Services Procurement Through Change
Services procurement often struggles with adoption when processes are unclear or inconsistent. Introducing structure and visibility can create confidence, improve delivery and support sustainable change.
With Vinos Samuel, Workforce Transformation Specialist
00:08:44 - Why services procurement is the most misunderstood lever in APAC talent strategy
00:15:37 - The orchestration of work
00:27:56 - The move to skills based architecture
00:39:54 - Centralization and supplier capabilities
00:55:33 - Bringing it all together and moving forward fast
Episode Highlights
Transcript
Auto-generated. Please excuse any minor errors.
00;00;00;02 - 00;00;28;08
Jonny Dunning
Okay, so I'm delighted to welcome Vinos Samuel to the podcast today. Vinos is a workforce transformation specialist, and we've kind of had a few conversations in the past due to your interest in the services element, the services portion of that workforce transformation. In particular, a really interesting, thought provoking post you wrote about the need to address services procurement and statement of work type engagements, specifically in the APAC region.
00;00;28;10 - 00;00;31;22
Jonny Dunning
I'm delighted to have you on the podcast today. Vinos, how are you doing?
00;00;31;24 - 00;00;36;15
Vinos Samuel
I'm doing well. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me and I'm looking forward to our chat today.
00;00;36;17 - 00;00;57;18
Jonny Dunning
Excellent stuff. Brilliant. So I know you've done some really interesting work. Particularly we've spoken about the work you've done at Netflix, for example. But would you just be able to give people a little bit of background on how you've moved through your career and the different things that you've done? Because now you've seen this kind of workforce transformation space from a few different angles?
00;00;57;20 - 00;01;40;16
Vinos Samuel
Absolutely, yeah. If you if you look at my career trajectory, it's at the intersection of outsourcing projects, transformation in terms of H.R contingent talent and recruitment. So in terms of the roles that I've played, I started with IQ navigator back in the day when they had the technology to procure, staff aug services. I led a couple of accounts and then moved to Singapore with Randstad, and manage the portfolio of MSP accounts, which had a elements of services in it, but is predominantly temp for technology, banking and financial services and pharma clients.
00;01;40;18 - 00;02;09;00
Vinos Samuel
For 2 to 3 years. I also did recruitment process outsourcing, but I solution and consulted with clients to build and acquisition solutions across Asia. With, with new technologies, with ATSs with distributed, sourcing centers and so on. And recently with Netflix, I headed up contingent talent, H.R. Operations and talent acquisition operations.
00;02;09;05 - 00;02;37;12
Vinos Samuel
So the idea behind that role was, a leader who owned the experience for employees, non employees and candidates together. So my my experience as you can say is varied. It is at the intersection of transformation of workforce. So how can you optimize different channels of hiring. How can you look at total talent and evolve workforce strategy towards, something like that?
00;02;37;15 - 00;03;02;24
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. I think it's really interesting that you've had these multiple angles on it from that kind of the technology point of view, the staffing or kind of workforce solutions provider point of view, and then in-house just addressing this whole issue of like, well, how does the organization get work done? You know, all of these different channels, they all feed into the overall capability of the, of the organization.
00;03;02;26 - 00;03;23;09
Jonny Dunning
And, and it does require all of those elements to be successful. I think in a sense, you need to you need to, apply the most appropriate and effective technology. You need to use the supporting organizations that bring the workforce expertise, where required. And internally, you need to kind of have a clear strategy. Really?
00;03;23;11 - 00;03;56;14
Vinos Samuel
That is correct. Yeah. In order to see these pieces together and kind of look at total talent, you need different lenses, right? Like, because if you are only have a TA lens, you're only looking at one channel of where your workforce can come in. But if you have the other lenses of services and contingent talent and internal mobility and so on, then you can add them all together and then kind of, see how best to meet the needs of the business, not just bracketing ourselves to say, hey, I need a headcount
00;03;56;17 - 00;04;21;04
Vinos Samuel
Right. So, so that's that's the space that I'm super interested in. And after Netflix, I've been consulting with clients to to help them rethink, their workflow strategy in terms of channels of hiring, which includes services. And that's how we got connected. Right? The way I see it philosophically. Right. And there are three, three waves, that are kind of colliding together.
00;04;21;05 - 00;04;41;13
Vinos Samuel
One is, of course, AI we talk a lot about it in terms of how, AI is transforming not just automation, but it's coming for our, brain work, that we do. And that has a huge impact on how workforce will be designed. Right. And then you have hybrid work you can already see post-Covid, most of the workforce is distributed.
00;04;41;13 - 00;05;02;28
Vinos Samuel
They're not in the office. So they're already, leading to ways of managing your workforce, which is not like before, where a manager would walk on the floor and meet people, greet people, know what their motivations are, etc. it's already distributed and all your, and then the distributed teams are delivering the output that you need. And then the third one is blended workforce.
00;05;02;28 - 00;05;25;28
Vinos Samuel
Right. Because if you look at any organization, you do have full time employees. But there's a big category of non employees in terms of temps freelancers and workers coming through statement of work. Right. And all of these three coming together is kind of redefining what's the unit of an organization. It's not a headcount anymore. It's work.
00;05;26;00 - 00;05;42;28
Vinos Samuel
Right. And if you redefine it that way, and you say, okay, these are, these are this is the work or this is the output that I need. And these are the skills that will determine that where is the best way to get it right. Do we have that internally. Do we have to go procure it if you have to procure it.
00;05;42;29 - 00;05;53;01
Vinos Samuel
Is it like a full time hire? Is it a temp hire, etc.. So I think that's the lens that I'm super, super interested in. And because of my past experience, I think this all comes together.
00;05;53;04 - 00;06;23;04
Jonny Dunning
I like that it's the unit of effort of an organization. I really like that. That's, that's an interesting way to frame it. I had a great conversation with a guy called Niul Burton, who worked for EY for many years on a kind of procurement, procurement side. And he was talking about the, the extended enterprise, and there's various different ways to describe it, but that when you actually break it down to what's important here is the work.
00;06;23;07 - 00;06;45;03
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And that's something that, I mean, I remember I had a conversation with, Bruce Morton, many years ago from Bruce, from, Allegis and, and Bruce talking about the work, not the worker. He wrote a book on it. Really, really interesting. So, so I like the way this, this is kind of an evolution of the sort of language that people are using, and it has to evolve.
00;06;45;03 - 00;06;54;08
Jonny Dunning
And the thing is, with everything changing so rapidly, I mean, even before the whole AI conversation with the way that work was changing pre-COVID.
00;06;54;11 - 00;06;54;24
Vinos Samuel
Yeah.
00;06;54;26 - 00;07;21;02
Jonny Dunning
The rise of kind of like gig working and and more fractional, based work. Everything was changing really, really rapidly. Whereas before it had been job for life for a large, you know, portion of post industrialization history. And then suddenly you got this shift to some more flexible, like a contractors temporary labor. It's just it's so much more complex and fast moving now that I feel like the market needs to catch up a bit.
00;07;21;02 - 00;07;44;04
Vinos Samuel
Sometimes, I agree. Yeah. I mean, you could you also look at data, right? Like, if you look at the last LinkedIn study and if you look at what's the, average tenure of employees in an organization, it's now two years, right? And it's much lower for the gens. The gen Z, workforce that's coming in too
00;07;44;10 - 00;08;04;14
Vinos Samuel
So that's one, right? And on the other side, the, the need of the workforce is also changing. Like, they don't think about work as something that they would do for life. They want to try different things, they want good balance, etc.. So that's also kind of, brings different types of employment into consideration and for choices as well.
00;08;04;21 - 00;08;27;14
Vinos Samuel
Like I could do a gig work, I could take up a project with an organization, then move on to somewhere else if I have certain skills and I productize that, and how do I deliver that to an organization? So all of that is very, very interesting mix and dynamic that is playing out. And AI and automation is kind of, making that very easy, for the workforce to put it forward to.
