny Dunning
So you want as much data as you can get this as simple as possible, and so that you can answer the questions that the business is asking you with good evidence. But I would put forward the statement of work data is far more complicated than just hourly and daily rates. And would you say there is greater complexity in that data, or is it just different information.

00;16;07;22 - 00;16;33;12
Chris Radvansky
To roll it up? Ultimately, we need to put these 50 different SJW projects together and we need to say something about them. We can say, well, in aggregate they cost $20 million, but each individual project cost 3 million. Here, a million and a half here are 500,000 there. Those are common numbers that we can all agree on. Yes, this is one thing that we can define, that we can measure.

00;16;33;15 - 00;16;55;11
Chris Radvansky
We recognize that they are all indeed projects. They all have a start date. They all have an end date unless you just kind of keep going, renew overdue or no. So there are ways in which you can say everybody's talking the same language. But then of course, every one of those projects has a lot of intricacies that you might say, Well, this is very, very different.

00;16;55;11 - 00;17;20;02
Chris Radvansky
This is that unique snowflake that is going to be something that we can't compare to other ones. And that's that's fine. That's that's why you go down this path of of SOW relationships. But, you know, ultimately you need to say, okay, we've been transacting business for five years, right? We've engaged in with 15 different SJW vendors over that five year period.

00;17;20;05 - 00;17;44;18
Chris Radvansky
There is some commonality within our transactions, within our projects. And then you say, okay, now that we have assessed all of our history, now we can maybe make some better decisions about governance going forward. You know, the best time to plant a tree was ten years ago. The next best time is today. So if you recognize that, well, we've been doing that for five years, therefore we can't do it today.

00;17;44;18 - 00;18;03;03
Chris Radvansky
No, you can start today. It's just a matter of leveraging the data that is in arrears, assessing it and saying, dammit, if we had better data five years ago, we'd be able to make better decisions today, start implementing that structure and that governance today. And that way in five years you'll be in much better shape.

00;18;03;05 - 00;18;27;14
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. So if you learn more about an outcome, you can manage that outcome more effectively. You've talked about peeling back the layers in a statement of work. Obviously on the continuing workforce side staff augmentation, the base unit of measurement is going to be an hourly rate or day rate. Do you think you can get to a base unit of measurement within services procurement?

00;18;27;17 - 00;18;51;05
Chris Radvansky
I don't think that's something that is, you know, because again, you'd said that, well, it's not exactly non employee labor. You're just looking to get a project on. It's also not widgets, right? So you're not looking for a specific volume of specific thing and each one costs how many per unit. Right. So w is not the same, but also again, that's uniquely different from staff augmentation.

00;18;51;07 - 00;19;18;20
Chris Radvansky
So there does need to be that level of flexibility built within your systems and built within your processes. But if they're built there, they also need to be documented. So you need to whether it's within your your system, again, we have all these different assumptions built within, you know, a type of a workflow, or if it's within a policy that says, listen, this is how we conduct business, this is the suppliers that we transact with in the way in which we transact with them.

00;19;18;22 - 00;19;42;27
Chris Radvansky
If you document this, you're going to have something that you can go back and say, This is our best practice and this is why we're doing it this way. So I'm always a fan of documentation that enables better clarity and communication. I think communication is so critical to build bridges between individuals, to have some consistency across your organization and have something to point to and say, Listen, this is why we're doing things this way.

00;19;42;29 - 00;19;57;01
Chris Radvansky
And when something else pops up that, Hey, this is brand new territory for us, let's write that down. Let's identify who's the owner of it, let's identify the processes and what could go wrong if we build a process this way. So that's all I have to say about that for now.

00;19;57;04 - 00;20;32;02
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. On 100% agree with you. And I think that's exactly the sort of approach organizations need to take, particularly when they're dealing with something new and complicated. Like when I say new, I mean or new in that kind of MSSP environment other than the staff or contingent workforce kind of standard type stuff. so do you see it as with regards to looking at the data within statement of work, do you see it as more as a comparison within statement of work or, or are you looking at this as a comparison across statement of work staff, org and all different areas?

00;20;32;05 - 00;21;02;04
Chris Radvansky
I think that what needs to happen and this is something actually I just had a conversation very recently with a MSP program manager and a staffing supplier and essentially it was, well, you know, within a couple of my clients we have the I.T organization is leveraging SOW a lot more than they would be. They're leveraging it and therefore we will not be leveraging our staffing suppliers as much because we're going to be using it that much more.

00;21;02;06 - 00;21;25;17
Chris Radvansky
However, if you do an analysis of these SOW projects, there might be a lot of them that have one worker. And historically what I've seen this might be anecdotal, but I think it's true based upon all the conversations I've had in the last couple of months, is that there are just fewer roadblocks to getting an S.W. approved as a as compared to a headcount.

00;21;25;19 - 00;21;46;05
Chris Radvansky
HeadCount right now is seen as something that is very much an added cost versus maybe an SOW. is something that we'll listen. We need to get this done and therefore it costs us this much. Can we get that approved? The answer is seemingly more frequently yes. Then you'll get the yes from the contingent, worker or staff org space.

00;21;46;08 - 00;22;16;29
Chris Radvansky
So I think what is now happening is staffing suppliers are saying, you know what? Well, if that's the case, maybe I should put my toes into the SOW vendor space. Maybe I should kind of restructure and rejig my service offering to be uniquely situated where, yeah, we do staffing staff augmentation, so we do projects. We can absolutely do that and deliver to the same folks that they would leverage and send over within these staff org sourcing process and they would say, All right, you know what?

00;22;16;29 - 00;22;40;01
Chris Radvansky
We're going to have some more Salesforce activity coming through here. We're going to have some more new Java projects that might be coming up. And we want to make sure that we have a three or a five or seven person team that's ready to go when that SOW comes across. Now, that might come across a little bit easier because those staffing suppliers that are now SOW suppliers, maybe they don't have a competitive bidding.

