Laying the Groundwork for Scalable Services Procurement

Services procurement often evolves without a clear operating model, leaving spend fragmented and hard to govern. This conversation breaks down how to build the foundations, from intake and data to ownership and change management, that make services procurement work in practice.

With Erin Shwiff, Director Operations, Transformation & Strategic Initiatives, Western Union 

15:42 - 24:06 - The importance of data and centralization in services procurement

34:26 - 44:32 - Building your business case and making things happen 

44:32 - 54:08 - Bringing skills into services procurement

54:12-01:05:07 - Creating understanding and buy-in

01:11:48 - 01:01:20:06 - Where MSPs could be offering strategic value in Services Procurement

Episode Highlights

Transcript

Auto-generated. Please excuse any minor errors.

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;12;20

Jonny Dunning

Okay. I am delighted to welcome Erin Shwiff, Director of Procurement Operations, Transformation and Strategic Initiatives at Western Union, to the podcast today. From Colorado, I believe, Erin, is that correct?

00;00;12;26 - 00;00;15;18

Erin Shwiff

Yes. Yes. Correct. It's snowing.

00;00;15;18 - 00;00;25;19

Jonny Dunning

Today is a very nice well, a snowy morning in Colorado, a rainy afternoon in, in London. Thank you very much for joining me. How are you doing?

00;00;25;21 - 00;00;29;08

Erin Shwiff

Good. Great. Excited to be here.

00;00;29;10 - 00;01;01;22

Jonny Dunning

Good stuff. So we got loads to discuss. So I'll get right into it. We're going to be talking about services, procurement, the transformation journey, the contingent workforce angles, the procurement versus HR conversation. There's loads of roles for us to go through before we get into that. What would be really great is if you could just give a little bit of a background on how you came to be doing this role at Western Union, what with what you're doing in terms of transformation and strategic initiatives and and also just a bit of an understanding of like how you got there.

00;01;01;24 - 00;01;16;29

Jonny Dunning

What's your journey been? What was your flight path? Where did you start out? Because I always find that interesting with regards to procurement, because people bring different skills and different backgrounds to it. Which is what makes the procurement function so interesting. So if you could give us a bit of an intro and background, that'd be really great.

00;01;17;02 - 00;01;57;24

Erin Shwiff

Sure. Yeah. So my my history, I mean, I have some buyer experience early in my career, mostly in computer resellers back in the day. So I'm old and there were a lot of them. And, but, when I moved to Colorado. So I came with some procurement, basic procurement, history. When I came to Colorado, but then soon got, hired with a startup with Chipotle and, in the IT department to do actually to roll out, to roll out DSL and the restaurants to process credit cards.

00;01;57;24 - 00;02;26;01

Erin Shwiff

So I was, I was on the restaurant team with, a few other women, actually. I mean, we travel all the time and did installs, and all the restaurants and grew, within that organization, from startup. So in 2001, I was there, I started there, had a big more it background by that time and, kind of a project management field too.

00;02;26;02 - 00;02;46;09

Erin Shwiff

So I was one of those people that were, thriving in that sort of environment because every time something needed to be done, it was like I stepped up and said, okay, how are we going to do this? And things like, you know, how do we manage the budget and how do we, roll out, you know, new POS hardware in the stores, things like that.

00;02;46;09 - 00;03;11;17

Erin Shwiff

So it was such a great opportunity for me not only to learn how to grow up in a professional environment, but also utilize the way my brain works, I would say, which is moving fast and and just kind of taking on whatever needs to be fixed. So I feel like that was a great foundation for me. And I can't even go into, just that, that whole 16 year journey.

00;03;11;17 - 00;03;46;24

Erin Shwiff

So I literally grew up there, by getting the opportunities that I kind of drove and, and was able to steer myself into different areas, which eventually led to it procurement. For the most part, I mean, being in that environment, it wasn't as formalized as where I am now, but it was an environment where, you know, I let a team of you know, governance and and procurement and financials, you know, manage the budget and a little bit of contingent labor, I wouldn't say a little bit, but the the contingent labor that we did was majority in the IT department.

00;03;46;24 - 00;04;10;03

Erin Shwiff

So I was running that from an international standpoint, not global like I am now. Smaller scale. But really got my feet wet in that area and had ten people on that team. It was more of a business, like an IT business team is what I would call it now. I call it more of a procurement ops or, but just for it.

00;04;10;06 - 00;04;37;01

Erin Shwiff

So for me that that experience and, and I just put 16 years in a really short sentence, but that 16 years encompassed so much more. I met great people and actually one of them works for me today at Western Union. So like I built. Yeah, I built, yeah, she's my right hand person and we can finish each other's sentences and we've been through, you know, a lot together, which actually has been helping me drive the change that I had back at Western Union.

00;04;37;01 - 00;05;08;04

Erin Shwiff

So fast forward. I mean, I think in between those two, my two roles. So Western Union and Chipotle because now I've almost been at Western Union for ten years. It'll be nine years this year. I feel like putting a decade in these days goes by really fast. 16 years felt like forever in these nine years. Haven't really just flown by, but, in between those two roles, you kind of I kind of got myself into a position where I was so this way and sort of this way.

00;05;08;06 - 00;05;36;00

Erin Shwiff

Right. So, I had, you know, like sales experience. I had buying experience, I had technical experience. I had, you know, financial experience, governance and compliance. I was there at Chipotle when we went public. So having all that experience of going from, you know, private to public and all the the SOX and PCI that I just, I absorbed as much as I could when I was there.

00;05;36;00 - 00;06;01;26

Erin Shwiff

So for me, it was a little bit difficult to find my place. Like to find where where was I going to go? And even I had recruiters saying, this is hard because you're so this way. And instead of this way, to this day, I fast forward to my, you know, where I am now in my career, actually, like, it's it's the best thing that ever happened for me and my personality.

00;06;01;26 - 00;06;23;02

Erin Shwiff

I feel like this was something I. You give me anything you can give me I can go sit in marketing. I can go sit in accounting, I can go sit in wherever. And I'm going to find a path, and something to fix and something to transform and and people to lead, you know, and and to grow. So for my career, that was a positive.

00;06;23;02 - 00;06;40;06

Erin Shwiff

It's been a hard, you know, situation. I think when when people look at your resume, you're like, yeah, sure. You know, all these things, but but I've actually touched them enough and gone deep enough to where I can, you know, affect the change in, in these different areas. Hopefully that makes sense.

00;06;40;09 - 00;06;58;04

Jonny Dunning

Very much. Sorry to interrupt you. I was just going to say that sounds very much a a symptom and I'd say a positive symptom of kind of startup, the startup environment, startup scaling up. I mean, obviously quite like, you know, things that scale rapidly. But that's, that.

00;06;58;07 - 00;07;29;00

Erin Shwiff

Yeah, I want to. Yeah. To say something to that. I mean, we were working at 150% and I, you know, when I, when I came over to the Western Union in the procurement department and I get there in a second, I was I think I was in shock. I think all I ever knew, you know, being there for 16 years was we had fun, a ton of fun, but we worked really hard and we worked really, you know, we worked sometimes seven days a week, and I traveled and I, you know, it was a different mentality.

00;07;29;00 - 00;07;54;01

Erin Shwiff

And I was around a bunch of people that had the same mindset. You know, it's it's a different breed to want to be in a startup. They think and actually do it until you've done it. It's you don't know. And I'm so grateful for that. Like, I will forever like and I say this jokingly, but that was my my schooling, my my college, my, my career building was there.

00;07;54;01 - 00;08;12;06

Erin Shwiff

And but it definitely takes a certain person because I hired I've hired a lot of, you know, younger people now and, and I wish I could give them that experience like you can you wish you can give your kids all of your growing up experience. You wish you could just, like, make them feel and see all the things that you that you've seen.

00;08;12;08 - 00;08;36;01

Erin Shwiff

But, you just can't. You just can't. You have to you can kind of deliver it. So coming to Western Union, in 2017, I got hired as a, an IT strategic sourcing manager. I took the role reluctantly. I enjoyed my interview, and I was told that there would be other opportunities. I could go anywhere once I got into Western Union.

00;08;36;01 - 00;09;09;19

Erin Shwiff

So I took a leap of faith. And I, I joined in the procurement department, and, it just wasn't enough. I mean, sitting in a cubicle, you know, handling contracts, it just wasn't. My procurement was one piece of all the things that I had done in my career. And to this day, it's not my favorite thing. Just doing that, like, you know, the transactional portion of it or just negotiations or just contracts, and that's just not enough for me.

00;09;09;19 - 00;09;45;06

Erin Shwiff

So for me, I have to see things from a much larger picture and touch all of the different aspects. So, gradually over time, you know, I did that for a year and a half and joined, you know, left the procurement department, joined a little, change management mission within Western Union where, you know, I learned lean, practices, and I handled a couple of different, you know, change management projects within the company, and decided, you know, this is really my my speed.

00;09;45;06 - 00;10;01;29

Erin Shwiff

This is what, you know, this is what I should be doing. My second, I had somebody that was on my team, my change management team, because I was part of one, and I ran one. And when I ran that one, I had a team of a couple of people that just came in as a as a stretch assignment.