00;08;27;17 - 00;08;52;06
Jonny Dunning
So you mentioned one of the the critical streams of this is the procurement of outsourced services under statement of work engagements. And the thing that really caught my eye about your LinkedIn post, I love the the stuff you do on LinkedIn, by the way, I think it's great, really, really useful, and engaging content. You were talking about how services procurement or statement of work, the spend under the statement of work engagements.
00;08;52;08 - 00;09;03;20
Jonny Dunning
That was as far as kind of like APAC talent strategy goes. That was you felt the probably the least understood area. Why do you think that is?
00;09;03;23 - 00;09;40;04
Vinos Samuel
Yeah, it's a good question. So let's say the environment that we are in today, most organizations have margin pressure. Most organizations have headcount, freezes. Right. Most organizations are in that volatile, uncertain environment. And when that happens, you're not growing in terms of your headcount, but your work has to still be done. Right. So if, if, if the focus is on, okay, if you're not hiring anybody but you're not looking at, are there any other ways through which, work is getting done, which is services procurement in most cases.
00;09;40;06 - 00;10;04;00
Vinos Samuel
And many times when you look at services procurement as an area, you can actually divided into two, right? One is pure statement of work, which is where there's clear deliverables, where there are clear milestones, where the organization is not responsible to direct the workers who are coming through the out through the project. And also the supplier has penalties associated with their deliverables.
00;10;04;00 - 00;10;21;20
Vinos Samuel
And it's like time bound. So there are criterias that you can look at. But there's another one where you have, a services contract with an organization, but there are people coming through it and you're kind of spelling out who comes or you are saying, you're going to pay timesheet based, pay, right? There are no milestones.
00;10;21;20 - 00;10;53;16
Vinos Samuel
There are no objective, deliverables. Associated with that. And that becomes like an services contract. But what you're doing is you're bringing labor, into the organization because you have constraints elsewhere. Which I mentioned before. That is, the focus for me. Right. And if you're bringing in their, core employment risk and the other risks gets accentuated because you are delivering, or you're directing those, those workers coming through it, you are ensuring that the work gets done.
00;10;53;16 - 00;11;14;26
Vinos Samuel
It's not the supplier, etc.. And then the question comes in, who owns co employment? Right. And when you look at services procurement, procurement owns it when you look at full time employees, HRPB and the other teams own it, when you look at temp workers and maybe independent contractors, contingent talent owns it Right. Then what happens to this category?
00;11;14;26 - 00;11;38;18
Vinos Samuel
Where do they sit and then will, ensure that the organization is not, defaulting on any of these regulations? Right. And that's why I think from a total talent perspective, all of this coming together makes a lot more sense from a compliance perspective, but also from a, when I when we look at the analogy of work and what's the best way to get work done, then it kind of distributes that to.
00;11;38;21 - 00;12;14;20
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, it's very interesting. I would say that the if you look at that full kind of workforce mix or work capability mix, I would say services, procurement and statement of work is the least mature area globally by by miles So I don't think it's specifically, an Asia-Pacific problem. But as you say, it's something that, in terms of program maturity, traditionally the kind of like contingent workforce program maturity, these workforce solutions, program maturity is kind of been led by the US, right?
00;12;14;21 - 00;12;41;04
Jonny Dunning
A lot of the time in terms of them being like slightly like at the front of the game, as it were, and this maturity is spreading more globally now, but it's interesting that some areas, like I would say, probably the most mature region in terms of services become, you could argue it's actually the UK and that's partly due to very tight regulations around misclassification and co employment.
00;12;41;04 - 00;13;05;12
Jonny Dunning
Right. So I think places like Germany, France have some very strict rules as well. So though there are various drivers that make people look at services procurement, one is cost, one is risk. You know there's there's so many drivers around it. I mean and it's you know, you're talking something in the region of $20 trillion annual spend that the organizations put into procured service.
00;13;05;15 - 00;13;31;25
Jonny Dunning
It's a massive, massive problem. It's a massive part of how they get work done. So therefore it makes sense to to address it. But it is quite complex. And it's interesting what you talk about with this kind of gray area where you have what some, some people might term as kind of like, body shopping where, you know, it's kind of disguised under a statement of work, but really it's just headcount contractors effectively, that are under the direction control of the organization.
00;13;32;00 - 00;13;51;25
Jonny Dunning
I mean, like I say that that is under very close scrutiny in highly regulated, areas like the UK in certain areas of Europe, think it's coming in slightly more into the US. There's been some very high profile cases where large organizations have had massive penalties, effectively saying, well, you know what, you're treating these these people like employees.
00;13;51;25 - 00;13;57;27
Jonny Dunning
Therefore you need to give them the benefits that employees have and, and pay the appropriate taxes. So.
00;13;57;29 - 00;13;59;06
Vinos Samuel
Yeah.
00;13;59;09 - 00;14;05;22
Jonny Dunning
It's the biggest problem area that part of service given isn't it. Where it, where it kind of where it isn't done properly sometimes.
00;14;05;25 - 00;14;38;04
Vinos Samuel
Yeah. You make an important point because most jurisdictions in APAC also have regulations to avoid co employment. Right. Or undercutting employees against body shopping etc.. But what is the enforcement of it. All right. I think UK enforces that more forcefully. And that's why it gains that attention in APAC I think barring Australia, to a large extent, and maybe Japan, to an extent, the rest of the countries have regulations, but it's not enforced.
00;14;38;04 - 00;15;09;12
Vinos Samuel
So organizations don't take it as much seriously as possible. And that's where then this becomes like a shadow workforce that comes up. I mean, shadow workforce comes in. There's compliance risk. That is one part of it, but it also pulls down, the, the objectives of the organization. Because if the organization wants to be more efficient, they want to be, reducing down on their costs, they want to be more agile, nimble, and these hidden, workforces and work that gets done is never, in anybody's view.
00;15;09;19 - 00;15;18;16
Vinos Samuel
And that means that you are, leaving, leaving part of your, workforce away, and not managing them efficiently.
00;15;18;18 - 00;15;37;16
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, totally. And and it can. It's that classic thing, you know, having worked on the workforce solution side yourself for, for Randstad and, seeing that side of it, you know, we all those of us who've had experience in that area, we all know the story. The organization says this is how many, you know, contingent workers we've got.
00;15;37;23 - 00;16;05;23
Jonny Dunning
The CEO asks, somebody says, how many non-employee workers have we got? I think we've got this many. And it turns out to be like five times the amount because there's people hidden left, right and center. It is, you know, like you say, if you don't have visibility over that, it's it's pretty negligent, really. I mean, you know, it's you know, APAC is obviously a massive region with very kind of diverse mix of, of countries in there.
00;16;05;25 - 00;16;25;20
Jonny Dunning
And I'm sure some of them will take on tighter enforcement of that type of regulation before others, but it's something that's definitely becoming more of a thing, I think is partly because, you know, governments and regulators are trying to keep up with the fact of how much this has grown. Right. And it's that classic thing you hear in Workforce Solutions circles of the squeezing the balloon.
00;16;25;22 - 00;16;48;05
Jonny Dunning
You know, you have a headcount freeze over here. And then these workers pop up over there and you squash that down and something happens over here. So it's inevitable that that is going to be utilized when organizations need to get work done. But as you say, if they if they embrace it, you know, and manage it as a, as a genuine, genuine strategic part of their workforce mix, then they can leverage it effectively.
00;16;48;07 - 00;17;12;24
Vinos Samuel
That is correct. Yeah. And most organizations in my opinion, and that's what we were trying to, see how to best do it with Netflix as well. Like who who who is that one person who could determine like which is the right channel to go to. Right. Most organizations have 3 or 4 different people, right? You have your HR BP but it is more focused towards TA then you have your procurement, then maybe your contingent team, which looks at temps.