00;22;40;03 - 00;23;03;26
Chris Radvansky
So W process. So instead of competing against other staffing suppliers for staff all work, they might just be winning an SOW project that is coming up in August or December, whatever it might be, and that might be an easier process. Is it the most cost effective by me being able to make decisions and comparing rates to rates to quality, the quality that we're doing within staff out?

00;23;03;29 - 00;23;25;13
Chris Radvansky
It's no, I mean, the answer is no. However, is it easier? As I mentioned, it might be a little bit easier, yeah. And does that ease tone with a tolerance for a higher overall cost? Maybe. And then again, those are a conversation and questions that companies have to ask themselves when they're establishing, you know, their processes.

00;23;25;15 - 00;23;54;24
Jonny Dunning
You know, I think it's so fascinating and that is partly me being a bit geeky, but just looking at understanding this part of the industry, having been involved in it in the way that I have, this is where it brings up this kind of gray area. Because if you're looking at best practice around delivering outcome based services, that's kind of different to what you're talking about there, which is to a certain extent what we would call in the UK body shopping.

00;23;54;26 - 00;24;14;06
Jonny Dunning
It's almost like disguised contracting in a way because it's kind of there's two sides of it that are being a little bit naughty. Maybe there's the buy side of it just getting around headcount restrictions and just basically just just get it done another way. And then there's the vendor side of it that are kind of like packaging it up, but actually it's behind the scenes, it's contractors.

00;24;14;06 - 00;24;41;20
Jonny Dunning
But to be honest, both of them are kind of have their own legitimacy because if the supplier is packaging it up effectively and taking on the delivery risk and it's contracted in the right way, what's kind of the mechanics behind the scenes shouldn't really matter because ultimately but this is where it kind of bleeds into the sort of the middle bit is where it ends up being fundamental based on time and rates.

00;24;41;23 - 00;25;12;20
Jonny Dunning
So it'll be an amount of time at certain rates and then it'll just have an extension. We'll have another extension of another extension. It's just it's just contracting basically. However, where there is an outcome or an output that is defined, it will have some time associated with it. But that's the suppliers problem to work that out, they've got to work out whether it's a profitable piece of work for them to do based on the timings and on the amount they're going to get paid for it and where the liability sits as to whether that's, you know, logical for them to do it in that way.

00;25;12;20 - 00;25;39;11
Jonny Dunning
So I think you could almost look at it as go there's the contingent workforce staff org sort of things. And then there's this in my opinion very messy kind of blended sort of quasi CW stuff in the middle that's kind of like maybe Shades of Gray sits kind of across both where the the, the standard of measurement could potentially still be broken down 2 hours or days.

00;25;39;13 - 00;25;55;12
Jonny Dunning
And then you've got what I would class is proper services, I mean, a proper statement of work where that's irrelevant. It's an output or an outcome. Clearly in proper service procurement, occasionally they're going to be certain elements of something that might have a time based element to it. Ten days of consulting is part of that package, but it's just an overall delivery.

00;25;55;14 - 00;26;09;16
Jonny Dunning
It doesn't matter who's doing it. You don't need to know that. You just need to know that it's done and it's done properly. So. So for me, this is an absolutely fascinating area to explore, and I'm really glad to be able to kind of bring in your insights with as well.

00;26;09;18 - 00;26;34;29
Chris Radvansky
Because I'm going to put a term on it when I've heard, you know, within SOW you have two different types and this might not be revelatory to you, but six bid versus timing materials where SOW time materials, you are capturing individual workers, you're capturing how much they're building and things like that. However, it is still a project and that is historically owned by procurement.

00;26;35;02 - 00;26;54;19
Chris Radvansky
So the suppliers and all the other folks, that's less of a piece of a pie in the staff org space, but it's still time and materials. So to your point, it is that gray area and there's two different types of projects do exist now. The balance between will, are we going to engage with time and materials more? Are we going to engage with fixed bid more?

00;26;54;21 - 00;27;25;10
Chris Radvansky
And I would say that is heading over to the fixed in space. And the reason whether this is the reason or not, but my hypothesis is that it seems to be just a general notification of data and facts. If we say, listen, we don't. And that's where regulation is all over co employment. That's why my former employer came into being because the Microsoft case back in 1991 is, okay, well, you know, this is completely at risk.

00;27;25;10 - 00;27;48;06
Chris Radvansky
And then all of a sudden all the lights were shined on non employees and their, you know, business relationship with their Clintonville employers or clients, I guess if you wanted to call it back then. So if the regulations are focused on staff augmentation, okay, how who are your workers? What are they doing? You know, how long have they been around or just sometimes argued something is very important.

00;27;48;06 - 00;28;09;08
Chris Radvansky
They've been around for six years. Well, they're definitely an employee. Well, that's not actually the case. However, it's a good data piece to collect and monitor if you want to make sure that you're optimizing your cost and your markups and things like that. But I digress. So the regulation is there for the staff augmentation population. Is the regulation as much there in the CW space?

00;28;09;08 - 00;28;30;06
Chris Radvansky
You might know this answer better than I do, but my guess is not as much. And if we can continue saying, Well, listen, this project cost me $15 million, I don't know anything more than that. At least nothing more is captured in the system. Is somebody forcing the hand here where it's like we need to find out a little bit more about this relationship.

00;28;30;06 - 00;28;47;29
Chris Radvansky
Well, it's a very, very large No big four vendor or it's a very, very large i.t professional services vendor and therefore we don't need to find out more. Okay. And all of a sudden, millions and millions of dollars that are being transacted between these very large companies is going just okay, I don't know any more about it.

00;28;48;01 - 00;29;06;11
Chris Radvansky
These two companies seem like they've been legacy, they've been around for 50 plus years. No more questions asked versus the stay of all population. Somebody building $50,000 a year, all of a sudden that has a lot more regulation around. And that's a bit odd to me. And that might be something that should be changing in my opinion.