00;10;01;29 - 00;10;24;13

Erin Shwiff

Right? They, they left their roles and came in to do this change management for, you know, three months and, and work on something within another function in the, in the business. It gave me an opportunity to learn more about Western Union. And it also, you know, I met more people and in that I met the, somebody in the, contingent labor.

00;10;24;15 - 00;10;25;15

Jonny Dunning

Team.

00;10;25;17 - 00;10;49;08

Erin Shwiff

So then I got to know that person. We were doing an I.T. change management project. But, you know, this was a person that I met, so, I decided they had an opening for a senior manager position and contingent labor. So I applied for that, and I got that. And that was in, early 2019. And by October of 2019, I inherited the whole thing.

00;10;49;11 - 00;11;13;07

Erin Shwiff

We did. We did a, we did some, you know, we minimize our, our staffing within HR. And this was sitting in HR. So I never sat I'd never reported to HR my whole career. Always it, but I was hired into HR to, handle that whole program and then handle background checks for the whole company.

00;11;13;08 - 00;11;36;03

Erin Shwiff

Company globally. So those two things were my in my, wheelhouse. We had an MSP, I had never really done it at this formal of a level. So, you know, I had to I had a lot to learn. It was a little all over the place. And I only had, I think I was allowed to keep five people for both functions.

00;11;36;05 - 00;12;01;02

Erin Shwiff

They were analyst levels. In other countries. And I had to kind of pull them in and get them going across the board. And really, only one of them was doing contingent labor at the time. Our MSP was handling most of it. We had IQ in right where there outdated technology. So it was a lot. And I you know, I, I'm used to technology and and implementations.

00;12;01;02 - 00;12;21;20

Erin Shwiff

But this was a tool that it was just so archaic. They hadn't done any configuration changes in forever. So I jumped right in. I mean and then Covid hit. So it was a lot of learning about how it was set up at Western Union. In in parallel of dealing with the background checks, which is a whole other company and global thing.

00;12;21;20 - 00;12;38;10

Erin Shwiff

So it was two different functions. I, I branched out a little bit, you know, within my peer group in the industry. But again, this was years ago trying to just kind of get some information from people, but really just trying to understand how was it set up, who you know, what is this like, what does this even look like?

00;12;38;10 - 00;12;58;18

Erin Shwiff

And gosh, I think back to that now and compared to what it is today, I was so confused. Honestly, Jonny, I was so I was so confused. I mean, I just that wasn't an area I had never really, dug into. And, and at Chipotle, we didn't have anything formal like this. We didn't have the MSP or anything.

00;12;58;24 - 00;13;00;28

Erin Shwiff

Do you want to ask a question?

00;13;01;00 - 00;13;23;08

Jonny Dunning

Yeah. That that's that's where, that's where being the type of person who gets out and ask the questions is really valuable because there's always there's always somebody who's working on something similar or maybe come across it, or the company's been through a particular thing that you're about to go through, but it's getting out there in the market and asking your peers and actually, you know, that inquiring minds.

00;13;23;10 - 00;13;28;19

Jonny Dunning

Yeah, that's the most important thing, isn't it? Especially if you're willing to dive into new situations.

00;13;28;21 - 00;13;49;27

Erin Shwiff

Yes. And internally, I mean, nobody really knew what was going on. Nobody really knew it was it literally was two full time employees that had it before me. So it just was it was just it was confusing. Like the rebate structure was confusing. All of it was confusing. I just, you know, it took me a good couple of years to dig into it.

00;13;49;27 - 00;14;10;15

Erin Shwiff

And that sounds like a long time. But, you know, I had two things going and I had five new employees that I inherited. I didn't, you know, they didn't know, you know, what they were going to be doing. So it was it was a lot of really just discovery, and understanding it in the middle of Covid, though.

00;14;10;16 - 00;14;38;00

Erin Shwiff

And I think it was 20, 21, I was called by our chief procurement officer letting me know that we were going to be moving to procurement. And. Yes, and I would have to restructure who I had. Again, I inherited an MSP and I inherited the technology. So I was giving up the background checks, which is great.

00;14;38;00 - 00;15;02;22

Erin Shwiff

I left that in HR. And I was able to take just two. I actually took three people with me over to procurement, to continue the journey of, of what we have today. And, you know, it was a little rough, Not for me as much for one of my another person who's still with me. And she's she's evolved over time into more of a supply management role.

00;15;02;22 - 00;15;24;04

Erin Shwiff

But I mean, she has grown and by leaps and bounds. But here we are, you know, almost seven years later and we are, it wasn't great for her. She was mad. She didn't want to go. That's a whole other, you know, thing that you have to deal with. And so I had to manage that. You know, whether she said it or not.

00;15;24;04 - 00;15;42;19

Erin Shwiff

But she said she stuck with me and, and we moved on to procurement, and I, we couldn't have changed technology. We couldn't have done what we've done, you know, and I'll get to that. But the whole business case and how we, we manage it today, none of that would have happened in HR. And it's no offense against, you know, H.R.

00;15;42;21 - 00;16;07;25

Erin Shwiff

I think there's a, there's a place just like there's a place for MSPs. There's a place for contingent labor to sit in HR. I couldn't go any further, with what I had being in HR, I needed somebody that was going to support technology changes, that was going to support something different, that was going to support governance.

00;16;07;25 - 00;16;29;12

Erin Shwiff

And, and, and maybe just a different way of looking at how we manage contingent labor as a whole. So it was all in all, because you’re talking to me today. Super positive move. And I had the support and I had somebody, you know, I had a leader that actually had had done some things like this before in other companies.

00;16;29;12 - 00;16;53;22

Erin Shwiff

And so they understood contingent labor. I didn't have that on the HR side. I just didn't have that support or, understanding. Everybody looked at it more from a T&A perspective. Instead of any sort of like strategic group or, you know, cost savings group or any of the things, right, or good talent. They didn't look at it the same as they looked at full time employees.

00;16;53;22 - 00;16;57;11

Erin Shwiff

It just was it was hard for me to to make any traction over there.

00;16;57;14 - 00;17;26;04

Jonny Dunning

So quick question. Yeah. So I sort of, dive in just, just, just kind of thinking out loud with, with regards to that program. How was it kind of how was it composed at that point? And I know you're going to come on to the next stage next. But at that point, how was it composed in terms of what I would class is like pure contingent labor, like contractors versus services procurement or statement of work type engagements.

00;17;26;04 - 00;17;29;19

Jonny Dunning

What was what was the split at that stage?

00;17;29;22 - 00;17;53;12

Erin Shwiff

So it was a little similar to what it is today, but it was so unknown. So what you had it in, it was so complicated. So what you had to do is you were in HR but you were passing all your SOW work to, to sourcing, to procure, but they were still doing all the contracting and, and I never that was the hard part for me to wrap my brain around at the time it was.

00;17;53;12 - 00;18;21;00

Erin Shwiff

So I would call it decentralized in a way, literally, you know, the system, the tool, the VMS was literally just housing the people. At that point there was no and it had their own. I was called the supplier governance or their team that was actually managing the the SLA's and all the things allegedly on paper, like they were managing those things.

00;18;21;00 - 00;18;38;05

Erin Shwiff

And I'm not talking bad about it, but it's like, you know, how how deep are they going? I don't know, because I wasn't managing them like that's in a whole other department. So kind of decentralized because you've got it, you have in their hands in the part you've got H.R. Kind of just managing the VMS tool and the dollars, maybe not even that.

00;18;38;05 - 00;19;01;06

Erin Shwiff

Just like looking at it from a report. It was very basic in my opinion, compared to what it is today. And then sourcing was was definitely, you know, in control of those SOWs and really managing all of that work and all the billing was going through our, you know, through Oracle at that time. So everything was just being built, you know, through through purchase order.

00;19;01;06 - 00;19;26;29

Erin Shwiff

I can't even remember Jonny because I wasn't ever in the system enough before we switched to even understand. I mean, there was no I don't think there is a billing out of the system from a program standpoint at that time. I it would have had it been MSP that was doing it. I'm very much clear now that with the new technology, because I went through that whole process.

00;19;26;29 - 00;19;48;13

Erin Shwiff

But being on something I inherited, I don't remember it being at all that robust. And by that time it was outdated and beeline had bought them and it was, you know, they were pushing me to to upgrade to the beeline version of, well, to beeline, and I wasn't going to do it. So, does that answer your question?

00;19;48;13 - 00;20;05;19

Erin Shwiff

I mean, it was very and everybody had their hands in the pot, like every IQN was wide open because there was no configuration changes. So any kind of places where there might have been, you know, something open, there is not compliance or governance around around that. That's.

00;20;05;19 - 00;20;22;26

Jonny Dunning

Yeah. It's it does make sense. It's certainly quite common story. Yeah. I would say even more common if you take one step back from even legacy technology like IQN a lot of companies just have no technology capturing.

00;20;22;28 - 00;20;24;06

Erin Shwiff

Oh, yeah. Spreadsheets.