00;17;12;27 - 00;17;35;20
Vinos Samuel
But then this category, which can be covered under services, but after that it could become managed services or it could become a pure SOW nobody's doing it and nobody's bringing it all together with, with one lens of how to measure the channel effectiveness. Right. Like apples to apples, it's very different. Like, and nobody knows what's the cost of an output that comes from different channels.
00;17;35;26 - 00;18;10;15
Vinos Samuel
And nobody has gone into kind of determining it because it's not come under one umbrella. And I always thought if that I mean, for top talent to work, I feel that there's one I most likely HR BPs. But HR BPs need to be like those channel effectiveness partners as well, right? Like when they're doing org design and that when they're talking about how, how the org needs to evolve to meet the needs that they need to meet in terms of objectives for the next year, two years or three years.
00;18;10;18 - 00;18;19;14
Vinos Samuel
What is the way that it can be done? Is it outsourced? Is it, project based, is it temporary? Is it full time employees? And that's the missing link.
00;18;19;17 - 00;18;46;18
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. It's like somebody's got to be orchestrating this or, you know, being the quarterback if you want to put it in sporting terms, somebody's got to be coordinating it. Just just as a slight side note, there must be a lot of really frustrated data and insights people in a lot of organizations, whether it's the organizations need to know what are the most effective ways for us to do work.
00;18;46;18 - 00;19;03;01
Jonny Dunning
How much does it cost to do it like this? What the results if we do it like that? I know, I've had many interesting conversations with Chris Radvanski, who used to be the head of insights for Magnit. One of the big kind of workforce solutions companies. And he he's he's doing his own really cool stuff around Workforce Insights now.
00;19;03;01 - 00;19;27;05
Jonny Dunning
But the frustration is for people like Chris and people in organizations. It's just they look at the different areas. Most of it can be measured. You can measure your permanent headcount. You know what's going on with that. You know, what's the the salaries are that's all fairly structured and organized. The contingent labor space around contracts and temps, I would argue, is pretty, it's pretty well developed, but it's pretty mature.
00;19;27;06 - 00;19;53;01
Jonny Dunning
You know, the technology's been around since, like the late 90s, early 2000s. With the vendor management systems and the programs are in place. Some of them are on, you know, multiple generations of programs now where they're quite mature. The services space is where the real kind of lack of visibility is for most organizations. But because it's such a big part of it, usually 6 to 10 times the spend on contingent workers, that's just a huge it's just this giant gap, really, isn't it?
00;19;53;04 - 00;20;19;13
Vinos Samuel
I yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, for example, I'll give you a look at that Netflix. Right. Like, if our temp and independent contractor spend was like x, and SOW spend 100 x, right. So it was right. But when you and I say SOW spend I combine a lot of things under SOW because we haven't yet divided.
00;20;19;15 - 00;20;40;14
Vinos Samuel
And divide and conquer. Right. Like you have your cloud services also comes under SOW. Whereas that's not something that, that we should be looking at or subscription services or software that you buy and those kind of things. But when it comes to, let's say, marketing services or when it comes to facilities, when it comes to, like VFX, was a classic example where, where we outsource.
00;20;40;21 - 00;20;57;01
Vinos Samuel
But to those outsource project, there are people coming in to, to do the work. And the dollars very clearly spelled out. And those are kind of projects which you can bring in. This is the other one, right. Like when you look at SOW, how do you break it down and and try address it one after another?
00;20;57;01 - 00;21;15;29
Vinos Samuel
You can't address a whole space at one time. So how do you how do you do it? One of the ways that we also did was we called it person, personnel as a service, because what we saw is there was an SOW signed it went under procurement and, the statement of work services based procurement.
00;21;16;02 - 00;21;36;19
Vinos Samuel
But people, there were individuals coming in like a tax assistant tax consultant or a or a management consultant coming in through it. But those are resources coming in under those SOW it should come under the contingent program and not otherwise. So that we can ensure that they are properly vetted. There is that tenure rules and all of that that can be enforced on it.
00;21;36;22 - 00;21;53;17
Vinos Samuel
But they were all falling under procurement. So can we take like, take that whole category and say, okay, this needs to go here. This then needs to go here. Or there is spend wise distinction that we do and etc.. So how do we how do we manage that?
00;21;53;19 - 00;22;15;27
Jonny Dunning
I mean, the thing is these are not simple questions, but the questions that do need to be asked. It's not you know, we're not trying to get to Mars. We're we're trying to solve workforce, but these are solvable problems. Yes. And and if an organization puts a strategy and a structure in place and creates their definitions, then they can do this.
00;22;15;27 - 00;22;43;07
Jonny Dunning
I mean, it's really interesting when you talk about the different areas of, of services procurement and ultimately a statement of work is a type of contractual vehicle. And it's a very good kind of like unifying principle to say, does this fall into this bucket or this bucket? You know, if it's engaged under a statement of work or work order or task order type agreement, where it's output driven, I will pay you X to deliver Y.
00;22;43;09 - 00;23;08;10
Jonny Dunning
You have the liability to do that. Off you go. That very much categorizes something with for example, like, you know, buying software and stuff like that. Quite often it'll just be under a SaaS agreement, which is a different type of contractual vehicle. So that will sit in a different bucket. So I think the statement of work, I'm really glad that the Workforce Solutions kind of world has moved away from just talking about that.
00;23;08;16 - 00;23;27;08
Jonny Dunning
They started talking about services procurement, which is the correct, in my opinion, the correct overarching descriptor for these outsourced procured services. The statement of work obviously is just the contract, but it is very, very important in the sense that, I mean, we have this with clients all the time when you're talking about, you know, do you address it all at once?
00;23;27;10 - 00;23;44;06
Jonny Dunning
What we tend to find a lot with customers, from our point of view as a technology provider in this space, they won't necessarily address it all at once, partly because it's such a large amount. But if it's 100 million spend, you know, billion spend, whatever it is, it won't necessarily be addressed by the necessarily practical to address it all at once.
00;23;44;08 - 00;24;13;10
Jonny Dunning
Also, you're kind of still building the business case sometimes. What we tend to find is that's why as a technology provider, being flexible and having that agility is very important. You know, you need to do need to be able to do a lot of configuration because ultimately the way people buy these services, if they're under a statement of work agreement, that type of contractual engagement, the underlying architecture of that agreement is basically the same, but it's that what goes on top of it, you know, what is a milestone?
00;24;13;10 - 00;24;34;19
Jonny Dunning
Is it a block of consulting time? Is it a sprint? Is it a KPI? Is it a pure project deliverable? All of these things are legitimate and legitimately, you know, there can be T&M based statement of work engagements. The, the, the actual mechanism underlying it is relatively simple and it's pretty much unified. What happens on top of that?
00;24;34;22 - 00;24;57;04
Jonny Dunning
You know, with, with, a customer who's dealing with marketing services and then maybe they're dealing with engineering services that are in a safety critical environment, for example, they're going to be very different in terms of the criteria around sign off, what type of template, what they're going to put in their scope of work. How are they going to, you know, what requirements they might have for insurances for that supplier?
00;24;57;06 - 00;25;30;11
Jonny Dunning
Many different variables. But yeah, I think that that's, that's how in my head I would see it being kind of like categorized. But what the questions you're all asking, I think are really important. And, and ultimately the benefit of asking these questions and coming up with answers is, you know, this this unit of effort, every unit of effort is maximized for that organization rather than 40 or 60% of the units of effort just being anyone's guess.
00;25;30;13 - 00;25;54;29
Vinos Samuel
That is correct. Absolutely. Yeah. And you're right. It's it's it's difficult because the way I see it, it's it's not like a normal change management. This is an organizational wide change management because this is a mindset shift. And many of the, top level decision makers in the business and in, in the support system, they are used to working in a certain way and that becomes the norm.