00;29;06;13 - 00;29;32;27
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, it's interesting because what we're talking about here does have different contractual and legal considerations, partly depending on where you are, but the kind of co employment type laws between the UK and the US, for example, there's some broad similarities. If my take on it is that the contingent workforce base is quite highly regulated, but it's quite, quite clear, as clear as these not very clear government assessment systems make it.

00;29;32;29 - 00;29;57;09
Jonny Dunning
It's pretty clear where you should, what you should be doing in terms of regulating the SOW space. It kind of doesn't need regulating in itself because it's a business to business interaction. That's a company being paid to deliver a service. They either do what's contracted or they don't do what's contracted. That's as far as it goes. But the regulations that apply to the contingent workforce laws are relevant in that space where people are blurring the lines.

00;29;57;11 - 00;30;24;05
Jonny Dunning
So what we see a lot of the time is companies getting quite nervous. If there's a lack of differentiate in between what they're classing as statement of work and what they crossing is staff augmentation. I mean, you know, we talked about you talked about ultimately, if you can't measure hours, you got nothing. Well, if you go well, I would kind of I would put forward the assertion that in in services procurement, you're going to be measuring different things.

00;30;24;08 - 00;30;45;29
Jonny Dunning
And it comes down to that word outcomes, which is which is something where it's it's a totally different thing if you're if you're engaging workers, individuals under a certain period of days, hours, whatever it might be, that's kind of on the never, never potentially in terms of how long it's going to take. But you know, you've got people at a certain level doing work, and that's what people are used to a lot.

00;30;46;00 - 00;31;02;00
Jonny Dunning
The time I've got people working on it, they're doing their best. We're moving along. How long is going to take? Kind of don't really know. It's harder to tie that down, but you know, you're paying per hour per day and you can feel comfortable with that with an outcome. As you said, sometimes people might look at it and go outsourcing.

00;31;02;00 - 00;31;24;19
Jonny Dunning
It is a higher overall cost, but I would question that that's not necessarily going to be the fact all of the time in the sense that the supplier is taking the risk for delivery and if it's contracted effectively with clear outcomes set out, they're either going to deliver them or they're not. And actually in terms of how expensive that's going to end up being against, contracting is up for debate.

00;31;24;19 - 00;31;47;09
Jonny Dunning
Plus, you don't have that delivery risk if it ends up taking longer or if something goes wrong. So the things that typically would get measured in services procurement are different. They're more like, if I look at my supply base, how many projects do they run? What's their average win ratio? What's their average cost overrun at a milestone level on every project they've worked on, how often are they on time, on budget?

00;31;47;11 - 00;32;09;21
Jonny Dunning
How often does the scope change? You can make some really interesting analysis around that, but it's different criteria. So I think that's like ideal world textbook statement of work services, procurement, right? However, we do have this, and if you look at it from if you think of it from a kind of MSP continuous workforce point of view, what's the entry point going to be?

00;32;09;21 - 00;32;37;16
Jonny Dunning
It's not going to be going from contingent workforce straight into the most sophisticated services procurement. It's going to be contingent workforce into whatever's adjacent to it. As far as statement of work goes. So but, but when you were talking earlier, you were saying about potentially this skew more towards fixed bids and more outcome based, what do you think are the drivers that are pushing in that direction?

00;32;37;18 - 00;32;56;00
Chris Radvansky
It's interesting and this is something you and I talked about down in Dallas is that one of my projects I said, listen, well, this will probably take me this many hours and I can be done by this date and and it'll cost this much. Right. And they can kind of back into what's Chris's hourly rate for this. And I go, okay, great.

00;32;56;03 - 00;33;24;11
Chris Radvansky
I was asked actually to to remove the number of hours that it would take me. And again, that's I'm giving you data. I'm intentionally giving you this and you're intentionally saying I don't want the data. Again, that's a governance decision that they're making to their. What do we not want to know? Because it might raise questions. And I think that's a curious, odd thing.

00;33;24;14 - 00;33;52;25
Chris Radvansky
But I understand it because the regulation that is around that they'd rather put the rug over some pieces of information just to avoid, avoid any thing that could be perceived as noncompliance. But ultimately, what was you know, if you're a vendor there, you say, okay, well, then it's actually going to cost you more. You can increase it. And then they don't want to kind of raise an eyebrow at it.

00;33;52;25 - 00;34;20;23
Chris Radvansky
So it is curious to me in the whole scenario that you just walk through about, well, how how is that vendor performing? How long does it take? How many days are they past their milestone date that was agreed to in the contract? That's assuming that you're capturing all the information within the contract, within the VMs, and that's where you can structure that kind of a workflow to, hey, you know, and measure a little bit more equitably and equally, you know, consistently.

00;34;20;25 - 00;34;32;12
Chris Radvansky
But overall, that's that's not happening. I would say seven times out of ten, if I can be generous. And sometimes that that might be intentionally as I just kind of painted the picture there.

00;34;32;15 - 00;34;49;01
Jonny Dunning
And what would you say is the majority limiting factor on that? Is it the capability within some VMS systems to actually capture that level of detail on statement of work? Or is it the lack of the kind of process input coming from the the client side or the supply side?

00;34;49;04 - 00;35;15;11
Chris Radvansky
I think that all the VMs out there are very interested in having the latest and greatest and best SOW module Zivio included here, right? Those of you and you're willing to say, Listen client, this is what we can capture. This is all the different fields that might be relevant for all your SOWs and if you need to configure it in a certain way, rename things.

00;35;15;11 - 00;35;35;17
Chris Radvansky
We can. However, we recognize this is how it works. It does have milestones, it has end date, estimated end dates, the process for renewal, the process for extensions, all those different stuff. You know, we have the red line. We want to throw addendums onto the PDF document itself. We want to capture that within the SOW module. Absolutely.

00;35;35;18 - 00;36;00;17
Chris Radvansky
All the VMs is, in my opinion, are either doing that or are working towards that end. It's on the buyer to take advantage of all the features of a piece of software and a lot of times that that's not the case for consumers as well. But I just I see the adoption of that level of granularity within the DSW space for these software.