00;20;24;13 - 00;20;51;03

Jonny Dunning

Yeah. Spreadsheets, email slack teams, whatever. And that's and and and the problem that you mentioned which will come back to I'll come back to you later around decentralization. That's super, super common. Yeah. But but that's an, a really interesting juncture in your journey to see what the status quo was at that point. And then from that point, you're moving under a kind of procurement umbrella.

00;20;51;06 - 00;20;55;00

Jonny Dunning

And I guess, like you say, that's where everything changed. Really?

00;20;55;03 - 00;21;15;26

Erin Shwiff

Yes, for sure. And I will go back. There was a lot of email. There were there were email, you know, that's where all our tickets came in. There was no sort of intake. There was no sort of control around what were the requests coming in. So to that point, email was the thing drove me nuts. I come from like, you know, we gotta have data.

00;21;15;29 - 00;21;27;11

Erin Shwiff

You can't have data if you've got emails, if you're if you've got five different ways of things coming of the work coming in, you know, there's no way you're going to ever understand the work at that point.

00;21;27;14 - 00;21;51;18

Jonny Dunning

This to me, when I look at the amount of spend involved in services procurement, it's so massive and it's usually, according to, David Orme, who's ex, Cox Communications, I was chatting to you recently. Who on works for Pontoon he was saying his experience for large organizations, it's usually around ten times the spend of contingent labor.

00;21;51;20 - 00;22;10;28

Jonny Dunning

If you mount up all of the services procurement, I mean, even in midsize organizations, it's like 4 to 6 times the spend. So I just find it incredible how many organizations likeyou say, you come from that You come from an area where you're like, we have tech, we capture this stuff, I've got data. I make decisions based on data.

00;22;11;00 - 00;22;33;12

Jonny Dunning

The amount of companies that then right now have not even started on that side of it. And they are emails, spreadsheets. It's when you look at the level you spend, you just think, wow, that feels it's just it's just hard to believe sometimes. But that is the situation for a lot of people. And it's kind of crept up on them because the focus is always on the contractor side of things.

00;22;33;12 - 00;22;59;23

Jonny Dunning

That's where the MSP programs came from. The VMS technology came from, and with the procurement technology that was normally based around it kind of came out of the ERP systems transformation into the procure to pay, source to pay suites. They're very predicated around things that you can buy goods, materials and buying catalog services wasn't as important is now possibly more important and it's more complicated.

00;22;59;23 - 00;23;19;05

Jonny Dunning

So a lot of companies are in that situation that you're describing historically where you were well, actually not as good as it wasn't like that because they probably didn't even have any other probably don't have any tech in a lot of situations. But it's like you say, I can't get my head around how a company can operate without that data.

00;23;19;08 - 00;23;21;09

Jonny Dunning

But a lot of people are trying to

00;23;21;12 - 00;23;40;27

Erin Shwiff

They are, they are. And and to your point, I think a lot of them are like oh it's not too much, it's not too much like we've got, you know, a thousand contractors or 150 or we're not managing that much right now. So it's okay, but it can grow overnight. And then you're in a place where, how do I even baseline.

00;23;41;00 - 00;24;06;24

Erin Shwiff

Well, we couldn't you know, we still struggle a little bit because I've got some things out of program and I'll get there. But you know getting just to spend number sometimes, you know, having the data categorized right. So that you know exactly what you're having your arms around the spend of, of this can get a little bit crazy, especially if you're using, you know, a five different ways to track it.

00;24;06;27 - 00;24;35;21

Erin Shwiff

So yeah. So we moved into procurement And the first, my first job was to get us off of IQN and, and find a new technology. So I did do an RFP out of the gate. We were just getting back to the office, like, you know, kind of a hybrid model. We still are hybrid, but kind of getting back to the office I just remember there weren't many people in the office, and I hired, my right hand person from Chipotle as a, a contractor to come in and help.

00;24;35;21 - 00;24;59;23

Erin Shwiff

But we had already done the RFP and implemented our new technology. I will say we use workday vndly But I actually chose them through an RFP process, and I chose them before they were brought by workday. So they were just starting out. And so I've been with them for, I think this is four years maybe.

00;24;59;25 - 00;25;04;12

Jonny Dunning

Yeah, they're required two and half, three years ago.

00;25;04;14 - 00;25;34;11

Erin Shwiff

They were we we yeah. So we rolled it out January 2nd, 2022 I believe is when we actually rolled that out. And then, my I had one more person join me in March. So we had rolled it out in January to help, you know, and I had an outsource PM that kind of helped with that. But the MSP, Vndly and myself, my little tiny team, rolled that out pretty blindly.

00;25;34;11 - 00;25;52;13

Erin Shwiff

I would say it was probably one of those implementations. I've it's not. It was nothing like I've, I've ever done. I've, you know, I'm used to testing and testing and more testing before we actually go live, just, you know, with experience and, and and we rolled it out. I feel like I was rolling the dice to something new.

00;25;52;20 - 00;26;15;16

Erin Shwiff

I again, I'm, I'm a big fan of the, I would say startups, people that are just starting because to me, I know they're going to be flexible, they're going to move faster. You know, it's not going to be as hard to get something fixed. I want to help them grow. I want to give them, you know, my feedback to say this is what works or doesn't work.

00;26;15;19 - 00;26;38;23

Erin Shwiff

I want to grow with them, those kinds of fields. So it just it came to be the right, the right things for us at the time. It's still right for us. I think you know, and the other folks that I looked at from a technology perspective were either, I wasn't impressed. Or it was too much.

00;26;38;29 - 00;27;09;12

Erin Shwiff

It was too much from a change management position to take our business and move them from IQN that was wide open. They could do whatever they wanted to, something that was really formal. And I think for a more mature program, we weren't there yet. I mean, this and a lot of people I've talked to or like, oh, I, I, I either changed my MSP and then I changed my, my technology or I, you know, went to an MSP from an in-house model.

00;27;09;12 - 00;27;28;11

Erin Shwiff

And then I changed my technology. And for me, I think from the way my head works, I it's not like the technology had to be first. I had to get some sort of tool and foundation in place in order to begin a journey of how do I change the mindsets and behaviors of the business? How do I get everybody operating a little differently?

00;27;28;14 - 00;27;50;29

Erin Shwiff

I think I needed to have the technology in place to to do that. And so and not everybody thinks that way, but that's the way I just I felt like that was the right thing to do. So we, we rolled out that and that was like the beginning of a journey. You know, it took us a year to really get everybody to adopt and learn and understand generally wasn't broken.

00;27;50;29 - 00;28;11;28

Erin Shwiff

It was just doing what it was supposed to, which was to govern what you're doing in the system. So that was like, I think I spent that whole year having that same conversation a thousand times, like over and over again, like it's not broken. It's good. It's not bad in the in changing the perception of, of the technology.

00;28;12;00 - 00;28;31;24

Erin Shwiff

To get my to, to get my arms around, at the same time, what are we doing? Like what what's what is what is the MSP do? What do we do and really understand that whole it sounds weird because I'd had it for a couple of years, but again, Covid weird, weird time, weird situation. Learning on the fly at home with people in other countries.

00;28;31;24 - 00;28;51;01

Erin Shwiff

It was it was a lot of more just discovery, like I said earlier. So getting that technology in place was the first step. And then from there, after that year was over in 2023, we started, my boss and I started talking about like, where do we go from here? How do we evolve? How do we transform?

00;28;51;01 - 00;29;18;28

Erin Shwiff

How do we change the way that we handle, you know, services and contingent, contingent labor like the staff augmentation of the world? But, so I began, like, trying to come up with an in-house model. There was a time I did do an RFP for different MSP. So I went through it was kind of an, I don't know, like a journey of, okay, I think I might need another MSP.

00;29;19;00 - 00;29;36;24

Erin Shwiff

Like know that's the problem. And I think that I had to go through all those steps in order to understand where I was going to end up. And so I did that RFP, and I did a ton of due diligence and looked at different MSPs. And what what is it I'm going to get from this one that I don't get from this one?

00;29;36;24 - 00;29;56;28

Erin Shwiff

And because at that point I was really struggling with strategy. I was struggling with, being a I didn't feel like I had the autonomy to affect the change that I wanted to, to affect having an MSP. They were handling the day to day, but I and this is no offense because I think there's a place for MSPs.

00;29;57;00 - 00;30;24;26

Erin Shwiff

So I want to make that very clear in the, in the model I had, I needed, I felt like I needed a little bit more autonomy and control in order to, to create the change that we wanted to, to do. So I was looking for another MSP that would, you know, be more strategic or be more, you know, involved or somebody I could actually partner with in a way to be at a different umbrella level.

00;30;24;26 - 00;30;57;08

Erin Shwiff

And I it was very tactical. It was very transactional. And it was very it was administrative. And yeah, I didn't need administrative help. And it just felt like, what are they doing that, that we can't do? It it was definitely it was definitely a lot of talking about that internally. And my boss and I like there I think we had to wait, you know, we had to do the RFP to decide that another MSP is not going to do us any good.

00;30;57;08 - 00;31;18;27

Erin Shwiff

It's a lot of change management itself to change from one to another. And if we're going to eventually go, you know, internal, potentially should be even do that right now. Should we just give it another year. Try to get this MSP where we need them. You know. And again they weren't failing in general. They were just it wasn't a fit for where we wanted to be.