00;25;55;01 - 00;26;12;04
Vinos Samuel
And if you want to shift that, it has to start from the from the top in terms of a mandate to say, hey, this is how we're going to look at workforce and these are the options available. And now everybody start doing it. And that's the difficult bit because you have to sell right at the top. It can't be can be anywhere down.
00;26;12;06 - 00;26;37;06
Jonny Dunning
To you know what I to say I love the content you put out on LinkedIn. You always come up with some really interesting points. You ask the kind of difficult and interesting questions I would. I think there's definitely options for you to put together some really interesting stuff. Expanding on your thoughts around this kind of whole concept of a unit of measurement unit of unit of, of organizational effort, because that's what CEOs need to worry about.
00;26;37;08 - 00;26;54;04
Jonny Dunning
And when you talk about the mandate coming from the top, you know, the the CEO, the CFO, the COO, they need to be thinking, how are we, how are we doing the work that we need to do? Because the work that we do either delivers the product or the service that we provide to our customers. So how are we getting this work done?
00;26;54;04 - 00;27;15;21
Jonny Dunning
How are we going to get it done in the future? What about when things change? What about when there's new work and our staff can't do that, and our current suppliers can't do that? You know, I think that's that's where the mandate needs to come from. Because, you know, as a as a tech supplier in the services procurement space specialist provider, we used to very much, kind of approach the world in saying to procurement
00;27;15;22 - 00;27;39;13
Jonny Dunning
We're going to make your life easier. But to a certain extent, you know, does the business care enough about that? Right. And what we've learned from dealing with these organizations, really the most important thing is about the end user being able to get work done as effectively as possible. And that means you need to know whether the supplier is doing a good job.
00;27;39;13 - 00;27;59;24
Jonny Dunning
You need to be able to find the right suppliers. You need to be able to transact quickly. Of course it needs to. It needs to be compliant. And it needs to be cost effective for the organization for that, end user it to be making good effort and good efficiency. So that is the real driver is, you know, how good is the organization in getting work done and how can they leverage each channel?
00;27;59;27 - 00;28;30;00
Jonny Dunning
Which is why I find it fascinating the way that you are taking this kind of total talent, perspective on services procurement and kind of saying, you know, you need to have a quarterback, you need to have somebody coordinating this. I mean, do you think that we will soon see, departments and organizations being structured in a way where because because the thing is, you've kind of previously got some the total talent talk is always kind of.
00;28;30;02 - 00;28;44;04
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, it's never really got to where people wanted it to get to, partly because there's this big area of it is not solved yet, but you've had, you know, people talk about strategic workforce planning and centralization. What's your view on the how that might look in the future?
00;28;44;06 - 00;29;10;18
Vinos Samuel
So so I have hope. And it stems from a couple of observations, right. One, if you go like probably 7 or 8 years back, most of the contingent talent programs also used to sit with procurement. But now you see a shift contingent talent for temp independent contractors mostly. And even, onboarding, offboarding of vendor workers sits with contingent and contingent sits with HR.
00;29;10;21 - 00;29;32;12
Vinos Samuel
Right. So so you're already seeing that move in some of the forward looking organizations where it HR is now at least getting a visibility of where their, workforce is coming from. What's the percentage spend, what kind of work is getting done from temp and independent contractors and services and so on. So that is very important and that visibility is super important.
00;29;32;20 - 00;29;51;15
Vinos Samuel
And once you have that, then when you see this shift of skills based organization that, most organizations from a talent strategy perspective are talking about, that is also kind of connected, right? Because once you start talking about what skills do we need for work to be done, then the next question is, where can you get those skills from?
00;29;51;15 - 00;30;09;22
Vinos Samuel
It's kind of saying, okay, I want to get this work done. Not that I want to get a worker, but how do I get this work done in skills based organizations also connecting to it. So I see these merging together and that would lead to total talent. But I haven't seen anybody figure it out. Everybody's on that journey.
00;30;09;25 - 00;30;18;11
Vinos Samuel
But there is not many champions of, of this thought within the organization in order to make it possible.
00;30;18;13 - 00;30;50;10
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. I think I mentioned to you, Lisa Williams from Dow Chemicals, she had a really awesome conversation with her recently. And she, she was very much she's absolutely passionate about championing this kind of total talent viewpoint on it. But as a, you know, I do really think that one of the reasons this hasn't been coordinated and orchestrated and centralized is if you've got five different channels and you've got you can only see three of them, you can't coordinate it.
00;30;50;12 - 00;31;11;28
Jonny Dunning
Yes. So so I think that the total, the total talent thing is being one of these things that it's kind of like people when they go to conferences and someone's talking about total talent. A lot of the time it's just the same stuff getting rolled out again and again and again. And it's really interesting to hear people like yourself, and people like Lisa talking about it in a different way and in a way where they're taking actions over.
00;31;11;29 - 00;31;30;28
Jonny Dunning
And, and I think it's really interesting when you look at like, who's problem is that? Who should be in charge of that? And I think at the moment in the market, it's only really going to be change makers. People like yourself, people like Lisa, who take a different view on it, who say, this isn't good enough, we can do this a better way.
00;31;30;28 - 00;31;52;02
Jonny Dunning
Why isn't this working properly? And I think when you look at it from the perspective of should this be HR coordinating this, it's really interesting because I wonder myself, I wonder what your viewpoint is on this. Like, is it going to be a new function or is it going to be that the H.R function is going to evolve?
00;31;52;02 - 00;32;19;26
Jonny Dunning
Because I've always thought of H.R as like, you know, they're looking after the needs and the, the workforce. Regulatory requirements and, you know, exercising good care over their workforce and developing people and all that sort of thing. Do you think it will be the responsibility of a, an H.R mark two function HR, you know, 3.0 or is it going to be maybe a new function that eventually takes us over and coordinates it?
00;32;19;29 - 00;32;40;12
Vinos Samuel
That's a that's a that's a good question. I thought I mean, I have a few, few ways to look at it. In my head, H.R. BP, I think is the perfect, role with education and with support and all of it, because that's available everywhere, right? And they're aligned to different functions, different teams, etc.. So you don't have to build anything within the organization.
00;32;40;15 - 00;33;17;00
Vinos Samuel
But you if you if you can't train or get that mindset shift within HR BPs, then who's next? Well-positioned to do it? I feel contingent talent teams are well positioned to do it because they understand the non employee workforce holistically and they understand full time employment holistically as well. And if you have contingent folks who understands TA they're better suited in order to get this whole thing together in conjunction with the HR as well because they are the ones architecting the, the org, structures, etc., along with org design and all.
00;33;17;03 - 00;33;40;04
Vinos Samuel
Or there may be a third role that comes up, right, which kind of connects all of this together. And the other partner, whenever there's a, need for hiring that arises within an organization and then, like a resource planning, partner or somebody who comes in and says, okay, I know these are my options of channels that I can go to, but let me see what you need.
00;33;40;06 - 00;33;59;13
Vinos Samuel
Right. And what is the problem that you're trying to solve? How do you want to evolve the business, maybe along with HR BP and then say, okay, for this, this is the best way to do it, right? And then it goes to the COEs that that come in TA, or CT, or procurement, however but yeah, I mean, that's that's in my head.
00;33;59;16 - 00;34;31;01
Vinos Samuel
I have a question for you, Jonny. Do you see, a different way of thinking in organizations which are scaling now, like probably 500 employees, etc., because many a time when we think about these transformation, we think about this big organization, right? MNCs etc. but maybe the mindset shift is easier to do in an organization that's scaling now and then it's easier to put these structures in which they can reap benefits as they continue to grow.
00;34;31;04 - 00;34;31;21
Vinos Samuel
Do you see?