00;36;00;19 - 00;36;25;09
Chris Radvansky
The adoption on the buyer side is just is not there. But I'm a little bit curious myself as to why. But I think again, it's just the regulation. It comes back to that like, well, if we don't or the interest or maybe even could be a of understanding as to the benefit of capturing that, is that just data for the sake of data or is that data that I can action upon and maybe they don't have the bandwidth right?

00;36;25;11 - 00;36;49;26
Chris Radvansky
So look, I do see how I can action it, but I'm not going to spend time, you know, going through all this data to make an adjustment so that maybe next time around in six months they'll deliver it the month sooner than they did previously. So you've got to understand that if there's meat on the bone, if there's bandwidth for people to actually, you know, take action on it, those are all different considerations you have to bring into play.

00;36;49;28 - 00;37;14;10
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, really, really interesting point. What you've just been talking through there makes me feel quite good about our approach to the world because I think, you know, adoption is a critical factor. If you look at so so where we would cost ourselves as a VMS for services procurement, we only do services procurement, so we don't do contingent workforce, we don't do hourly direct, just purely statement work.

00;37;14;12 - 00;37;51;17
Jonny Dunning
So that what that and I'm not trying to look at it blow our own trumpet here, but I'm just talking strategically that allows you as an organization to focus on that particular use case and in my view of the world is services procurement. The statement work is different. It's different enough that you need to consider it differently. I'm passionately believe that ties into to the adoption side of it in the sense that my belief is if your original starting point is contingent workforce and then you add a module specifically designed to deal with something else, you're still going to have some carryover of that original approach.

00;37;51;19 - 00;38;10;16
Jonny Dunning
Now I'm no Nostradamus, but my prediction is that people are going to want one thing, one ring to rule them all in one scenario. In some scenarios and in other scenarios, they're going to want specialists that interface in the correct way because you're dealing with different stakeholders. So if it was just contingent workforce category managers and talent acquisition and an h.R.

00;38;10;16 - 00;38;43;27
Jonny Dunning
People dealing with that statement work stuff, they probably just want to try and push it into as much of a similar scenario as the contingent workforce as they could get away with within within the regulatory framework. But if you look at procurement, they don't they want to do it properly. They want to do it in a procurement way, which is, to be honest, partly where I think the leap is over steps that need to be taken for the MSP providers to to bridge that gap, to get to be able to offer those stakeholders as good a service as they can offer the contingent workforce stakeholders.

00;38;44;00 - 00;39;04;24
Jonny Dunning
So so when you look at it like that, this is a huge greenfield area for data analytics because if there's a very limited amount of information being captured thus far and it is limited to hourly rates and day rates, which won't apply to a lot of this stuff, and where it is, it's on a little bit of shaky ground.

00;39;04;27 - 00;39;22;01
Jonny Dunning
Just imagine when you start getting into the true metrics around statement of work, nobody's really doing that. So so in the way that we look at the world, we're looking at on time, on budget to scope, what's the win ratio, what's the cost overrun because you need to be able to compare supplies on a like for like basis.

00;39;22;08 - 00;39;46;20
Jonny Dunning
Have they got X and Y capabilities and how reliable are they at doing what they're contracted to do? So you're absolutely right in talking about how you need to capture the contracted details effectively, you need to be able to systemize deliverables, milestones, whatever those milestones might be, that could be pure deliverables, could be a sprint in an agile development process, could be a KPI, could be a block of of time, for example.

00;39;46;23 - 00;39;51;22
Jonny Dunning
So there are lots of facets to it.

00;39;51;25 - 00;40;18;28
Jonny Dunning
Capturing that information is one thing, measuring it as an is another. But there's that like for like measurement across those suppliers. So I think that's where there's the room to go, what that makes difficult. So that ends up putting contingent workforce and statement work in two different boxes. You're measuring different things. Then you've got the challenge of going, okay, if you're measuring outcomes over here, the company that designing work around outcomes need to put quite a lot of thought into it.

00;40;19;05 - 00;40;37;28
Jonny Dunning
What do I want to achieve with this? Where's the end point? How much do I think that should cost? And maybe on the other side they'll be thinking, Well, I'll cost out what I think that would cost on a a staff augmentation basis and maybe they can make some sort of comparison, but they also have to layer into that other factors like the legal responsibility for delivery.

00;40;37;28 - 00;40;55;06
Jonny Dunning
It will sit with the supplier and you're kind of guaranteed an outcome with that. Whereas with this it could extend and you don't really know how far it's going to go. So that I think for me will be the point where it can get really fascinating, where organizations can look at their different workforce. Channel What if I get this work done through permanent channels?

00;40;55;08 - 00;41;21;29
Jonny Dunning
You know, what if I outsource it? What if I if I stuff up with contractors? That's where the really clever decisions around kind of strategic workforce planning need to take place. They've got to be fed by data. It feels at the moment like SOW is either a kind of bottomless pit of zero data or there's some data that's kind of staff org and people that maybe want to measure it instinctively and that way when it's part of an MSP program.

00;41;22;01 - 00;41;25;28
Jonny Dunning
But it feels like there's a long way to go.

00;41;26;00 - 00;41;42;16
Chris Radvansky
Yeah, and I would say it's a bit of an uphill battle. So you say that there's a, you know, opportunity here for better data analytics around. So W and I agree. However, if you start with the absence of data and say, all right, let's get to an analysis, you're going to be done your job very, very quickly. Right.

00;41;42;16 - 00;42;01;14
Chris Radvansky
So we need to make sure that those folks out there need to recognize that, well, you need data to make better decisions. You shouldn't have data without recommendations and you shouldn't have recommendations without data. Right. So if we're recommending something that better be driven by data, if we have data, I don't want data for the second data. I don't want data.

00;42;01;14 - 00;42;31;22
Chris Radvansky
So it makes our databases enormous and say, look at us. We have a lot of information here, but we have data so we can make better recommendations. So that's just one point I wanted to make in terms of Zivio and SOW VMS module or, you know, just the standalone VMs even, that's something that is so important. I think that in the age of AI, if I can say those two, two letters right now, hyper specialization is going to be really, really important.

