Setting Services Procurement Up for Success
When services are clearly defined upfront, organisations gain more control, better outcomes and stronger partnerships. This discussion examines what needs to change early to support scalable, effective services procurement.
With David Orme, Global Head, Services Procurement, Pontoon
00:02:11 - Creating services procurement conversations
00:11:34 - The importance of a full services lifecycle
00:24:52 - The current services procurement tech landscape
00:36:04 - Leveraging the most suitable tech
00:49:44 - Achieving 'best fit' for innovation and agility
Episode Highlights
Transcript
Auto-generated. Please excuse any minor errors.
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;14;13
Jonny Dunning
Right. So here we are. David, It's nice to be in person recording a podcast together. That's right. So we're coming live direct from, beautiful New Orleans in Louisiana. It's been a real interesting couple of days, hasn’t it?
00;00;14;15 - 00;00;23;02
David Orme
It has been. It's been fun meeting a lot of suppliers and a lot of clients just been introducing ourselves, introducing you. And it's been great conversations.
00;00;23;04 - 00;00;49;25
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, it's been really good. So in this episode, what I think would be really good to kind of wrap up the little mini series that we've been talking about, we've been talking about the program that you were running at Cox. So, you know, $1.5 billion program that was like 95% services procurement, amazing story. Great to kind of draw those anecdotes and experiences out to be really, really useful hopefully for people to to listen to.
00;00;49;27 - 00;01;13;23
Jonny Dunning
And then then we had a conversation talking about how you kind of, you know, jumped the fence, as it were, but but it shifted into that MSP advisory, you know, service provider environment, which is really interesting to look at what your, what you're looking to do with taking this offering to market upon to helping other customers, helping organizations with their services, procurement and taking all the lessons you've learned.
00;01;13;26 - 00;01;36;27
Jonny Dunning
Cox and really taking that into the reality with, with customers for Pontoon, so in this episode, what I really wanted to do was, firstly, we have to just talk about the last couple of days, particularly yesterday, the Talent Strategy Summit, which was a whole lot of fun, really interesting with some great clients, in there having conversations around services procurement with us another Pontoon members, which was great.
00;01;37;00 - 00;02;00;07
Jonny Dunning
And also talk about a little bit about the kind of tech landscape and service that came inside, the kind of best fit avenue for MSPs. How to get that right combination of tech enabled service that fits specifically for the particular clients, you know, the particular client's needs. And then also looking at the real key stuff that you and the Pontoon team are looking to deliver.
00;02;00;14 - 00;02;21;01
Jonny Dunning
And to be fair, we're looking to deliver as a technology provider as well around innovation and agility to to really get this market moving. So I think there's loads of cool stuff for us to discuss. My first question to you is with the TSS yesterday, how did you feel that discussion went? Well, what was your kind of did it meet with your expectations of what you expect it to be like?
00;02;21;03 - 00;02;51;08
David Orme
It absolutely. Did. I mean, exceeded them? Yeah. Just for the listeners, the Talent Strategy Summit is a meeting of clients. Potential clients. That's really facilitated by us, you know, no intent for sale, just more for building relationships, sharing experiences. The focus right now is innovation and services procurement. So we picked, clients that had that are farther along in their journey and some that aren't that haven't even started or are just beginning to start.
00;02;51;11 - 00;03;02;08
David Orme
And really just facilitating that conversation to share best practices, share experiences, what they've done in their industry, how they set up their work in their processes, what worked, what didn't.
00;03;02;11 - 00;03;23;20
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And I think the thing that strikes me about when these type conversations happen is as soon as you you get the practitioners in the room, yourself being one of them, and, you know, people take a little bit of a while to kind of warm up to it. But once the conversation starts amongst the practitioners, it's just you're off and it's great because everybody's talking about what's happening within their programs.
00;03;23;20 - 00;03;47;18
Jonny Dunning
They're talking about the challenges within their businesses. You able to talk about all of the amazing experiences you had at Cox and what you've done in your procurement journey as well? And it's just that kind of sharing of ideas. And that's that's how the market moves towards best practice. And because it was like a long form conversation, which is which is why I like doing this type of conversation, it just gives the chance to really get into the detail.
00;03;47;20 - 00;03;57;05
Jonny Dunning
So I think I find it quite frustrating a lot of the times if you're at conferences and you have a round table and it's like ten, 15 minutes and then whoosh, turn around, well, it.
00;03;57;11 - 00;04;12;05
David Orme
You can't get into any, any meat in those conferences and you can't even talk about what you're actually there to talk about. You know what I mean? By the time you pose a question, you've got one person that has an answer and then you think you the bell and it's gone and everybody moves on to the next thing.