00;31;18;29 - 00;31;22;12

Erin Shwiff

If I can, if that makes sense because I you know.

00;31;22;15 - 00;31;52;12

Jonny Dunning

It does make sense. And I think the point that you're making, about your strategic control, you'll need to move quickly the situation your organization was in at that point in time, it just didn't suit you, particularly if the offerings aren't giving you what you need at that point in time in terms of control, if what you needed at that point of time in time was just, administrative, tactical, kind of like outsource support, then great

00;31;52;15 - 00;32;15;06

Jonny Dunning

But it's something we can come back to a little bit later, because I think that part of the market has recognized that and is moving more in that direction. But for you guys at that point, and I love this because this is exactly how my brain works. You know, Zivio was a startup is a scale up that I pretty much always worked in startups.

00;32;15;08 - 00;32;36;08

Jonny Dunning

I love it, I just want to go 100 miles an hour to get stuff done. Lead follow get out the way that kind of, you know, mentality. And you know, it's great seeing how you brought that to these problem solving exercises and this one happening to to have moved around sat under HR and then moved on to procurement.

00;32;36;10 - 00;32;53;10

Jonny Dunning

An interesting to see the leverage that you got when you were under procurement. So at this point you're thinking right now I really want to put the hammer down some serious change management that's going to go on here. If I have an MSP in place as well, that's going to make it more complicated than me. Just clear the decks and just going straight ahead with what I want to do.

00;32;53;14 - 00;32;55;24

Jonny Dunning

You'd already done the technology at this point.

00;32;55;26 - 00;33;14;11

Erin Shwiff

Yes, yes. And I again, a year prior, I tried to see if I wanted to do another MSP and that was the problem, you know, how are you? You sometimes you feel like something's bothering me, but I don't know what it is. And you kind of grasp that, like, maybe it's this. Nope, that's not it. And it maybe it's this.

00;33;14;11 - 00;33;36;18

Erin Shwiff

No, it's not that, you know. That's not it. I think that's kind of what I was doing without knowing I was doing it. So when I went to do this RFP for another MSP, I was you know, I realized at that moment that it's not going to be any different. Like, it's not going to give me exactly what I'm looking for and what I'm looking for is, you know, a few things, but it could evolve into more things.

00;33;36;18 - 00;34;02;27

Erin Shwiff

And maybe that's just better done in-house. And and I'm also somebody that didn't come from the you and I talked about this, I think. But I didn't come from I still don't I didn't come from the like the, you know, the SIA groups or the I didn't have a lot of peers in the industry because I came up during Covid and it was kind of like an isolated time.

00;34;02;29 - 00;34;04;13

Erin Shwiff

Yeah. So I never.

00;34;04;16 - 00;34;04;29

Jonny Dunning

And.

00;34;05;02 - 00;34;26;02

Erin Shwiff

Yeah, I never really attended all those. I actually didn't really ask for this, but they gave it to me to do. And so it's one of those inheritance things that I had to kind of learn on my own. And then I'm the type that just because everybody's doing it doesn't mean I want to do it until I look into it and see if it's really right for me.

00;34;26;05 - 00;34;54;11

Erin Shwiff

And so, I'm not the typical contingent labor owner. I think a lot of I know who the players are and the and the people that, you know, have been doing this their whole careers. This isn't what I've done my whole career. So I think I see it a little differently. I think I've had a different lens on what contingent, you know, contingent labor and procurement services means and and how does that fit at Western Union.

00;34;54;11 - 00;35;17;15

Erin Shwiff

And so, my boss and I talked about it and we decided to, allow me to build a business case to, to try to sell for us to go, forward as a, as an, an in-house program and, and let our MSP go. I, I luckily was friendly with, you know, friendl enough where I think they knew it was coming.

00;35;17;17 - 00;35;41;17

Erin Shwiff

You know, we did our due diligence for a good, you know, six months or longer, making sure that we understood because I think sometimes people don't understand what the MSP is doing for them because they leave it up to them to do it right. It just gets done and we're kind of managing it on the inside. I guess I would hope that people do understand, but I didn't always understand what the MSP was doing.

00;35;41;18 - 00;36;01;00

Erin Shwiff

Again, I inherited it and I needed to, you know, really figure out, like, what is your role versus what are we doing and what do I need to understand that you're doing? So, flash forward, I did a business case in our. How do you want me to go with this? People have been wanting my secrets, and I.

00;36;01;01 - 00;36;25;22

Erin Shwiff

There's not really a secret. I think, you know, my business case was very basic, and they had to make it simple in order for me to, to be able to say that this is better. I mean, since then, we, you know, I looked at it in our company, I look at call center, I look at, accounting.

00;36;25;24 - 00;36;41;16

Erin Shwiff

You know, we've gone and been at Western Union almost ten years. It's it goes back and forth. You know, we're going to outsource it. Oh, no, we are we're going to in-source it. Nope. No, we're going to outsource it. You know, that's so it's more black and white and flexible. I think contingent labor is one of those things.

00;36;41;16 - 00;37;12;27

Erin Shwiff

It's a definite program where you have to you know, it's got to be thoughtful. You got to think about, you know, how is this going to look from the customer side, the supplier side. And you know, the finance side, the procurement, all of it. And there was a little bit of melding everything together. So I basically, you know, built a case where we would be self-funded, supplier funded I shouldn’t say self-funded, supplier funded, just like we, you know, just like the MSP was supplier funded.

00;37;12;29 - 00;37;14;23

Jonny Dunning

Cost neutral basically.

00;37;14;26 - 00;37;21;10

Erin Shwiff

So now I was building a case to where I'm going to pay for these people. I'm going to hire through the program.

00;37;21;12 - 00;37;22;03

Jonny Dunning

Right.

00;37;22;06 - 00;37;54;03

Erin Shwiff

And we're going to stand this up as an internally managed program, and still leverage what we were leveraging before. And basically, if you look at it from from a high level, we're kind of like our internal we’re our own MSP. We were our own little function. And I would say at this point there's, there's I just did this exercise, you know, I have a I have an organization of 25 people now, but it's procurement ops and it's across all of sourcing and, and the source to pay, I own the source to pay process basically.

00;37;54;03 - 00;38;24;28

Erin Shwiff

So that's a lot of sitting on my side. But before it was, you know, I hired nine people to get this stood up. We probably only had 4 or 5 people on the MSP side when I separated from them. So there were only three of us or four of us, and then five on that side. I hired nine people, and started establishing more of an organization that not only handled this, but handled, you know, procurement ops.

00;38;25;01 - 00;38;51;18

Erin Shwiff

But the nine people, I was able to write the business case in order to cover that, those salaries and, you know, for the for the first six months, it was actually for the first year and a half, which was up until December of 2025. That was my year and a half mark. You know, those are covered and I have about four people doing full time, I would say contingent labor out of my whole organization, and that's it.

00;38;51;21 - 00;39;07;10

Erin Shwiff

Right now there's people that touch it, you know, and from a from a governance perspective or from a reporting and data analytics perspective, but full time, you know, contingent labor. I really only have four people doing that.

00;39;07;12 - 00;39;38;17

Jonny Dunning

What this is, so many great points is a lot of interesting stuff to cover. I've made quite a few notes. So I've got I've got a few things that I'd like to kind of like just to pull up the threads in a little bit more detail. Certainly when you're talking about taking it in-house, it feels to me like at that point in time, the expertise that you needed or the experience that you needed for what you needed to do within your organization, you weren't feeling like that, sat in an MSP.

00;39;38;18 - 00;40;01;14

Jonny Dunning

You can just draw on it. And I think that's that feels like where MSPs are changing, certainly with regards to services, procurement, procurement services, how you kind of want to define it, but that they're investing now, they've had to invest in procurement expertise because their expertise had previously very much more H.R T&A pure contract labor kind of expertise, which they've got very deep domain knowledge.

00;40;01;14 - 00;40;20;26

Jonny Dunning

It's mature offering now that services procurement starting to get involved. And it's part of this whole external labor contingent labor picture. They have they've recognized they need to if they want to be credible, that taking that change management into organizations, they need to have people in their organization who've done that. And they need to have that procurement domain expertise.

00;40;20;26 - 00;40;35;12

Jonny Dunning

So I definitely think that's something that's becoming more available now. It's absolutely maturing. But at the point that you were doing it, you're like, well, this is just, you know, we're paving new road here and we need to just we're going to have to we're going to have to do it on our own.

00;40;35;15 - 00;40;56;11

Erin Shwiff

Yes. And that just sparked a whole bunch of things I want to say about that, because I think one, I have procurement background. So that was good, right? Like I had that and I didn't understand when I was an HR, like, why are we going out to, you know, sourcing to do that? It was so back and forth when I did build the business case, it got approved.

00;40;56;13 - 00;41;24;17

Erin Shwiff

I actually, you know, we have and I'm going to give you just like a high level of what how our organization is in procurement. So you got your CPO and then you've got me and you've got a peer of mine that handles the whole what they call the strategic sourcing side, which is basically all contracting work. It's all anything that's, you know, high dollar big deals, services, all the things they're they're handling all of that.