00;42;31;25 - 00;42;58;08
Chris Radvansky
Leveraging experience and real world history is going to be something that's very important. Now, I with Rad Consultants, I am in an industry that not a lot of people outside of people watching this podcast right now have heard of. And when you talk about data and analytics, it's a space that a lot of people maybe they've heard of it, of course, but do they really know what it means and can they implement it in any way?

00;42;58;10 - 00;43;30;12
Chris Radvansky
Probably not as well. So I'm in a hyper specialized space in a niche industry, in a niche area, but that's needed because we are getting to a level of hyperspecialization. And I kick this off with AI because AI is a really great generalist. It has no experience and can read of course, but it's a terrific generalist and if you haven't done it and you haven't said, give me ten reasons why I should do X within your contingent labor program, even it'll give you ten reasons.

00;43;30;14 - 00;43;47;18
Chris Radvansky
And then you say, You know what, give me breakdown item number one with five different bullet points. It'll do that and then do that for the number two and number three and number four. And it gives you that and you got boom, you got a big old white paper after 10 minutes of work and just iterating on this generalist information.

00;43;47;20 - 00;44;09;08
Chris Radvansky
However, when we talk about hyper specialization, that's where it's going to give you hallucinations, which if you don't know, those are just facts that are wrong, but they sound darn good. So that's where you need to learn. Lean on those experts within that specialized niche. And as humans, we need to recognize that's where our value is going to lie.

00;44;09;11 - 00;44;32;12
Chris Radvansky
Our value is going to lie in the things that we have lived and breathed and know and could speak for, for a very time about. So fine that hyper specialization recognize that this is the value that I can bring. Because when you talk about value versus scarcity versus abundance, we now have abundant general, you know, consulting at our fingertips.

00;44;32;15 - 00;44;59;20
Chris Radvansky
We the scarcity and the value comes from the hyper specialization in a very specific field. But that specific field needs to have a lot of meat on the bone. And in the growing non-employee workforce space, there's a lot of meat on the bone. There is going to be more and more companies that, unfortunately. So you know what? We don't need as many employees as we used to have, and therefore you're going to have a lot more growth within 1 to 5 person companies that are going to be saying, okay, we can drive value.

00;44;59;20 - 00;45;21;00
Chris Radvansky
We have the skills to contribute to a skills base organization and therefore we can offer that 10 hours a week here, 30 hours a month there, and, you know, for these and clients. So instead of having one full time employer, you have ten different clients. And that is a very real possibility as companies are recognizing really need folks that we need.

00;45;21;00 - 00;45;50;22
Chris Radvansky
We don't want to carry a 30,000 person employee base. We want to carry one that's maybe 20,000 or 15,000 and then figure out plug those folks that we don't need them full time, plug them in as as needed within our skills based organization. So that's a little bit of my diatribe about the importance of a very specific software such as Zivio, as a very specific vendor such as myself with contingent labor analytics, but also I think that it's a growing need in general across the market.

00;45;50;24 - 00;46;14;16
Jonny Dunning
What you know what, I found it really inspiring chatting to you in Texas, just your passion around the AI stuff. I think I was telling you about what we've been doing around requirements, sourcing requirements, scope creation story with our interface with GPT four Turbo and some of the cool stuff we're doing around that, which I'm actually going to be showcasing next week at a conference in London.

00;46;14;18 - 00;46;44;06
Jonny Dunning
And one of the things that I came away from the conversation with you thinking was, if I'm not using a generative AI platform, whether it's Chat, GPT or something else, if I'm not using that every single day, I'm doing something wrong. If I'm not trying to take some value from that every day, I have actually set myself that task that I have basically asked generative AI at least one question every day because it comes down to the whole thing of people talking about AI taking people's jobs.

00;46;44;08 - 00;47;12;28
Jonny Dunning
My opinion, and I can't remember this is something you've also subscribed to or not, but people who use I'll get to take other people's jobs in the sense that, you know, you can you can stand there and you can look at it and go, This is scary. This is weird. It is. But also it's a tool. And if it's used effectively in the right in the right scenario and you understand the limitations, it is a tool that people can adopt right now in their personal and professional lives to elevate what they're doing.

00;47;13;00 - 00;47;39;20
Jonny Dunning
So I think it's a very worthwhile point to bring up. And when you start getting into like complex dealing with complex scenarios, like, for example, services become there's a lot of complexity, you know, in terms of looking at contracts, looking, evaluating suppliers, writing requirements. There's all sorts of things that these large language models can be directed towards and guided through specialist providers actually tuning what they're asking and how they're how they use utilizing that.

00;47;39;20 - 00;47;58;17
Jonny Dunning
AI is, as you say, it's a generalist, but when you tune it for a specialist purpose, you're less likely to get those kind of hallucinations. You're more likely if it's factual information, whether the large amount of data available to the generative AI model, you can get some pretty useful stuff out of it. So I think you're absolutely right to bring that up.

00;47;58;19 - 00;48;12;24
Jonny Dunning
And I would also say, I think the thing I took away from you about making sure I'm using it every day, I think everybody should be should we try to think along those lines to say, how can this add value to what I'm doing rather than taking away from on day?

00;48;12;27 - 00;48;43;18
Chris Radvansky
Yeah. So with Open AI's dev Day, which was I guess last Monday it was now but they released the the ability to create GPT which are essentially your own bespoke trained up activities. You can dictate how you want it to operate, you want it to access the internet or do you want to only allow it to access the data or the knowledge that you're uploading in your creation of that GPT created one over the last couple of days.

00;48;43;20 - 00;49;09;13
Chris Radvansky
Wild Ride Workforce Guru Check it out out there if you're able to to find that a LinkedIn but essentially where we were before with hallucinations. I don't want to upload my own internal datasets and you know I'm concerned about that and as you should be, I mean, this is something that we still need to be guarded against because of the implications of adding this massive amount of intelligence for free to everybody all over the world.