00;34;31;23 - 00;35;03;25
Jonny Dunning
It's a really good question. I mean, we typically deal with larger organizations, right. But in my experience, you know, those kind of like fast growth companies, they massively leverage outsourced service providers. You know, they're very flexible in their in their approach to doing the work, partly because they just can't hire quick enough. Yeah. And if they're in the technical sector quite often it'll be like scarce skills, new skills, very technical skills where there are gaps in the workforce.
00;35;03;25 - 00;35;33;25
Jonny Dunning
And there's this there's been this kind of like war for technical talent for a long period of time. I think inherently as a, as a smaller organization, it is easier because you're just dealing with less mass and less structure. But what we're what we're seeing in terms of how smaller organizations are approaching this whole kind of getting workforce done effort, it's fast is really, really fast, and it's flexible so that they can be fast.
00;35;33;28 - 00;36;05;09
Jonny Dunning
It's right. It's it's definitely like you snooze you lose. And that's the thing is I do think that message now, that's the thing I would say is translating up to the message that CEOs need to take on board, and CFOs and COOs and CPOs, they need to take on board is if your organization is not deploying effective units of effort, whatever that workforce channel may be, you're going to lose because you've got to get the work done to deliver your product, deliver your service.
00;36;05;12 - 00;36;27;21
Jonny Dunning
It has to be done faster. It's more complicated, it's changing faster. But the competition moves faster. If, like these big organizations that are just stuck in the structure where they can't see stuff and they can't manage this, they're going to lose out to more agile organizations. So if there's anything to take from these smaller organizations as to how they're doing it, they are they recognize the urgency.
00;36;27;23 - 00;36;52;19
Jonny Dunning
Right? And they will, you know, these smaller organizations will be eating the lunch of the bigger organizations as they go through. I mean, you know, to a certain extent with things like agility and stuff like that. You see it in the contingent workforce world where you see that kind of like challenger technology players coming through, like the smaller, more agile VMS players that come through and, you know, do things quicker, you know, more modern interfaces and all that sort of stuff applies to any organization.
00;36;52;21 - 00;37;13;20
Jonny Dunning
If they want to be competitive in the market, they need to be able to deploy effort rapidly and effectively in the right areas. So, yeah, it's that flexibility means you need to be able to leverage these channels to leverage them. You need to be able to see them for a smaller company, seeing that a smaller scale is generally easier.
00;37;13;23 - 00;37;25;15
Jonny Dunning
But yeah, they, they, they don't they don't have such a fixed view of what a workforce is. Their view is we just need to get stuff done.
00;37;25;17 - 00;37;26;13
Vinos Samuel
Right.
00;37;26;15 - 00;37;49;10
Jonny Dunning
And that and that kind of very much resonates with me, being, you know, part of a smaller organization. I'm an entrepreneurial type person. You've got to get things done and you got to get them done now. And before somebody else does it, I say it's hard to translate that level of urgency into a giant organization, but I think just the speed the world is changing, that's going to happen.
00;37;49;13 - 00;38;18;24
Vinos Samuel
Yeah. No. Yeah, absolutely. And that's, that's that's where my focus is being in the consulting world that I'm trying to dabble Right. Like these organizations that are at 1000, 2000 and scaling fast and would go to IPO, they are the ones who would take this mindset shift seriously and do something about it. And they would have that agility and, and nimbleness in order to do it as well and mandate from the top, pushing it down too.
00;38;18;26 - 00;38;37;12
Vinos Samuel
So that's, that's the space that I am trying to say. Hey, have you thought about this? Have you thought about how you want to become this company in the future, which is rigid, but what are the structures you can put in, which will help you stay, nimble and look at workforce differently and, and keep your flexibility, within the orchestra.
00;38;37;14 - 00;38;59;18
Jonny Dunning
And you know what? Netflix is possibly the best example of this kind of attitude that you could possibly have out there. What was it? You know, that blockbuster, could have acquired them and just, that's that's that's the world changed. And the the this Netflix or one of the kind of like, 50 most valuable companies in the world.
00;38;59;18 - 00;39;29;08
Jonny Dunning
Now, I think that the world is changing really rapidly. And the companies that are at that size and scaling fast, that you're talking about your kind of target market, you know, they they've got an opportunity to really overtake much bigger organizations in the same way that, you know, Netflix proved that that can be done very effectively. So just just going back to the your point about kind of centralization, I think it's really interesting looking at that from a kind of like, can you centralize it around a H.R business partner function, coordinating it and quarterbacking it?
00;39;29;11 - 00;39;52;05
Jonny Dunning
You know, the the difference between engaging a contract worker and engaging a supplying organization? I do think there's still a significant difference in the mechanism of how it's contracted, the way the relationship is managed. And procurement have got that expertise. So do you see this coordinating function more as in like drawing in the relevant other functions of the business where required.
00;39;52;08 - 00;40;14;28
Vinos Samuel
That is correct. Yeah. Yeah. Like if I, if I play down, it's like a decision tree at the top right. Which the hiring manager, which the business partner is helping go through. Right. Like like what are you procuring? Is it a personnel or is it a service? And if it's a service, is that a fixed milestone or you want people to come through that service contract in order to do it?
00;40;15;01 - 00;40;37;27
Vinos Samuel
So that's how you kind of break it down. Even when it's full time that you're getting a personnel, there are questions like, do you see the role remain the same over the next two years? Or you think this will evolve or change depending upon how the growth of your organization looks like? Because if a manager is not sure a role is going to look the same a year or two down the line, then what's the point of hiring a full time employee?
00;40;38;00 - 00;41;00;06
Vinos Samuel
Might as well have a temp worker, right? So so that decision tree, that kind of aligns. And then from there, if you determine it's temp or IC, it goes to CT. If it's full time employment employee, you pull your TA function. And if it's pure service services procurement then you put your your, your procurement function into it.
00;41;00;09 - 00;41;14;28
Vinos Samuel
The procurement function of course owns contracting and supplier management and all of it. But after that, if you want milestone tracked etc., onboarding of employees, etc., then there may be a connect to CT right? And so that's how I see it.
00;41;15;00 - 00;41;37;02
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Because even if an outsourced, outsourced service provider is they’re providing a service which involves doing some work to be people doing some of that work, and obviously for compliance purposes, they need to be onboarded to be able to have building access systems, access, all of that sort of stuff. And it does kind of cross over.
00;41;37;02 - 00;41;54;09
Jonny Dunning
So you've got a central part of the organization coordinating it. One of the things that I found quite interesting that you've spoken about with regards to this before, was just that strategic element of saying you need to plan what you need to do first. And I think you described that to me as kind of getting ahead of the problem.
00;41;54;12 - 00;42;13;27
Jonny Dunning
That that's, you know, it's and that almost that needs to be happening on an ongoing basis really doesn't like you can't just say, what work are we going to get done this year? Who knows what's going to happen this year? You know, the world changes so fast that mean that's a that's an interesting function. But you kind of need the data to drive that don't you.
00;42;13;29 - 00;42;39;03
Vinos Samuel
Yeah. No absolutely. You need you need internal data, which means you are your HRIS and the VMs and your procurement systems needs to come together in order to provide that intelligence. And of course, you need external, market data to come in in order to help the HR BP to take the most, reliable, insights driven, outcomes to, to the business.
00;42;39;03 - 00;42;59;11
Vinos Samuel
Right. Also, there was one thing that I wanted to I wanted to point out, which I'm missing now. Oh, yeah. For example, you mentioned about, nipping all of these problems that are downstream in terms of compliance and, extra spending, all of it right at the beginning. Decisions like location strategy as well, like, has to be determined at the top.