00;41;24;19 - 00;41;54;26

Erin Shwiff

And then we have a buy desk which is more commoditized, which now sits with me. But, that's pretty much how we restructure. There's contingent labor, there's strategic sourcing, and then there's, there's, there's a buy desk or the commoditize, you know, the buying the low dollar transactional buying when I first wrote this business case, got it approved, implemented, which we can go into some of those details if you want.

00;41;54;28 - 00;42;17;10

Erin Shwiff

And how I did that transition. Because I think that that transformation because that's, that's a big I think a lot of people have questions like, how did you do it? How did you do it fast? And I did it really fast. So we can talk about that. But I think what's what on the top of that you're asking right now we have arms of of category managers and they're handling, you know, across the organization.

00;42;17;13 - 00;42;39;16

Erin Shwiff

I, I asked the CPO to to move that one vertical into my group, and they were in my group for six months to really get them up to speed on contingent labor. How it works. You know, they were handling the contracting, but there wasn't a lot of strategic work happening, and there wasn't a lot of, understanding of how it all tied together.

00;42;39;18 - 00;43;02;29

Erin Shwiff

And I asked to have them just under under my group so that we could really get them up to speed and understand our vision where we want to go with this, and then how do they help, and how do they partner with us to make sure that we're we're getting the contracts written right, that we're able to to categorize everything right, that we're able to govern and manage that on the back end, everything was going into Vndly anyway.

00;43;03;05 - 00;43;21;15

Erin Shwiff

So how do you know? What does that actually look like? And so they they were with me for six months. And this is one of those key things that I think my mind went to, I asked for I made it happen. It's not something that you think to do. We're all in the same group anyway. It doesn't mean that I have to, you know, have the people under me.

00;43;21;15 - 00;43;41;12

Erin Shwiff

But it was a chance for them to be incorporated into my team that was handling the more transactional day to day. But I also had a vision from contingent labor standpoint so that they could help. They could partner, they could assist in that area. And now they are back in that sourcing side. And, and it's much more dialed in.

00;43;41;19 - 00;44;01;14

Erin Shwiff

We're all on the same page. We're all lined. We're all going towards the same goals. We're trying to, you know, get in front of the business, do the planning, get them to to really understand them being the business, to understand, really what they're doing when they're, when they're asking for the services and the people. What does that mean from a procurement standpoint?

00;44;01;14 - 00;44;32;15

Erin Shwiff

And in a spend perspective? I don't know if that is kind of what you're asking, but I think that that is one part of my journey that that helped us stand up and and get more involved. It was so I'm going to say decentralized again, but disparate like it was just so all over the place before. And and this is really put us in the forefront of all, you know, the buying piece of this or the purchasing or the, the contracting piece of it.

00;44;32;17 - 00;45;04;13

Jonny Dunning

Yeah, I don't know. But quick question for you. So appreciate this is going to be like very organization specific. But if you look at a let's let's use that you kind of using the blanket term of contingent labor to cover the contracting side and the services procurement side. So if you take that bracket in most organizations, do you think that is likely to be more effectively kind of control or centralized under procurement or under HR and TA?

00;45;04;15 - 00;45;31;15

Jonny Dunning

And obviously it depends on the organization structure. But if we generalize about it, do you think that is something that who should be leading this? Because that's something that comes up a lot at the conferences and stuff that we discussed. And people go all over the place with it. But you mentioned the fact that you didn't you wouldn't necessarily have had the agility and the decision making process to to make the do the change management under H.R, an HR has a much broader range of responsibilities.

00;45;31;17 - 00;45;35;24

Jonny Dunning

Do you think it's more effective for that to be controlled under procurement or HR

00;45;35;26 - 00;46;06;11

Erin Shwiff

I have I want to say 100%. I still look at my HR department there. So they're not where they're not up on the contingent labor side. They really don't understand it. And, I don't think it's just my like it's not just Western Union. It's I think that's across the board. It's not their their wheelhouse. And if you're having to go to procurement from a contractual standpoint, anyway like it it to me it makes complete sense.

00;46;06;11 - 00;46;32;20

Erin Shwiff

I think even leading this type of program with procurement background is super important because you understand how it all fits together. We know it's not only just, you know, procurement doing this. I am so tight with legal in my company. That was part of, you know, the buy in from business case as well. But I utilize our internal legal team all the time.

00;46;32;22 - 00;46;59;12

Erin Shwiff

I mean, all the time. Finance was a big part of this. I mean, you know, we we had at the time in procurement, we reported to the COO. So we had the we're under operations at the time, and we've only been under the CFO for like the last six months. But that was, you know, at the time, kind of important because there was more of the process piece that took place in the standards and the there was a lot of focus on the customer service.

00;46;59;12 - 00;47;27;08

Erin Shwiff

You know, it was it was like a journey. And now we're under the, you know, CFO. And I feel like I'm pushing metrics and I'm pushing measure, you know, performance. And I'm pushing the financial side of it. And there's it's kind of evolved just perfectly in my opinion. I do I, I think you can sit either place depending on talent in your HR, like what their skill sets are, not that they're bad or good, but what their skill sets are.

00;47;27;11 - 00;47;42;06

Erin Shwiff

But if you want to do something strategic and transformational, I think you have to be in procurement. I just absolutely believe that it's about the money, but it's also about the tools. It's about.

00;47;42;08 - 00;47;53;00

Erin Shwiff

The metrics. It's about the performance. There's a lot more going on there. I feel like from a skill set perspective and how you partner with the rest of of the business.

00;47;53;02 - 00;48;14;26

Jonny Dunning

Yeah. I think it comes back to, I made some notes about kind of when you were talking about, well, about working at Chipotle and kind of start up mentality and having that kind of, you know, more of a kind of, you know, broad spectrum of experience and, and skill sets that you built up. Because in a startup, on a scale up, you end up getting if you're a smart person and people go, hey, can you make this happen?

00;48;14;26 - 00;48;27;29

Jonny Dunning

Hey, can you make that happen? You go and talk to these guys, go and talk to those guys and make it all work. But but that's the that's the great bit that that gets everyone fired up. And it's the bit that makes you feel tired as well. Yeah. It's it's great. You gotta be.

00;48;27;29 - 00;48;29;11

Erin Shwiff

Careful what you wish for.

00;48;29;14 - 00;48;49;28

Jonny Dunning

Exactly. But it's, you know, you bring a pragmatic approach. You like to move fast. All of those things tie into that. And I was going to ask you kind of like, what skills do you think brought most value from that startup life? But I feel like it's a, it's it's having the ability to be flexible and to deal with the different stakeholders.

00;48;49;29 - 00;49;20;01

Jonny Dunning

At H.R. To, to do you don't necessarily need to start up mentality to be good at HR To be good at H.R. You need to be empathetic. You need to be strategic in how you think about people and capacity and all these sorts of things and careers and changing with skill requirements. There's a lot to it. But what it but procurement is very different, and that's where it always fascinates me because people come to procurement, people come to HR quite often from a HR background, HR qualifications, training all the way through procurement.

00;49;20;03 - 00;49;55;11

Jonny Dunning

People are coming in from all different angles and it's like a it's like a bit of a get stuff done department, but only if it is. Otherwise it can be a real underachieving department where people are absolutely sitting there and being the police. So I think the thing that just a round up, what I'm getting at is I think the, the fundamental thing that people like themselves bring to this is a business approach where you're thinking about the business and you're thinking about and, and that's where I think strategic, procurement can be enormously strategic in terms of what does the business want to achieve?

00;49;55;13 - 00;50;14;19

Jonny Dunning

We're kind of, you know, we're here where it kind of fixer and we're an interface between the internal world and the external world of getting stuff done and buying what we need. That's very pragmatic. And if you've got a business like approach to it, you have to be able to interface with all these different departments, really. And I think, did you feel like that was a benefit coming from that world?

00;50;14;22 - 00;50;28;26

Erin Shwiff

Absolutely. And and you just sparked something that I would love to share, which is, you know, and I'm going to go back to where I said I did it, I did I had the nine people and I did it in 30 days.

00;50;28;29 - 00;50;30;22

Jonny Dunning

Wow.

00;50;30;24 - 00;51;02;05

Erin Shwiff

Yeah. It, it in, in very short conversations. But what I want to say about that and why I'm mentioning it, not so much about the timing, but about the skills I brought in to the team, because what you were saying is like, so I'm resonating with it, right? Like it's I have a vast background, my right hand person, technical background too, she’s, you know, we grew up at Chipotle, but she came over and we we've utilized our skill sets moving fast, going public, all the things right.

00;51;02;06 - 00;51;25;03

Erin Shwiff

Understanding, you know, how to how to avoid risk and all of the change how to manage people's behavior and all of the change. Like how to get people on board and excited about things. Those are things that I think we brought to the table. But also, I can't stress enough, like I left Chipotle, like having an I what I call an IT business team.