00;49;09;19 - 00;49;28;22
Chris Radvansky
That's essentially we're doing. But if we know how to build it, we know how to leverage it in a way that is suiting already, that's aligned with our goals, then that's where. Yes, absolutely is a tool. It is a tool of Excel. I love them to use the Microsoft Excel. It's a tool. It's a tool that a lot of people are scared of.

00;49;28;24 - 00;49;53;23
Chris Radvansky
A lot of people are, you know, scared of in a way that, okay, let's leverage this for larger than just creating a table, right? So those folks that have not achieved a level of data comfort will not become data literate and will be even that much more intimidated by A.I.. Right. And they'll say, I don't want to touch it, but it can be used for a darn good purpose, just like Excel can be used for a darn good purpose.

00;49;53;23 - 00;50;19;10
Chris Radvansky
And the internet and a PC. And how far back do you want to go? So yeah, I you know, I think that constantly learning is something that is really, really important right now in 2023. And as we move into 2024, A.I. is going to be developing. And I would encourage everybody that's watching this to just constantly upskill themselves, you know, because this is going to be that revolutionary over the next 2 to 3 years.

00;50;19;13 - 00;50;39;23
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, the genie is out of the bottle, basically, is there's no there's no kind of putting it back in. But yeah, I mean, when you look at it in a comparison to two Excel, I mean, you're probably creating a GPT, your own personal GPT. I mean that's we're talking pivot tables and macros and equivalence. That's terrifying. Yeah. Yeah I agree.

00;50;39;23 - 00;51;05;16
Jonny Dunning
And, but, but I also think that it's very important that, for example, this sort of conversation is hot Now other people might have completely differing opinions too. You and I, and they might have some really valuable input that they can add to it. But that's what the industry needs to do, because when you look at the contingent workforce industry and its impact on the services procurement segment, work industry services procurement is so big, it's like $20 trillion spend annually across the whole world.

00;51;05;16 - 00;51;29;01
Jonny Dunning
It's gigantic. It's very complicated and it's it's very embryonic. And it's in terms of its spend management because it's incredibly varied. It could be anything. No two projects necessarily are the same. But but that is something that the organizations are having to get control of now, having to start look at and and technology providers are having to address in a meaningful way.

00;51;29;03 - 00;52;07;26
Jonny Dunning
And that does create opportunity. And I think the advent of AI just at really accelerates the ability to dig into that problem. But in the meantime, I think also people need to understand where the differences are, not try to cram one thing into another. So we were talking about you put forward a quote or you're doing some work for somebody and they said, I don't want to know how many hours is not a really interesting conversation with a head of procurement of a large construction construction kind of project delivery organization.

00;52;07;28 - 00;52;30;26
Jonny Dunning
So they're basically providing surveying services and all sorts of different services around massive construction projects all over the world. So so they're the interesting thing for them, the twofold one is typically services procurement is classed as part of indirect spend, but for them it's actually their direct spend is is services where it's like, you know, architects and surveyors, it's their product.

00;52;30;28 - 00;52;50;05
Jonny Dunning
So they're buying that from people subcontracting and pushing that through to the client. And whereas the goods are materials, it sits within kind of like direct or indirect. Alright, so that's one interesting thing. But another interesting thing was this guy was saying, you know, he really believes in technology. He wants to take things forward. He knows statement of work is not contingent workforce.

00;52;50;08 - 00;53;20;08
Jonny Dunning
But his point was, I still want to know roughly what that price that the supplier has given me breaks down into. And that threw up a really interesting argument for me on a be I'll be interested in your viewpoint on it because yes it does. If you take it out of an arbitrary measure of what's the effort involved in doing that, but also what's the kind of like intellectual IP element of what that service provider is delivering.

00;53;20;10 - 00;53;41;15
Jonny Dunning
Now you could say that within a knowledge worker the same thing exists, but if you're delivering a service on an outcome basis, it kind of becomes a bit of a moot point to me around how long it's going to take, because ultimately they're saying, I can deliver this for you. I'll take the risk that I'm going to deliver it within these timeframes and I'm going to charge you that that amount of money.

00;53;41;17 - 00;53;52;06
Jonny Dunning
Do you know, would you still be drawn towards trying to say, I still want to know what that is on an hourly rate? Or do you kind of see that how that diverges at that point?

00;53;52;09 - 00;54;16;09
Chris Radvansky
No, I think that you need to be flexible when it comes to, you know, what level of granularity do you want. There should be some questioning. You know, again, it's all about removing that. You don't know what you don't know If there's something that down the road, down the road, you could say, you know what? I could understand how this could be an important piece of information to capture.

00;54;16;11 - 00;54;37;09
Chris Radvansky
It doesn't hurt to ask and it doesn't hurt to implement a policy that has the buy in from multiple different stakeholders within your organization, whether it's procurement or h.r. Two. This is how we're going to conduct business. This is why and also there is an exception policy. If we're not going to capture it for certain situations, what are other situations and when?

00;54;37;15 - 00;55;08;25
Chris Radvansky
When is that acceptable? So again, it comes back then to to to documentation and to policy. I know it's boring, but leverage a certain generative situation to create the bones of that policy, the skeleton of that policy, and then build it out with your unique knowledge that is scarce. And again, that can help to foster a better situation, improves communication, improves your own robustness as an organization and says, All right, we're a legitimate operation here.

00;55;08;28 - 00;55;30;01
Chris Radvansky
And if a vendor wants to push back, you say, listen, here's the policy. It's signed off by all the relevant folks within the organization and it's just how we conduct business like that. I get it. But that's how we conduct business. A lot of times, if you deliver it like that, they're going to be listening. They're going to jump on board.

00;55;30;03 - 00;56;01;00
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. I mean, what you what you're describing, there is a clear motivation within the buying organization to get value and to understand. It's not as I said, it's a very, very meaningful spend for almost all organizations. You know, the figures I've heard from from experts in the procurement sector, all the services spend on average across all different types of organizations across the world is roughly 50% of spend on obviously in a manufacturing heavy organization versus a bank, for example, they're going to be a different skew, but on average.