00;42;59;13 - 00;43;13;28
Vinos Samuel
Right? Because today, if a work has to be done, it doesn't have to be that it has to be done in Singapore. Right? It could be done from another, location where you will have a cost advantage or you have your shared services and those kind of things. So you've got to think about it from that perspective too.
00;43;13;28 - 00;43;18;08
Vinos Samuel
And that comes up, higher up, in the chain.
00;43;18;11 - 00;43;35;26
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, absolutely. The great thing about all this, and the thing that really I find very invigorating about this sort of conversation, is it's about being strategic. It's about getting things done. It's about being effective. That really appeals to me. I love that. That's how I like to operate. So I do find this such an interesting topic.
00;43;35;28 - 00;44;01;04
Jonny Dunning
One of the things that, I really like about the way you approach this is this concept of a moving towards the skills based workforce architecture. Or quite. I would maybe even call it like a, a capacity and capability architecture, but it's the ability of the organization to get stuff done. Yeah. So to be put into the right boxes hasn't it, of what is it you need to do.
00;44;01;07 - 00;44;30;20
Vinos Samuel
Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. And I see many organizations do that, like many organizations today are implementing an internal marketplace. And an internal marketplace is just that, right? Like, you know, where your employees are. What skills and capabilities do they have? What projects are they doing, which are which have transferable skills so that you have a mapping. And tomorrow when you have, let's say, a requirement, and that requirement is something that, you don't want to go out and hire.
00;44;30;22 - 00;44;51;29
Vinos Samuel
Is there somebody internally who wants to move? So that's where your internal mobility question comes up. And if is that if that work that you want to get done, can it be packaged as a project, can be extended as a stretch project for somebody wants to build skills, etc., or wants to move into that function? Can they take on that project and do it for a while within your organization?
00;44;52;03 - 00;45;09;07
Vinos Samuel
So that's where that flexibility of having your people develop skills, you knowing where the skills are sitting and how can you enable internal mobility comes in. And then you extend that to external world to if it's not available internally, how would you go out and get those capabilities? Yeah.
00;45;09;09 - 00;45;34;11
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, I've seen some interesting approaches to this sort of, to this sort of kind of philosophy. And for some organizations, particularly if they're working in like highly technological areas, they tend to employ what they refer to as like horizon planning. So, so these are all the things that we do now. These are the kind of ways that we do that.
00;45;34;14 - 00;45;53;27
Jonny Dunning
What about the things that we don't do now? You know, that we think we're going to need to do on. I mean, that must have been something that was, that was something that Netflix had to consider in terms of like, you talk about VFX and stuff like that, you know, the latest technologies, use of AI within the kind of like, you know, entertainment industry and all that sort of thing.
00;45;53;29 - 00;45;58;03
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. People need to look down the road because we're driving faster.
00;45;58;05 - 00;46;10;29
Vinos Samuel
That is true. Yeah. You need to know what's happening now in the next year or two, what's going to happen like over the next 3 to 4 years. And then also long term. Right. Like where are we headed? And if every function has that, then that's going to guide them. Well.
00;46;11;02 - 00;46;42;21
Jonny Dunning
And it's interesting when you look at, the ability of the organization to flex and, and do what they need to do is partly about like internal talent, then it's about contingent talent. And you could break that down into skills and competencies and say, we got this much resource in these, you know, x many different areas. The interesting thing about this, this statement of work and procurement side of things is you're dealing with organizations on the other end of that that are also evolving, and they are building their skills, and they may be building their skills before you need them.
00;46;42;24 - 00;47;06;13
Jonny Dunning
But if you don't have visibility of that, if you don't have those relationships, you don't have that line of sight. And so this kind of horizon planning, I've seen it a lot within like the defense sector and like high tech engineering, aerospace, that sort of areas, those type of industries, they, they, they utilize that with this is anything that you've come across before, but they tend to utilize within their services supply chain things called expressions of interest.
00;47;06;15 - 00;47;28;15
Jonny Dunning
So when the when they're starting to actually like do this future analysis and this horizon planning, they'll go out to their supply chain and say who does this? Who has knowledge of X, who can do Y, who who manages these particular technologies or who has a capability, or who's building a capability in this area? And rather than it being a specific engagement of, right, we're looking for somebody to do this right now.
00;47;28;22 - 00;47;57;08
Jonny Dunning
It's saying if and when this comes up, who, who, who's any good at this? Who's got capability? I find that really interesting because that's something that if you're gathering that information in advance, you're really starting to think strategically. And you can flip that expression of interest into, a requirement, a hard requirement at any period of time. And that for those types of industries where I've seen that happen, it allows them to work around effectively building that supply chain as well.
00;47;57;10 - 00;48;13;14
Jonny Dunning
So say, okay, our supply chain is great, but we've got these new areas and actually nobody in our supply chain is even thinking about doing this. We need to go out and source those suppliers and put them on our kind of like, you know, build our supplier ecosystem further. Is that something you've come across as tool?
00;48;13;17 - 00;48;42;11
Vinos Samuel
So not not in terms of that per se. But in my previous roles, of course, supplier strategy, which is owned by procurement, of course, had these touch points at suppliers to know what other technologies are they getting into, what others, industries that they are, doing projects and etc.. So that was a touchpoint that was understanding of the supplier that the procurement team used to own, predominantly for two reasons.
00;48;42;11 - 00;49;00;15
Vinos Samuel
Right. Because as an organization, you're also thinking about what's our core work and what's our non-core work, right? And once you define that, your core is not going to anybody, right. You have to keep it like for example, in at Netflix engineering, right. Or, or the algorithm is not going to go to a supplier. Right. So you don't need to know that.
00;49;00;18 - 00;49;15;24
Vinos Samuel
But anything else. Right. Which is peripheral maybe. Right. So if you want to think in terms of horizon and these are things that are coming up, is it core non-core if it's non-core or can we find out if our existing supplier base has that, potential or not. Yeah.
00;49;15;26 - 00;49;41;21
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. So so when you look at this concept of a skills based architecture, if that, I guess, again, that plays into your, your thinking around it being need to be managed by a centralized orchestrating function and whoever, whatever that function is. It's very interesting what you just said about there about the supplier strategy. So to that data from procurement.
00;49;41;23 - 00;49;53;13
Jonny Dunning
Absolutely. It has to fit in. So, so would you see it being like, a unified skills architecture just across that? It's the organizational architecture. It's not H.R or architecture.
00;49;53;15 - 00;50;19;18
Vinos Samuel
Correct. It will. It's what the organization will need. Right. Because it can't be a chart. It has to be for all the different functions, which means that it has to be fed from the org, from the different business units up. Right. And then it becomes, one unified architecture. The, the the thing is also, I mean, I keep hearing this like, there are there are a lot of proponents of the skills based architecture, and there are also detractors.
00;50;19;18 - 00;50;44;01
Vinos Samuel
Right. And if you look at hear the detractors, what they would say is, how do you know the skills that an employee is saying that I know is really skills they own, right. For example, like when we implemented Internal Marketplace, I had to go create my profile. And in that profile, of course I could put my LinkedIn, profile, the experiences, etc. the system would say, okay, based on your experience, these are skills that you have.
00;50;44;05 - 00;51;02;08
Vinos Samuel
You can add more, right? Maybe you're going to Python cohorts, etc. you can add I can add anything. Right. And then that becomes a skills architecture. Right. So is that accurate. Is that not accurate. And also skills are changing too. Right. Like what role may need today is different from what it needs six months down the line. So how do you keep it refreshed.
00;51;02;11 - 00;51;15;27
Vinos Samuel
How do you ensure that it's more accurate. So so there are a lot of other dynamics that plays out when you when you look at implementing it and ensuring that it runs, which maybe AI plays a role in kind of keeping it all together 100%.
00;51;15;27 - 00;51;35;00
Jonny Dunning
I was literally just about to say that I think this is a real area where, AI can play a role. I mean, we see it in supplier capabilities. So, so within, Zivio, if an organization has that services supply chain in there, you can look at look at these capabilities and you look at these skills based taxonomy effectively.