00;04;12;05 - 00;04;41;11
Jonny Dunning
So yeah. And I think, you know, just the general conversation, it was quite it was quite a high level of sophistication of like procurement practitioner chat. Which is great to see. And it's, and it's really it allows people to get into the detail of like what is actually making them tick on a day to day basis, talking about how it fits with finance, talking about how it fits with strategy, talking about the challenges, and also just people sharing ideas of how many people are in your team that does this.
00;04;41;13 - 00;04;58;11
Jonny Dunning
How do you approach that? And also, I think just like the sharing of the problem statement is what I find really interesting because people go, oh, you know, that makes me feel better to know that you're in that situation as well. But it's it's, you know, you must see this all the time when you're talking to clients and prospects.
00;04;58;13 - 00;05;04;14
Jonny Dunning
There's the generally, the reason a high level of maturity across the market when it comes to services procurement.
00;05;04;17 - 00;05;31;29
David Orme
There's not, unfortunately, especially from a services standpoint of what we do with the clients. Right. You know, it's that contingent side is so saturated with MSPs and suppliers. The maturities, they're the technology is there that helps, you know, give it a level of delivery that the client needs. We don't have that yet on the services procurement side. We have the capabilities, but we don't have the actual clients or the prospective clients.
00;05;31;29 - 00;06;01;16
David Orme
The corporations haven't caught up to to realizing what the need is. I believe we talked about a little bit in the last podcast where we were saying, your typical procurement person doesn't see the full end to end life cycle, right? So they don't understand the pain that finance feels that your business stakeholder feels for you, you know, having to do dispute resolution, manage the vendors, you know, because everything post signature goes back over the fence to the client or you know to that that engagement leader.
00;06;01;18 - 00;06;04;13
David Orme
And they don't see it unless there's an escalation.
00;06;04;15 - 00;06;25;10
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And with with people talking about how they're approaching from different angles. It's it's also seeing how they build trust and how the MSP world can build trust. And services became because it is a sideways move. And I know a lot of people say, oh, we already doing X amount and sensitive equipment, but a lot of the stuff is a very low level of sophistication.
00;06;25;10 - 00;06;54;09
Jonny Dunning
It's typically like worker tracking that sort of resource focused, basic administration approach to where there is anything in place. But I think seeing the conversation that was going on yesterday, with you kind of, you know, facilitating that from a practitioner point of view that's getting into much more of the meat of how procurement can add value to their buyers, their engagement managers, as you said, how they can bring value to the business and how they can also bring value into procurement.
00;06;54;11 - 00;07;09;05
Jonny Dunning
You know, one of the comments yesterday was that, you know, sometimes it can be a bit of a thankless task. But there's so much value that can be generated, you know, when people are talking about the data on what they can do with the data, where they do capture it and where it isn't just thrown over to the other side.
00;07;09;05 - 00;07;16;14
Jonny Dunning
And, and so you kind of scanned, signed PDFs, stuck in a document repository somewhere. There's a whole world you can do with it.
00;07;16;17 - 00;07;47;27
David Orme
And you become, you know, the more mature I feel like you because as a procurement organization, you become a better storyteller, right? That's what you're doing, right? You're taking that data. You're telling a story with that data to your boundary partners, to your executives. You're building solutions versus just focusing on cost savings, right? I mean, cost savings is great, but that's not what's going to get your business team to really move the needle and engage you and become more of a strategic partner and involve you in front.
00;07;47;27 - 00;08;07;16
David Orme
So you can make those decisions on, oh, what supplier should we use? What are we measure the performance, that supplier make sure those outcomes and deliverables are tightly put together inside the statements of work or should it even be an SOW. Right. It shouldn't be going somewhere else, you know. Is, is are we looking at a 5 or 6 year time frame for building this?
00;08;07;16 - 00;08;13;23
David Orme
Well, why are we talking about an FTE or if it's six months, why are we talking about a staff aug resource.
00;08;13;25 - 00;08;37;17
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And so the kind of business case drivers that was a really interesting part of the conversation. And the, the way that people are approaching the problem, I thought was also really interesting, which was where we kind of go into the discussion around, okay, all of these problems exist around services procurement. But which ones are most relevant to you?
00;08;37;24 - 00;09;04;01
Jonny Dunning
Which was where I'm going to bring in a prop for a second, where we brought in the extremely, high tech, Wheel of Pain. So looking at all angles from rogue spend misclassification, which is mostly upside down, scoping variations, leveraging AI governance performance, direct award versus competitive bidding, lack of visibility, you know, no data for running category strategy, that sort of stuff.
00;09;04;09 - 00;09;30;25
Jonny Dunning
So I thought this was this was quite interesting seeing where people were going with it. And the thing that I find that that is a very useful device is something certainly, from the Zivio point of view, we found very, very useful in conversations because you and I know that most organizations will have most of those problems. Right. But when it comes to the individual organization, the ones that matter to them the most, I mean, even yesterday there was quite a variation, wasn't.