00;51;25;03 - 00;51;43;04

Erin Shwiff

And I'm going to say that because it was this weird model and now I have this larger version of it in a weird way, that sits in procurement and it does a lot of the same things and more. And so when I hired the people I hired, I had several, internal candidates at my, like, analyst level.

00;51;43;04 - 00;52;06;04

Erin Shwiff

They got promotions, but they came from other parts of Western Union. So I brought in some Western Union knowledge at a very administrative, tactical level, hoping to, you know, grow them in their careers. And then from the leadership perspective, I brought in a program manager and a senior manager of my ops team that are, they both have contingent labor background.

00;52;06;05 - 00;52;39;00

Erin Shwiff

They both have worked for MSPs. They both have, you know, no procurement experience, which is always one, has a lot of HR experience and, and I actually have one person at the intake level that's a senior analyst. And she came from a from the department in our H.R. department. So I and I've talked about this in other and I've spoken, you know, at different different times about this actual topic because I didn't just bring in, like, you know, a whole bunch of contingent labor people to do the contingent labor.

00;52;39;00 - 00;53;02;12

Erin Shwiff

I brought in a vast variety of skill sets to, to get the job done. I had a vision of who needed to do what I have two gentlemen that came outside the company for my data and analytics, but they're they're accounting and finance guys. So like, I have really brought in a vast variety of skill sets to create this whole.

00;53;02;12 - 00;53;16;01

Erin Shwiff

And then some of them didn't even know anything about this, about contingent labor and so and services and procurement for that matter, like none of them had ever sat in those, those departments. So I think it's.

00;53;16;03 - 00;53;36;24

Erin Shwiff

From my experience and I it's all I can, I can speak to I think procurement makes a ton of sense. I think I got I consider myself lucky for inheriting this and being able to transform and transform something in the way that I have and and bringing all these other people in, whether they liked it or don't like it.

00;53;36;27 - 00;54;08;00

Erin Shwiff

They're all they all have the same mindset. They all want. They're driven, they're motivated, they're excited. You know, my program manager, he's my biggest cheerleader. Like he's always, you know, this is amazing what we're doing here. And I'm so excited to be a part of this. Like this is something nobody's doing for example, I think people are doing it at different levels, but I think just being a part of it, it was super important to me to have a diverse group of people on this journey, and I do, and there are the ones that have made it happen.

00;54;08;06 - 00;54;12;13

Erin Shwiff

I think I made my vision in my head come to life.

00;54;12;16 - 00;54;40;03

Jonny Dunning

Yeah, that's great. And I think talking about that kind of diversity of background, diversity of experience, different approaches, mindsets, the ability to communicate with different departments, the change management aspect is fundamental to this whole external capacity conversation. Like I say, if you just take the contract intent side of it, there's a fairly clear path to do that.

00;54;40;06 - 00;54;58;16

Jonny Dunning

And and the MSPs are very well versed in that side of it as well. But that's been around since 2000. Kind of that was in the early days of it, the when you take the services procurement, the statement of work side of it for a lot of organizations, that's where a large part of the, change management has to take place.

00;54;58;19 - 00;55;23;02

Jonny Dunning

And unfortunately, it touches a lot of departments. And it's, and it's a lot of internal buyers that need to get stuff done, and they need to get that stuff done right now. Getting the buy in and making that change management process happen. You know, you've got a kind of, tactical unit on tactical strategic, but like a Swat team that can get this stuff done.

00;55;23;02 - 00;55;33;11

Jonny Dunning

But it sounds like you had some pretty good when you were able to get good executive buy into this as well in terms of supporting that. So I think I feel like that's quite important. Would you agree?

00;55;33;14 - 00;56;00;12

Erin Shwiff

I do I do that I've spoken about this before. It's so important. I think my business case, you know, it went up through finance at the time. Again, I wasn't reporting to the CFO. I do now, but you know, he had he had to say yes to this. And I went, you know, to legal. I went to, what was most, you know, it was finance and legal that I really had to get the buy in for this.

00;56;00;12 - 00;56;19;29

Erin Shwiff

And, and then my, my VP was, was all in. I mean, I think it was I think it was scary in some ways because we hadn't really seen it. And it it almost was scary simple. Once I wrote the business case I it was overwhelming to think about how am I going to write this? What am I going to think?

00;56;19;29 - 00;56;47;00

Erin Shwiff

How am I going to express, you know, what I'm what I'm envisioning and how is that going to come out on paper financially? It ended up being a lot more simple. I think the hardest thing is trying to get other executives in the company to even understand what we do. I still feel like I'm I'm explaining things and I'm in a company where we just we switched over at least switch of leadership quite a bit.

00;56;47;00 - 00;57;11;09

Erin Shwiff

Not right. Like, not because it's bad, but I think, you know, we have an somewhat new CEO, in that whole as new CFO, but leadership in the IT world has changed a lot and shifted a ton since I've been in the last 2 or 3 years. So really getting them up to speed every time somebody new comes on, like, how does how does how does it work here?

00;57;11;09 - 00;57;35;11

Erin Shwiff

Because at my old company, this is how it worked. So my VP did a great job, I think amongst his peers to, to get them to understand what we were doing. But it is literally taken, you know, two years for people to understand what we actually did. And it was and it was a huge thing and it wasn't like it wasn't small.

00;57;35;11 - 00;57;53;27

Erin Shwiff

And I think it's just now catching up and, and I tell you, like, change management is still happening. It's happened all of the time. I'm still like, we're getting my my, my VP and I are going to do a roadshow this year for procurement in particular because the perception, you know, we implemented another new tool which is our intake tool.

00;57;54;03 - 00;58;16;29

Erin Shwiff

Procurement tool, which is pretty well known. Now it's new, but it's a startup, and we're hoping that we're to move faster for us because we're moving fast. Right. And and it's become the tool. But if people, you know, view our technology is awful because there's so, there's so reluctant to adopt anything new. Nobody wants to, to change how they do things.

00;58;16;29 - 00;58;38;09

Erin Shwiff

They want to go around the system. They want to, you know, get their stuff done, like you said, as soon as possible at any cost. So getting people to really take a step back, our CFO has been like super in slowing things down and really, you know, understanding what we're spending money on. How does that how does that look from from this area?

00;58;38;12 - 00;58;58;18

Erin Shwiff

I think putting some, some gates in place have have been helpful. I might have just veered off of your original question. No, no, no, you know, doing the buying and we're and we're, we're because I have my own and this is the piece I'm going to say about the MSP too, because I have my own team that are, you know, full time employees.

00;58;58;20 - 00;59;26;12

Erin Shwiff

The ownership has been such a big key to the change and the success of the change. I could have never done what we have done, especially this fast, without having it internal and having our own employees. At least I never saw that happening outside with an MSP. When you are actually an employee of the company that you're trying to affect, the change, like it becomes more of an ownership.

00;59;26;12 - 00;59;53;16

Erin Shwiff

It's it's an ownership thing in my opinion. Everybody on my team has a stake in this. Like they want this to succeed. We're we're killing like, our metrics when it comes to different things that we manage. And. Yeah, I mean, I think the buy in has been it had to be there for the business case, but then that now the buy in.

00;59;53;17 - 01;00;13;15

Erin Shwiff

When you talk about buy in, it's more about them understanding what we what we actually are and what we do and how we can help them and how we can serve them and all those things. I mean, that's that's the new phase. If you would have told me six years ago, this is going to take six years for you to get to this place, I probably would have been so over I would have been overwhelmed.

01;00;13;17 - 01;00;30;06

Erin Shwiff

Yeah. And last year, you know, I kind of trot out a theme every year with my team of like, what? What's this you're going to be about? And last year was definitely you have to start somewhere. Yeah. The first six months was getting it up and running and getting everybody trained and getting everybody settled and, you know, trained and and even just contingent labor.

01;00;30;06 - 01;00;50;02

Erin Shwiff

But this last year was our first full year and it was literally like, we have to start somewhere. So like anytime something seemed overwhelming, it's like, well, let's just start here and work our way to whatever that goal is. And I, I'm a firm believer in if you identify something, you got to do something, whatever that looks like.

01;00;50;04 - 01;01;23;13

Jonny Dunning

Yeah, there's there's the only was it, there's there's nothing worse than a bad decision other than no decision. Yeah. It's just that kind of one step at a time mentality. Otherwise, it's just totally overwhelming. And I think the problem that has existed in the market, particularly around the services procurement side of this whole kind of external, labor, story, is the fact that it's just too big to do for a lot of people, you know, like you say, some of the tools, the cost, the implementation time, the amount of spend that needs to be included in the program straight away.

01;01;23;15 - 01;01;53;12

Jonny Dunning

The change management is it's got to be big. People just can't move it. And so it just it doesn't progress. Whereas actually, you know, I'm seeing a lot more evidence now. People start small. Eat the elephant one bite at a time. You know prove it. Move on proven move on and actually build that that that support internally. I think when you talk about the buy it, it's really interesting listening to you talking about the change management buying, which is more across the organization and then the executive buy in and actually getting people to understand it.

01;01;53;14 - 01;02;16;13

Jonny Dunning

But I think once the C-suite grasped the fact that, you know, this is about the organization getting work done, whatever service the organization is providing, whatever product they're selling to their customers, work needs to be done. So the people running the company need to know what's our total capacity, what's our total capability, what am I options if I want to get something done, how can I do it?