00;51;35;03 - 00;51;58;03
Jonny Dunning
And one of the things that AI is amazing at doing is looking at the requirements, the skills and the attributes and competencies in a requirement, capabilities needed and actually assessing a supplier, looking at looking at everything they talk about, looking at the past work they've done for that organization, looking at the competencies that maybe they've, achieved kind of accreditations for and things like that.
00;51;58;10 - 00;52;14;22
Jonny Dunning
And it can give really interesting recommendations on the suitability of a particular supplier for particular types of competencies. And I think the same thing could be applied to individuals because, you know, you might it may be that there's more accreditations required for different skills and competencies.
00;52;14;24 - 00;52;30;17
Vinos Samuel
Right? Yeah, absolutely. And in your case, when AI pulls that from the suppliers, is it like it's it's sending out a questionnaire or is it interviewing them? How is it pulling all that information in. And that must be getting done on a regular basis. Right. It should be a cadence to it.
00;52;30;23 - 00;52;50;27
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. Well exactly what it's all it's almost kind of in real time because when the when the call comes out for we need this particular capability. It's assessing at that moment in time in real time. What is the capability of that supplier look like for what's the you know, how good is that supplier for that particular capability?
00;52;51;03 - 00;53;13;22
Jonny Dunning
So they can look at things like previous project reviews for that specific organization. You know, they can look at wider and wider public information, what the capabilities that they have within any literature where they talk about themselves as large language models, you know, how rapidly they can go through that sort of information. But it's also things like ratings, reviews, how well they've done what they, how they performance to be managed previously.
00;53;13;25 - 00;53;36;29
Jonny Dunning
So it's a, it's a real time measure and it's something that is just that sort of side of the use of AI is just scaling out so quickly. It literally changing on a month, month basis. Is that how it can do that more effectively? And if you're as we do, you're integrating with these large language models. We're not trying to solve the problem of how AI does that most effectively.
00;53;37;05 - 00;54;05;20
Jonny Dunning
We're trying to use the abilities of AI in the specific context that that user wants in that scenario. So yeah, it's incredible the level of information you can get from it and how quickly you can get it. And ultimately, as I say, things like accreditations are still really important. You know, we have, accreditations around skills and capabilities in Zivio where the organization has to basically provide some sort of evidence that they have those skills and capabilities.
00;54;05;22 - 00;54;23;23
Jonny Dunning
And the same potentially can be applied to people. And it could be that you need to take a skill, a particular assessment for a particular skill to get that accreditation and things like that. But, you know, as you said earlier, this is not trying to get to Mars. This is just trying to be organized and actually, these are all really solvable problems.
00;54;23;25 - 00;54;44;25
Jonny Dunning
And what AI does is it just adds an extra element of efficiency and scale to solving these problems. You know, large amounts of unstructured data. Perfect. That's what I always very good at working through extremely quickly, tying it into, you know, comparative large amounts of information across the whole internet. All of the information these large language models, how they can do it in seconds.
00;54;44;25 - 00;55;05;06
Jonny Dunning
So yeah, I think it's it's a it's a question of organizations deciding this is important to them. Right. And then dedicating the resources to solving the problem. It's a solvable problem. And there's many different ways you can go about it. But ultimately it's just saying everything that we do needs to go into a needs to be categorized. Yeah.
00;55;05;06 - 00;55;29;21
Jonny Dunning
And then we need to know, can we do it? And if so, who's good at doing it? Is it our people? Is it the contractors? Is it external suppliers? And if if we haven't got anybody in our whole universe that's good at it, where do we find somebody who's good at it? And it's, you know, it's but but the, the, the real thing that needs to drive it is organizations saying, you know, we're spending 2 billion a year on these services and we don't understand what we're getting.
00;55;29;22 - 00;55;33;24
Jonny Dunning
We don't understand what our suppliers can do. Yeah. That's not good enough.
00;55;33;27 - 00;55;43;16
Vinos Samuel
Yeah. It's about making that pain real, and then saying, okay, now what do we do for this pain? Right. When you don't know that is a pain, then you don't do anything about it.
00;55;43;18 - 00;56;16;17
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And I think that's the kind of the point that this brings us round to is, is really I'm interested to just hear how you feel the organizations can kind of bring all this together, because we've talked about getting upstream of the problem, you know, the kind of work planning stage, centralizing this in a total talent mentality. And the fact that SOW and services procurement is the biggest gap, you know, closing that gap, getting under control, taking a holistic viewpoint, and moving towards this skills based approach.
00;56;16;19 - 00;56;22;02
Jonny Dunning
How do you think organizations can bring this all together and kind of make it happen?
00;56;22;04 - 00;56;48;20
Vinos Samuel
So good question. I think we touched upon it like we see, the holistic view of workforce is coming together because contingent is moving towards HR, in many organizations. And that's one step. The other step is how do you make this, invisible, visible. And what's the pain, that's coming in because it's staying invisible. Right?
00;56;48;22 - 00;57;10;26
Vinos Samuel
You don't wait for a noncompliance case to emerge to know, okay, there is a pain. You don't wait to, like, go IPO and then figure out, hey, we have an, an unmet or rather unseen amount of spend that we're doing, which is not accounted for or it's not, put in a, in a, put in a particular way that's, it's needed, etc..
00;57;10;26 - 00;57;30;04
Vinos Samuel
So how do you bring those pain that can inflict an organization and all the value that can come in by addressing it upfront and then driving it down is, oh, I think is the best way to do it. I mean, there are other ways to do it too, right? Like many organizations are, modular, like they may have one country running in a different way.
00;57;30;05 - 00;57;48;25
Vinos Samuel
And for one, part of the business running in a different way because procurement is different, HR BP is different. So you could also say, okay, for this business unit, we are going to solve this problem. And then once it does, then okay, can that become like a template that can be taken over by other organizations and so on?
00;57;48;25 - 00;57;51;11
Vinos Samuel
Yeah. So that's another way to look at it too.
00;57;51;13 - 00;58;14;13
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, definitely. I think if you look at services procurement specifically, I think the way that technology has traditionally tried to be applied to it. If you take, for example, organizations that are trying to apply a VMS to look at services procurement, there's there's a few areas where I would say that that has slowed the market down. Ultimately, a VMS is looking at contingent workers.
00;58;14;14 - 00;58;40;12
Jonny Dunning
That's what their heartland is. So they're all about individual, you know, hiring Jonny Dunning for X amount of days or whatever it might be. Whereas services procurement is engaging a an external supplier to deliver an output or an outcome very different. So it's hard to apply worker based and time based technology to statement of work engagement. So I think that's one thing where the adoption that slowed organizations down, if that's the only option, which is why organizations like Zivio exist to do it differently.
00;58;40;14 - 00;58;57;28
Jonny Dunning
But the other side of it is if you could only start with a very big program, but because contingent workforce is mature, the commercial models of those types of technology are designed around large programs. So you're not going to deploy, you're not going to deploy unless you're biting off a really big chunk, which stops a lot of people from ever getting started.
00;58;58;06 - 00;59;23;17
Jonny Dunning
So I think what you were saying about looking at whether there are parts of the organization that can try stuff out and through proof of concepts, you know, that's something that we see all the time. Services procurement is complicated. Services procurement is varied. The underlying architecture is similar. So you can you can apply it and say the fundamentals are the same, but the stuff that goes on top is going to vary department to department.
00;59;23;24 - 00;59;49;13
Jonny Dunning
So the ability to try stuff and move fast, that's where you get emerging technologies that try and do things differently to break things down. And I think that's what the services procurement industry needs. Break things down, get started, get moving, learn the lessons, apply the lessons, and move forward to the other parts of the business. So I think that's a really good point you made there in the sense you, you know, organizations can't just do this all at once.