00;09;31;02 - 00;09;39;11
David Orme
It's performance management, it's classification governance. They are all very related but different issues and focuses.
00;09;39;13 - 00;10;02;18
Jonny Dunning
And I think that's what's nice about when I see you having a conversation with practitioners about this, you know, it's not a sales conversation effectively. It's a consultative conversation. And certainly what we try and do as well, if we're talking to customers, because with services procurement is complex enough. It's not about, you got to get to the root of the matter for that particular organization.
00;10;02;20 - 00;10;16;07
Jonny Dunning
You go to really understand it. And I've even seen situations where people will say, you know, our services procurement is fine. And then if you actually take them through, well, how do you do this or how do you do that? Do you have any issues in any of these areas? People suddenly start going, oh yeah, that's a massive problem.
00;10;16;09 - 00;10;38;08
Jonny Dunning
But if you take it as just a kind of if you try and approach is just like how is your services procurement, you know, people can look at that as like it's a too big that that in their mind they're just like oh that's that's too big and complicated. But when you break it down into those specific areas, it really kind of plays into the reality of what they're doing on a day to day basis and, and those pain points that are genuinely affecting them.
00;10;38;10 - 00;10;57;01
David Orme
Well, and that's and that's how you sell services procurement. Right. You have to create a solution and you have to come you have to identify what their problem is, what their need is, and say, well, here let's let's co-create your solution. Let's figure out what works best for you, whether it be technology, whether it be people, whether it be process and help build that with them
00;10;57;01 - 00;11;02;21
David Orme
And that's how you build the credibility and the trust. And that's really how you educate people.
00;11;02;23 - 00;11;26;12
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And it kind of ties into the conversation we're going to be coming on to about like technology within the service, because ultimately, what you guys have got to do, what you've got to do is a practitioner or an advisor. What Pontoon have got to be able to do as an MSP is to find the most appropriate solution for a particular customer, which is, you know, what's the best technology fit, what does that service need to look like?
00;11;26;12 - 00;11;34;12
Jonny Dunning
And it's, you know, for you guys, you're just trying to say we want to serve that customer as effectively as possible. But you need that information so you can kind of piece it all together.
00;11;34;16 - 00;11;54;21
David Orme
Absolutely. I mean, we we are agnostic for technology. So we want to come and figure out what the best solution for them is. Right. To your point, what's the optimal solution? Do you need people on site? All of them. Everybody else like supporting your your team, supporting your managers. What level of expertise do you need? Where are you in your journey?
00;11;54;24 - 00;12;13;08
David Orme
Do we need to leverage our offshore support model? Do we need to leverage an SPS like Zivio? Do we need to, or a traditional VMS just based on the needs in the way they're already set up, you know, servicing their staff augmentation? There's so many factors that go into it. You know, and it's not just procurement that you're solving that problem for.
00;12;13;13 - 00;12;37;09
David Orme
Right. And I think that's that's historically where a lot of companies have focused. It's like, well, you know, procurements the one buying the service. Right. Because they're they're leading the RFP or they're the, ultimately they're in charge of the statement of work. But the boundary partners, all of those stakeholders, all have a voice, right? And that's where you have to find out are, well, are we really solving for what legal needs as part of this?
00;12;37;12 - 00;13;12;28
David Orme
Are we really solving for corporate security compliance finance, finance. Yeah. Right. Finance is huge. And and then ultimately are you making the experience better for your end users. Right. I mean, every every procurement person will tell you, you know, if I'm there to service my stakeholder. Right. We've got to make them happy. Right? We've got to you know, a lot of times that's why things don't get done as quickly or you know as well as they should because you're rushing to make sure you're meeting a timeline, you're fighting fires, you're making that customer happy and getting them the signed agreement as quick as possible.
00;13;13;01 - 00;13;30;01
David Orme
So it's the same thing with how you're, how you're supporting them, right, for through your MSP and everything else. And that's why I said there's a, there's this gap. I feel like with, with procurement teams when, you know, they sign that document and they send it back, they don't see all of those extra pieces beyond. Right.
00;13;30;01 - 00;13;55;06
David Orme
It's not the full end to end lifecycle. They're they believe they're hopefully part of the up front with the sourcing and selection and supplier negotiation. More often than not they're just getting that already agreed upon SOW that came across from a supplier yeah. So really you're only able to negotiate 5 to 10% off of that because the, you know, your budget's already been given to to the stakeholder, to the supplier.
00;13;55;06 - 00;14;13;26
David Orme
So they know that they have already agreed. The stakeholders already agree to that price with them. So you're really just checking compliance or checking, you know, did we do we have the right legal language indemnification, whatever it may be, are the rates close to what we need them to be? You know, typically, yes, they are, because it's a preferred supplier or a supplier already in the network.