00;56;01;03 - 00;56;30;01
Jonny Dunning
So it clearly is very meaningful trying to get to that value. And so people are addressing it and they and it's and it makes sense to address it, but it's kind of always fallen into the too difficult box previously. And this is where I dedicate to technologies dedicated expertise can help move that along and solve that problem. But I do agree that flexibility is also an important part of it because you can't necessarily just instantly put things everything in one single framework.

00;56;30;01 - 00;57;01;15
Jonny Dunning
You've got to move along, move along the tracks with with this type of thing. Just one other thing that I thought was quite interesting was another thing that causes that to be crossover with, with knowledge based services, procurement versus contingent workforce is ultimately still work being done and this is still work being done by people using AI, not the AI doing the work.

00;57;01;17 - 00;57;30;01
Jonny Dunning
And so ultimately that requires things like the ability to track which resources you have on the pitch, as it were, who's accessing our systems, who's got right to enter the building? Where are these people? Who's who's doing X, Y and Z? So I think that is another reason why sometimes it can get kind of confused and crossed over with the contingent workforce element, where that is clearly a significant thing that has to be managed in the continued workforce space.

00;57;30;03 - 00;57;51;09
Jonny Dunning
But it's but, but there's definitely still that separation that needs to take place because, yes, you need to know who's on the pitch. You need to have compliance and control around the people that are working maybe on your site or using your equipment. For example. But that's where it's at that that is relevant to an individual because they might need a badge to enter your office, for example.

00;57;51;12 - 00;58;14;25
Jonny Dunning
But actually, if you're getting a piece of time based delivery as part of a statement of work, that shouldn't really matter which individual it is, it might matter that it's an a senior associate doing that work for that many hours because that's what contracted. But it doesn't matter whether it's Sarah or Pete. So so that's that's a subtle difference.

00;58;14;28 - 00;58;30;24
Jonny Dunning
But you can see why it's confused at the moment and it's partly because of the site. It's quite nice of people trying to get on top of this and some of the drivers are the regulatory side of things, whereas it pushed people across into this kind of quasi statement of work. And then now people are saying, Well, that's not good enough.

00;58;30;24 - 00;58;49;04
Jonny Dunning
We need to separate them out. So it is moving down the path of evolution, but it's still fairly early on in it and it stages, which is why I think it makes this kind of conversation particularly interesting, certainly to me and to other people I know, hopefully in the industry, because it's not really the sort of thing that I've heard being spoken about that much.

00;58;49;04 - 00;58;51;25
Jonny Dunning
You don't about, you know.

00;58;51;27 - 00;59;19;19
Chris Radvansky
It's because you said that, well, listen, with a contingent staff augmentation worker, we just we're going to charge ours, right? We want we want to check out ours versus with. So w project oriented work, we're going to check that things get done right. There's a big difference there. The things getting done is an outcome. The hours that are being charged is not an outcome, right?

00;59;19;21 - 00;59;39;27
Chris Radvansky
It's an input to receiving value or quality work out of those hours. Right. And the assessment of, well, how much work was done by the staff all worker, did they get exactly what they were brought on to do. You know, are they checking that box? And a lot of times I had a little bit of a back and forth on LinkedIn about this.

00;59;39;27 - 00;59;46;10
Chris Radvansky
This week was, well, are we capturing that information on the staff org worker Well.

00;59;46;12 - 00;59;48;13
Jonny Dunning
Just kind of, yeah.

00;59;48;18 - 01;00;12;24
Chris Radvansky
But the only way is through worker quality surveys that are generally voluntary response and have about a 25% response rate and also are very, very subjective by managers. A manager going to assess different folks in very different ways versus SOW, where you're talking about an outcome and a deliverable, Did that deliverable get met as per the contract? Yes, usually that's pretty darn binary, right?

01;00;12;27 - 01;00;31;21
Chris Radvansky
Yes or no versus the staff org worker. Did they get done what they were brought on to do for the contract? Well it's not a contract, right. They've been brought on to work 40 hours a week while some nobody else is out or on the special project. That is a short term basis. And they made it to the end of their assignment.

01;00;31;21 - 01;00;55;03
Chris Radvansky
It was not an involuntary or voluntary turnover. And they're now going and we like them. And you hear that 25% of the time. So you need to really consider, okay, are we going to have the policy again to require all hiring managers to give us worker quality feedback on their workers? I don't see why that would be something you say no to.

01;00;55;05 - 01;01;25;13
Chris Radvansky
That something is. Well, yeah, obviously we're going to spend 30 million, 20 million, $100 million on contingent labor spend. I want to make sure that our worker quality scores are coming in through the roof. Right. If I have the ability to say yes or no on projects, I should have a very similar ability to assess my continual workforce and the suppliers that they're coming from in a very similar type of manner might be different because we know that projects and staff, all because we've talked about for the last hour, are not the same thing.

01;01;25;16 - 01;01;30;26
Chris Radvansky
However, you should still have data on which you can make decisions going forward.

01;01;30;28 - 01;02;03;01
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, yeah, that's a super relevant point. And I think it highlights that the the structure and organization about how this work is done, whether it's a contingent workforce scenario, people's time, or whether it's an outcome based statement of work, both of them need tightening up. They need to have a better framework around them within organizations. They need more policy around them exactly as you said it to start the conversation, because ultimately you can't say one is always going to be better than the other in terms of getting work done.

01;02;03;01 - 01;02;29;11
Jonny Dunning
You need to have the channels available. You might need to, you know, a gig marketplace channel to get certain things done under a credit card. You've got your permanent employees, you've then got your contractors, you've temps, you've got your outsource service provision, you're consulting firms and all that sort of thing. You need a great CEO once kind of said to me, I just need to know the what is the most optimal use of all the resources that are available to me as a as a strategic play.