01;02;16;19 - 01;02;38;27

Jonny Dunning

If this changes, what's going to cover me? And when organizations don't have services procurement covered or within a program or visible, which most organizations don't, they're just missing out a chunk with that where it's just that's a fundamental part of how their organization does things, and therefore it directly affects their ability to compete in the market. So that's where I get it comes back to me.

01;02;38;27 - 01;02;58;04

Jonny Dunning

I always have to suspend disbelief sometimes when if people are just not interested in trying to grasp this stuff because it's like, well, how is your organization going to compete in the market if you're spending spending, 600 million or 1.5 billion a year on this stuff and you haven't got it under control, that's a pretty big risk to take.

01;02;58;04 - 01;03;23;20

Jonny Dunning

It feels like to me in terms of, well, what if your main competitor actually does have this stuff under control? They're going to have better supplier relationships, they're going to get better work out of their suppliers, they're going to save costs. They're going to manage risk better. So I think the executive side of it, if you can explain it in the right way, and if they're enlightened to that, that's sometimes easier than getting the buy in from the actual people within the organization, because they're just thinking something else.

01;03;23;20 - 01;03;33;07

Jonny Dunning

I'll have to do another hoop I have to go through. But that's where you guys have got to win the hearts and minds and say, look, we're here to help you. We're here to help the business. We're not here to be in your way.

01;03;33;10 - 01;04;03;23

Erin Shwiff

Yeah, all of that. And I'm when you're talking to. So I was thinking about, you know, managed services and then your time material, your fixed fees, all of the SOW work that we've done over the years, it's been very between, you know, the business, the supplier and you know, the procurement person and our program was really left out of it unless it was just to administer administratively like put them in the system and, and manage that.

01;04;03;25 - 01;04;28;28

Erin Shwiff

We, we've taken at such a different level now and we're so intertwined. And I am you know, I have a new vision this year. It's like I saw at some of our last year, this year, like it's really getting back to procurement. What is procurement here for. Like what. Why are we here. Because in a lot of companies the business kind of can get a hold of driving the spend, for their own purposes.

01;04;28;28 - 01;04;52;19

Erin Shwiff

And we can get lost in the convenience versus the, the value or the best, the best for your money. Right. Or what does that look like? And and I'm, I'm, I'm treading lightly here to not like, say, you know, I think it happens across the board. I think you sometimes you have the business driving where we go for the people.

01;04;52;20 - 01;05;16;04

Erin Shwiff

What people? We have all the things. And I'm trying to get my group more mature in a way of where the you want to come to us to get the best talent, but you also want to kind of just get the best suppliers we have. I mean, there's so many little details I haven't told you today about what we've done since we brought it in-house and there, and it's really my structure.

01;05;16;04 - 01;05;43;17

Erin Shwiff

It's the way I utilize my team, the way that we have evolved over time. In the little things, it's the little things. It's the, you Vndly has an SOW module. We use it. We're probably I think we're one of the top customers that use it the most. And we have since day one and, you know, every SOW’s in there.

01;05;43;19 - 01;05;51;11

Erin Shwiff

But we also have and I'm going to say this level path is that is the and that those are the workday strategic sourcing guys. I'm sure you've heard of Level Path.

01;05;51;11 - 01;05;53;07

Jonny Dunning

Because it's yeah. No. Yeah.

01;05;53;10 - 01;06;09;28

Erin Shwiff

And we were there at the beginning. You know I was given level path, I don't know, three years ago when they were first starting like, hey, take a look at this and see if we can use this Erin And then, you know, we ended up implementing it as our intake tool, but we're using it for so many other things now.

01;06;10;01 - 01;06;37;28

Erin Shwiff

And, and reporting is one of them and data is one of them. Compliance is one of them understanding the work. You know, you need some sort of method to understand the work. I guess where I was going on the, SOW side, managed services were, you know, originally was ran outside of the program, but all of the fixed fee and time materials was in program, but there wasn't a whole lot of governance still or say in how that's categorized and how that's done.

01;06;38;05 - 01;06;57;27

Erin Shwiff

I mean, I've put myself or inserted our team into we got to be the deciding factor of how this, you know, is can is categorize, build the work requirements, tell me what it's you know, what the work is going to be. But let's talk about how this should, should look and how it should be categorized, because I know a lot of companies have issue with this.

01;06;57;27 - 01;07;24;04

Erin Shwiff

I mean, this is a struggle. We have a contingent laborers. Are we categorized, right? Are we are we funneling things through one way because we don't want it to be seen on the other side, right. Does it is it SOW but really it is staff aug. There's a whole lot of that. I mean, I'm just giving you some highlights of places where I, you know, we've got we've gone in and really dug in this my right hand person leaves a governance you know, a governance vertical.

01;07;24;04 - 01;07;47;09

Erin Shwiff

I was very adamant about having a risk and, and kind of compliance arm in my group to manage all of procurement and, and how we actually do the work and how are we, you know, looking at you know SOW unused spend things that I think you're kind of alluding to from a a governing perspective of, of managed services.

01;07;47;11 - 01;08;04;13

Erin Shwiff

How how are the suppliers performing scorecards and all the things. It's all and and I'm getting there. But I again, like you told me six years ago, was going to take me like ten years to get there. I probably would've been like, I don't want to do this, but it's it's just keep going to the next thing, you know?

01;08;04;16 - 01;08;26;28

Jonny Dunning

Yeah, it's such a big thing. But the thing I really, appreciate about what you guys are doing, what you and your team are doing on this unit is you've there's been a recognition that this, you know, you talk about the SOW stuff, the services procurement stuff, this external capacity, it needs a specific focus. I mean, getting it under control.

01;08;27;00 - 01;08;48;01

Jonny Dunning

It's not like trying to get to Mars as in this doesn't it's not beyond the realms of current, you know, capabilities. It is difficult. There's a lot to it. And especially when it's a fairly small team, a lean team trying to accept that sort of change in a big organization that's done it maybe manually or semi manually for a long period of time.

01;08;48;03 - 01;09;02;12

Jonny Dunning

But what people like you were doing, which is well, I think it's great to highlight this conversation. You were admitting that, you know, there are still things you want to cover, and there's always more you want to do and a more maturity you can add to it, but you're going through just solving the problems and you're approaching it.

01;09;02;15 - 01;09;31;12

Jonny Dunning

And I love the fact that, you know, it emphasizes the difference of using technology to create clarity and to build data, which then gives you a really great argument. You know, it's you can't argue with the data. And that's where the kind of finance element comes into it, whether you're talking to the C-suite or whether you're talking to business stakeholders, if you're armed with some evidence and some data which you can only collect by having this stuff digitized or digitalized, however you want to kind of describe it.

01;09;31;12 - 01;10;06;15

Jonny Dunning

But capturing this information in a system, then you can do something with it, then you can use those insights and you might start with simpler insights to start with. But when you can layer on complexity as you go. And so I just think for organizations that are looking to do this, unless you could effectively bring this problem into the light and get get the data and bring it into some, some sort of technology, whatever that fits within your stack, you can't scale without it because trying to do it, trying to get your arms around this on kind of manual semi manual, you know, Excel it.

01;10;06;17 - 01;10;27;12

Jonny Dunning

How can procurement teams scale with that? You can't. It's just it's again back to this transactional versus strategic. The transactional stuff should be automated and it's not a threat to people's jobs. It just means that those people can concentrate on the strategic stuff, but they're not doing it. They're neck deep in trying to manage manual SOWs, zipping around all over the place.

01;10;27;15 - 01;10;55;28

Jonny Dunning

But I going to go into a bit of a rant on that one. But but what you're describing is, is absolutely what I see within organizations that are successful with this is somebody's got responsibility. There's a dedicated, targeted approach of a function to solve the problem, and the problems go across all parts of the business. The center around this, this dedicated function using the correct technology, getting the data.

01;10;56;01 - 01;11;06;26

Jonny Dunning

Then suddenly it just all starts to make sense. From what I see, I think it sounds like that's been the case for you guys. I, I appreciate the journey is kind of ongoing, but it sounds like you're bearing the fruits of it.

01;11;06;29 - 01;11;33;14

Erin Shwiff

Yes. And we are definitely just, you know, Load Path has quite a bit of AI, built in. And I'm looking and I'm working like this year I'm working with legal. Like that whole source to pay processes. There's so much opportunity to streamline, but also, you know, govern better as well. And so utilizing the tools, like you said, tech, I have one tech guy in procurement.

01;11;33;14 - 01;12;07;27

Erin Shwiff

He does all of it and he reports into me too. So I'm like looking at overseeing all the systems that we use and and having that, you know, the right tool in place that can that can funnel the work and not have the manual intervention.

01;11;48;03 - 01;12;07;27

Jonny Dunning

So, so let's so, so obviously actually, in fact, let me one of the things I want to come on to next is I just want to get back to that MSP conversation for a minute. Yeah. So so with the MSP side of things, you guys have that in place. Legacy program, legacy technology, managing just the kind of contract labor side of it.