00;59;49;16 - 01;00;08;25
Vinos Samuel
Yeah, impossible. And also, on the services procurement side, you have category owners for different kind of services procurement as well. So, so that also, makes it a little difficult because you've got to get everybody together. But can you look at category by category. And that's how I think some of the MSPs are looking at it.
01;00;08;25 - 01;00;26;14
Vinos Samuel
Right. Like when they want to extend into SSW, maybe what's the closest or contingent talent which falls under services procurement, which can, be taken over like maybe facilities or maybe and marketing operations or, or something like that. And then you build on from there on. Yeah. For testing. Yeah.
01;00;26;16 - 01;00;56;04
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. Well, you know, i.t i.t outsourced i.t services are absolutely the biggest, i.t digital biggest by far. And that does have a lot of kind of crossover with that gray area where there's, you know, scarce talent in, in that kind of contracting market. But yeah, I think, I think you make a good point. The, the other point that I really like that you made, which I think is is the most important point, is the pain organizations have got to understand the pain that they have got.
01;00;56;06 - 01;01;18;19
Jonny Dunning
And it's it's essential for them to understand why this is crucial for them to address it. And I think it ties into to something that you've alluded to before, which is it's a rapidly changing market. It's volatile, it's uncertain. We all know that. It seems to just be getting more volatile and uncertain. So the pace has increased and you need to keep pace.
01;01;18;21 - 01;01;47;28
Jonny Dunning
And if you don't keep pace we use the Netflix blockbuster. Perfect example. You know companies will lose and they won't see it coming. If they're not paying attention, then they're gone. Just exactly like Netflix blockbuster. So that pain of organizations having this massive blind spot, that's the most critical thing that they need to realize. And, and if they don't, I think very quickly the organizations will suffer from that.
01;01;48;00 - 01;02;17;16
Jonny Dunning
For some of them, it will be too late. Know, but for others, you know, the opportunity is there. Now, look, you know, this isn't rocket science. This is about putting the emphasis on it being organized and actually doing things properly, having the data, making decisions based on data. If the organizations aren't doing it. I would argue if, you know, for any organization that has the capability to do this, which any large organization could if they wanted to, it's negligent, really, if they're not.
01;02;17;19 - 01;02;38;19
Vinos Samuel
If there's yeah, if there was a best time to do this, it's now. Right. Because you have AI available to do a lot of your, heavy lifting. You have providers like yourselves with with a lot of knowledge. You have, specialists in the market who understand this field. And our view, it's about getting all of that together, and, and getting started.
01;02;38;22 - 01;02;57;25
Jonny Dunning
So, so one of the things that's interesting about when you look at it from this perspective, so say, you know, you and I get our magic wands out and we, we apply all this logic and say, people need to be coordinating this. They need to be strategic. They need to be planning ahead. They need to use the right expertise to show them how to approach this.
01;02;57;27 - 01;03;14;27
Jonny Dunning
They need to use the right technology. They need to bring it all together with their teams. What's your view when it comes down to actually should organizations be mandating these types of process or not? Because cultures within organizations vary a lot.
01;03;15;00 - 01;03;35;22
Vinos Samuel
Yeah I know, and then mandating is kind of fighting with the business too. Right. Like business love to have their independence to do, these kind of things themselves. Yeah, I do, I don't know, I mean, I feel mandating is the best way to do this, and because this is something that's going to benefit the organization and not the individual businesses.
01;03;35;26 - 01;03;53;15
Vinos Samuel
So you've got to put the organization lens rather than what's best for my team and my business, and say what's best for the organization. Because if you are doing in a way that's not the most effective and you have leakage and you have compliance risks, then you are putting the organization, you're pulling down the organization. Okay.
01;03;53;21 - 01;04;29;11
Vinos Samuel
So I think from that point of view, mandating is the best way to do for example, I mean, it's all related. I can give you another one, right? Most organizations mandate using corp cards, right. Like it's not it's not related, but it's similar. Right. Because if you don't, mandate corporate cards, then you're losing the best deals that you can get with your vendors if you keep it like, either ways, then most employees for their benefit would go and use their own cards, get their own points and miles and so on, and just reimburse it back, for, for the cost that they've done.
01;04;29;11 - 01;04;41;17
Vinos Samuel
So many organizations now start mandating that usage of corporate card is the way to go. Then we know, better insights and better deals and and do the best for the organization. So it's something similar. In a way.
01;04;41;19 - 01;05;25;20
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. It's a it's an interesting area to debate. I think if you talk about the sort of strategic mandate of this is how the business needs to operate, that if you do it properly, if you have a good, a really good process and you use technology that makes life easier for people, then what that allows is that still gives, the, the autonomy and initiative for the business buyers to build these supply relationships and do what they need to do and make choices, because if they're working within, you know, the services supply chain, for example, if they're working within a, an approved set of suppliers, they can they could theoretically choose whoever they think
01;05;25;20 - 01;05;43;10
Jonny Dunning
is the best supplier. And there's going to be various reasons for that. And I can help guide their decision making process. And provide insights. But ultimately it's human decisions that need to be made. So, so theoretically, with with a mandated approach to this, you can still empower people to, have better access to choice and decisions.
01;05;43;13 - 01;06;04;28
Vinos Samuel
Yeah, yeah. By mandating it wasn't what is it that you're taking away? Like you're still helping the business and doing what is right unless the business just had a preferred supplier and they always wanted to give business to them, that's something that might go away. But you have a more structured, tech enabled, data enabled, workflow, that you put in.
01;06;05;00 - 01;06;31;14
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. Excellent stuff. Well, listen, it's so interesting chatting to you. I really appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation with me. I think there's so many areas here that are worthy of further debate, and, I'm, you know, I'm I'm sure you and I will have, future conversations around this sort of stuff. And it'd be brilliant to see the work that you're doing and kind of really pushing this at the very front end of the market, to see how that develops over the time with the customers you're working.
01;06;31;14 - 01;06;49;20
Jonny Dunning
We're seeing the journeys that they're going on. But also, you know, keep the content coming. I love it, I love, you know, the interactions on LinkedIn and the the kind of thought leadership that you're putting out there and the thought provoking, posts and content that you're putting out there. What's the best way for people to find you?
01;06;49;23 - 01;06;52;28
Jonny Dunning
If they want engage in a conversation or hear more about what you're doing?
01;06;53;01 - 01;07;10;11
Vinos Samuel
I think LinkedIn is the best. Like Vinos Samuel, just search for my name. You get it? I'm on Twitter, but I'm not. So, I'm not talking about workforce on Twitter. It's mostly AI. But if you want to follow me, it's, vinos25. there too. But LinkedIn is the best way. I'm there almost every day.
01;07;10;13 - 01;07;22;05
Jonny Dunning
Brilliant. And ultimately, you know, you and I love talking about this sort of stuff. Other people in the market are starting to really get involved and talk about it. It's the more discussion, the better for everybody, really?
01;07;22;11 - 01;07;44;09
Vinos Samuel
Absolutely. Yeah. And it's a great time to be talking about it. As we said, there are multiple waves that are colliding together, which is going to make this easier, to take. And also needed for organizations to think in this way. So I'm pretty excited for this space in the, in the coming, coming years. And see what I can do in this space to, to help people rethink too.
01;07;44;12 - 01;08;00;10
Jonny Dunning
100%. I wish you all the best. And I do think I agree with you. I think it's a really exciting time. And I'll be, keeping an eye on what you're doing with a lot of interest. And so thank you very much again. I really appreciate it. I think it's been a super interesting conversation, and I'll hopefully other people find it useful.
01;08;00;12 - 01;08;02;14
Vinos Samuel
Absolutely. Thanks, Jonny. Thanks for having me here.