01;02;29;14 - 01;02;34;04
Jonny Dunning
Where do I where do I put my resources? Where which pieces do I move? So this horse is.

01;02;34;04 - 01;02;37;08
Chris Radvansky
Because, you know, he told you. It depends.

01;02;37;10 - 01;03;02;00
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. well, just yeah, I'll bring Chris. He may say it depends, but he'll tell you in a better way than that. I'm so, so what I was going to kind of say around that was if you tighten up the criteria around measuring work that gets done on the staff augmentation, it's then much easier to make a comparison of that against a statement of work or an outsourced method of getting that work done.

01;03;02;02 - 01;03;20;12
Jonny Dunning
By the same token, if you tighten up what you're measuring and how you defining what it is that's going to be done around in a statement work scenario, that's going to be clearer as well and it going to be clear what you're getting, what the value is and how much it costs, and therefore you can make that comparison more effective because that's where organizations really need to get to the just.

01;03;20;15 - 01;03;39;07
Jonny Dunning
It's just a question of piece of work needs doing most the most effective channel to get it done. And what you were talking about, about the changing nature of organizations size, shape, cope with had a massive effect growth for the gig economy, people working remotely, all that sort of thing. That has changed. So organizations need to be able to deal with ever more volatile market conditions.

01;03;39;07 - 01;04;02;20
Jonny Dunning
They need to be able to flex up and flex down in banks to continue workforce. More important, it makes outsource suppliers more important and mean in the way that they may be less, potentially less people in kind of set permanent roles. Now it makes those that are more important, well, retaining them, training them, upskilling them. So it's a really interesting scenario for us to be looking at.

01;04;02;21 - 01;04;36;13
Jonny Dunning
And I think having it under that overarching banner of just getting work done for me, that always ticks the logic box of it's just getting work done. There's just different ways to do it. So plenty of plenty of way to go on it. But I think I've really enjoyed this conversation. I've actually I feel like I've learned looking inside your mind is your approach to this you put across some great points about the pros and cons of looking at it in different ways, but ultimately the situation that most people find themselves in at the moment is that they don't really have any information to even start getting worried about.

01;04;36;13 - 01;04;53;08
Jonny Dunning
So the steps that need to be taken to actually get to that point, but if they can go in there armed with understanding the type of information they're going to need to collect the reasons for that and what they ideally are going to get out of it, that's going to be a good position for them to be in compared to people five years ago.

01;04;53;11 - 01;05;20;27
Chris Radvansky
Yeah, and I'll just do one. And then we're wrapping here, but I could go on for another hour and a half with you, maybe over point next time over. But it comes down to, you know, folks asking themselves questions, what data do we have and what are we doing with it? And if you don't know the answers to those questions and start, you know, again, plant that tree today, start asking questions and center what my goal is to make better decisions.

01;05;20;27 - 01;05;42;23
Chris Radvansky
My goal is to, you know, have cost savings for the company as a whole, which ultimately might help you at the end of the year come Christmastime when bonuses might be handed out. So start driving the value, leverage the data that you have. And if you don't have it or if you're you know, it's not easy to use, work with somebody to make sure that it's a lot easier to make your job that much easier.

01;05;42;25 - 01;06;05;24
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, absolutely. And if you if you if you if you go all the questions and you want insights, don't forget to make use of the tools that are available out there. I feel like that that whole topic of trying to use generative AI at least once a day is it's a great remover of procrastination. That's one of the things we've looked at with requirements scoping.

01;06;05;25 - 01;06;22;23
Jonny Dunning
One of the problems is you've got a blank page, where do you start? And that's what generate value are. The large language models are incredible. Whatever is, you know, you're thinking about doing what dog breeds should I get, you know, theme. I found it fun. Interesting. If people try to ask questions in the same way they would ask Google.

01;06;22;26 - 01;06;34;19
Jonny Dunning
But after a little while of interfacing with these platforms, you start asking things in a slightly different way. And I think that's something that people need to upskill themselves with. I don't know if you've noticed that.

01;06;34;22 - 01;06;54;29
Chris Radvansky
Curiosity and creative creativity are two of the very important skills going forward. I thought it would be it, and my daughters are going to be all right developers. And that was a, you know, turned on its head 12 months ago when Jackpot rolled out. We need to make sure that we're taking advantage of our humanness and our ability to think what has already been documented.

01;06;55;04 - 01;07;05;28
Chris Radvansky
And that does require a lot of creativity and curiosity. But it requires us to be reading and, you know, lifelong learners, I would say as well. So that's something I'm of myself on these days.

01;07;05;28 - 01;07;16;18
Jonny Dunning
I love it. And in terms of lifelong learning and being creative, rad workforce, scary is the tool you've on LinkedIn. I'm going to be definitely looking that up, checking that I'll.

01;07;16;18 - 01;07;36;29
Chris Radvansky
Send I'll send you the link. Jonny It's got 203 right now. Pages of content across Deloitte, McKinsey, SCA, Everest, all these different companies that have released white papers consolidate that information down. I actually looked for his review and I said, Hey, tell me about Zivio. I didn't go through all two and three pages and say, Hey, there's a Zivio in here.

01;07;37;01 - 01;07;53;06
Chris Radvansky
And sure enough, I ask the questions. Then they were like, I didn't think they'd be in here because I did look through a little bit and it said specifically, Here is where it is. And it saved me time and learned a little bit more about Zivio.

01;07;53;09 - 01;08;10;23
Jonny Dunning
That's absolutely fantastic. What is it? I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for being patient. When I had a more technical problem before we got started. And thank you so much for your input. I've really enjoyed that conversation and I definitely think this isn't going to be the only conversation we have around this because it's just it's just the start, really.

01;08;10;26 - 01;08;19;12
Jonny Dunning
So yeah, whether it's overbearing London or the next time I'm over in the States or or via Zoom, I very much look forward to continuing the conversation that. Yeah, Thank you very much.

01;08;19;14 - 01;08;22;23
Chris Radvansky
Candy. Thank you very much. And we will be in touch.