01;12;07;29 - 01;12;34;00

Jonny Dunning

You then taking it in-house and just, you know, massively executed the change management and transformed it brought it under procurement centralized it. And you know you're off and running now and you. Yeah. And great guns. What what would your advice be I appreciate you kind of highlighted originally when you were saying that what they were doing was transactional and that was not what I needed.

01;12;34;07 - 01;12;49;10

Jonny Dunning

But if you had advice for MSPs, for the companies that where this is going to be the best option for them to to have an MSP, help them through this process, what would you want to see within those MSPs and what advice would you give those MSPs?

01;12;49;13 - 01;13;08;11

Erin Shwiff

Yeah, I yeah, I had a lot to say on this lately and I because I feel like I feel like there has to be a shift. There's a lot in, in, in the contingent labor space. And this might be controversial, but I feel like there's a lot of,

01;13;08;14 - 01;13;31;14

Erin Shwiff

We got to do it this way because this is the way we've always done it. And they're not necessarily people aren't necessarily saying that, but their actions display that. To me. That's my perception of, you know, there's not a good reason. Like, and I'm, I'm, I'm a big questioner. You probably picked up on that, but I am going to ask you maybe ten questions like I'm going to until I get an answer.

01;13;31;14 - 01;14;03;18

Erin Shwiff

And I and this is not an MSP is necessarily this is on just industry wide. And I'm going to be again controversial by saying that. But there's a there's a bit of a staleness out there. I went to my first conference last summer and spoke at the conference. And good or bad, I feel like, you know, we've gotten into a complacent place of how we manage our contingent labor programs.

01;14;03;20 - 01;14;39;11

Erin Shwiff

Everybody's hungry for something different, but nobody can kind of pinpoint or maybe get behind one thing that is going to drive the change. I listen to people speak and, you know, again, good or bad, I, I just didn't really pick up on anything or anybody doing something or thinking a different way. I think it's super important in anything that we do to challenge to be bold, to, you know, think of different ways of doing things.

01;14;39;11 - 01;15;04;01

Erin Shwiff

And, and that might be my personality and not the thing that people want to do. But I, I feel it's very important in order to any time transform or exact change, you have to challenge sometimes things that people just have done for forever. And it sounds kind of basic, but it's it's one of those things that through this process, I've learned that we accept.

01;15;04;01 - 01;15;36;06

Erin Shwiff

We tend to accept so many things in companies in general, not just contingent labor, but just in general process wise, technology wise, you know, standards wise or not, standards leadership, like, there's just so many things that we just accept and I'm not that person. I feel very grateful to have inherited this and been able to look at it from a different lens.

01;15;36;09 - 01;16;01;27

Erin Shwiff

MSPs, I think, are in the same boat. I think they have to think about and challenge their peers, challenge what really is the right thing to do if I'm an outsourced company? What what is it that like? Not guess not try to sell the next thing like really just think about it from a, from a, a strategic level.

01;16;01;27 - 01;16;28;02

Erin Shwiff

I, you know they claim to be they I mean MSPs pretty much claim to be or helpful in strategic ways. I, I didn't see that even in my RFP process. I didn't see it. Right. It's not that I only have experience with one MSP. I think that if you're going to add value, you gotta add it in a way where you you enter, you are brought in with the business and you kind of meld yourself into that company so that you understand.

01;16;28;05 - 01;16;54;00

Erin Shwiff

So many MSPs are you have teams that are running with five different companies or they're they're spread, you know, beyond two companies. And I don't know how you really do a great job other than tactical work at that point or administrative work. The key I remember the first QBR or second QBR, I would say that I started with my MSP, I, I stopped it, I stopped it, I said, I don't want to see the slideshow.

01;16;54;00 - 01;17;12;15

Erin Shwiff

Like, let's talk about what what you can do for me or what we can do for each other. How are we going to partner in this? Because I didn't understand why I was just trying to be sold all these things like, I thought you were here to help, you know, and be an extension of of the team. And it's it's a fine line with like, it's, with a leader like

01;17;12;18 - 01;17;40;17

Erin Shwiff

I'm trying to transform and transform something. How do I utilize an MSP and be able to control that in a way that I need to, and it controls a horrible way to say it. But, you know, have I have I guess. Yeah. Leverage that maybe is the right thing. So I guess my point is MSPs I think, are going to have to think outside the box, more.

01;17;40;19 - 01;18;00;13

Erin Shwiff

And I think the best way I can say is to be bold and to say, okay, no, that I, we follow each other right? They're doing this, I'm going to do this or, you know, but what can I do differently? And what's out there that's different? How can I think outside of, of the norm and and how could I be of service?

01;18;00;16 - 01;18;21;25

Erin Shwiff

It may not look anything like it looks like today. I don't think it can look like it does today and survive. I think you have to evolve. And, right now, it just feels like everybody's in this place of being hungry. And I'm seeing everybody meeting customers like companies, you know, like. Like me that run programs, plus the MSPs.

01;18;21;25 - 01;18;35;22

Erin Shwiff

Everybody's hungry for something different. But I don't know how bold people are being and doing so. So this is my general perception. It's my general, I don't know, opinion. I, I don't know.

01;18;35;25 - 01;18;57;16

Jonny Dunning

I just I love it. I mean, I think, you know, what you're saying is there's an opportunity for disruption. There's an opportunity for people to think differently, do things differently. That 100% resonates with me as a tech provider in the services procurement space. For us, it's all about disrupting the old and doing things and thinking about service in a different way.

01;18;57;19 - 01;19;11;26

Jonny Dunning

And I think what it also brings in is it brings up that stuff, brings in that startup mentality. It comes back again to, hey, look, we're trying to solve a problem here. Don't just keep doing what we've always done. You'll get what you always got. Let's let's move on and look at how we can do something new.

01;19;11;28 - 01;19;30;29

Jonny Dunning

And I do think there is a hunger in the market. And that's why I think it's very important, for these sort of conversations where you can really get into the detail for people to hear about the challenges and hear about the things that have gone well and hear about how you made change happen, and how are you planning to make that change continue in the future, and where you trying to get to?

01;19;30;29 - 01;19;53;17

Jonny Dunning

So from a tech perspective, from an in-house perspective, procurement versus H.R. You know how you make the change happen, how that reflects on the external service providers, the MSPs, how that how that reflects on the supply chain. All these things are super important to get into the detail of which is why I think it's so valuable to be able to have this kind of chat on in terms of the disruption and the need for change.

01;19;53;19 - 01;20;05;24

Jonny Dunning

Everybody knows how fast everything is changing now. Everybody knows how much this disruption is happening in our daily lives and work lives. It's never been as crazy or as fast

01;20;05;24 - 01;20;06;19

Erin Shwiff

You're right.

01;20;06;21 - 01;20;26;10

Jonny Dunning

Ever. So if there was that right time to to, to for people to kind of like buckle up and get in for the ride and, and and think in that way, now's got to be it, for sure. And so, yeah, I thank you so much for for sharing your story. And, and talking through the process.

01;20;26;16 - 01;20;39;17

Jonny Dunning

I think from my point of view, this is obviously an ongoing journey for you guys. So I'd love it if maybe we have the opportunity to catch up a bit further down the line and see what see what the next steps look like. Like you say, we're you're kind of having a new vision for what are you doing?

01;20;39;17 - 01;21;02;26

Jonny Dunning

And the team are getting on board with that. So I'd love to kind of follow where this gets to. But I'm just really appreciate appreciative of you taking the time to go through this and talk through the backstory and where it's got to, because I think it brings it to life really nicely, and hopefully it'll be really useful for other people to just be able to earwig on our conversation and, and hopefully take some useful stuff from it.

01;21;02;28 - 01;21;28;24

Erin Shwiff

Absolutely. Thank you for having me too. I love I like to share about this. I think it's, you know, exciting for me, but also for my team and, and, yeah, I mean, I, I'm open to have any discussions. I think it's something I didn't want to share, you know, a year and a half ago. And now I'm kind of in that place of, let's just talk about it.

01;21;28;27 - 01;21;53;12

Erin Shwiff

I'm willing to, to, to share with anybody. So I think it's it's a good story. There's so much more to it. It's hard to talk about it in an hour but, you know, these are things. And, you know, I love talking with peers in the industry. If they have specific questions, there's different topics within the program. I think people struggle with. So, I try to, you know, leave myself open for that as well if people want to reach out.

01;21;53;12 - 01;22;04;29

Jonny Dunning

So and what's the what's the best way for for other practitioners who've got other questions about this? Obviously, you know, you're busy person, but is it best for people to kind of like contact you via LinkedIn or just try.

01;22;05;00 - 01;22;10;02

Erin Shwiff

And LinkedIn is great. Yeah, LinkedIn is great. That works perfectly.

01;22;10;04 - 01;22;20;24

Jonny Dunning

Well. The more the, you know, the conversation can be brought forward, the better, as far as I'm concerned. And, yeah, it's fantastic to have your voice in the conversation. I really appreciate it. Thanks very much.

01;22;20;26 - 01;22;21;25

Erin Shwiff

Well, thank you, Jonny.