00;14;13;29 - 00;14;38;17
David Orme
And you're signing an agreement and sending it back to you. Your ability to impact is severely limited. So, so it's really becoming, you know, part of that full end to end life cycle and making sure that you're starting with your business stakeholder. Right. But then coming back and ending with your business stakeholder. Right. Because it goes, you know, business stakeholder, you, us, procurement teams.
00;14;38;20 - 00;15;01;17
David Orme
Then you're talking about legal compliance, making sure those checks are taken care of before you before you sign it. And you going to finance, you know, getting the approvals, getting it back to the end user and then putting it in hopefully into some system where you're actually managing the deliverables and outcomes, managing the performance of the supplier and then able to take that data and use it for future decisions.
00;15;01;20 - 00;15;18;21
David Orme
That's where I feel we have a biggest a bigger gap is everybody anecdotally wants to use this supplier because they're in the network, but nobody has. What is the supplier of the actual performance. You know, are we have we always have. We've been happy with what they've done every single time. Is the product always met that need the service that they created?
00;15;18;21 - 00;15;38;05
David Orme
Has it always done what we want it to do, or is it always 75% of the way there? Or change order management? We talked about this, the variations. You saw it on the on the wheel of pain Yeah. Right. Here at the TSS last night, one of, you know, one of the folks, when the client said, you know, I have a massive number of change orders.
00;15;38;07 - 00;16;01;01
David Orme
So any negotiations you save on, let's say it's a $10 million agreement. Great. I say 25%. We got it down. You know, to 7.5. But now I've got four change orders after the fact that wipe out that cost savings. Yeah. That you're paying more because because they didn't take the additional time with the stakeholder. It's not necessarily procurements fault.
00;16;01;01 - 00;16;09;12
David Orme
Right. It's often driven by the need of the business to really define those that scope and those deliverables. So that doesn't happen.
00;16;09;14 - 00;16;33;16
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And these were really some of the key points that were coming out of the conversation yesterday. And certainly the end user part of it that you just mentioned, you just you really describe that kind of life cycle very nicely there. But that is really important to people and this concept of people going to the business and saying how can I help you, you know, procurement going to the business to say, what can I do for you?
00;16;33;16 - 00;16;52;10
Jonny Dunning
How can I make your life easier as a technology provider, as a, you know, specialist in services procurement? We've we've learned our lesson over the years that we've been doing this that, that like you say, it's not necessarily, you know, just serving procurement. It's like there's there's definitely that kind of a little bit of approach of like no one cares enough about that.
00;16;52;12 - 00;17;10;25
Jonny Dunning
The business doesn't care enough about that. You know, it's a tough world if you're a procurement practitioner, you just, you know, you you've got to crack on with it. Sometimes with limited resources. Often we quite lean teams. But where these programs can be put in place is elevates the role of procurement by giving them more data and allowing them to help the business more effectively.
00;17;11;00 - 00;17;35;11
Jonny Dunning
So I always take the approach of, you know, we always kind of preach this easier, faster, safer, for people in the organization who need to buy services to do so and to also get value with it. And that really came across yesterday with these discussions with the, with the clients and, and practitioners, which I just think is super valuable because that's the information for people like you and I providing services in this area.
00;17;35;15 - 00;17;53;20
Jonny Dunning
That's what we need to hear and understand and reinforce, but also for them talking to each other, it's it just helps clarify things for people, doesn't it? It takes it. Otherwise it it can feel like super complex. All that. Everyone's so different. But when you bring it back to it, most people have got the same similar problems.
00;17;53;23 - 00;17;54;12
Jonny Dunning
They do and.
00;17;54;12 - 00;18;13;21
David Orme
They do, and it's just a different pathway to that same problem. Right. Or you look at it differently. Right? We we talked about the classification. Well, honestly performance management really ties into a lot of that classification. You know, if you if you're suppliers are taking advantage of what you're doing or how you, how you set up that supplier.
00;18;13;24 - 00;18;37;01
David Orme
and SOW. The we talked about these large managed services as a SOW. They're really time and materials. You know, it's really staff augmentation hidden inside that SOW because there's no outcome, right? You're just managing people. You're managing a bum on a seatyou got a one of your own team members, or your business stakeholder is managing that person and the work that they're doing.
00;18;37;03 - 00;18;46;16
David Orme
So it's, it becomes, I don't know, a problem that just keeps feeding itself. Right. And it keeps growing and keeps exacerbating.
00;18;46;19 - 00;19;24;03
Jonny Dunning
One of the things I want to come on to, is the supplier angle. Because I think that's a really interesting part of it. And the some interesting parts came out in that conversation yesterday. And also in the, Pontoon Supplier Summit. Some of those conversations with, with suppliers was, I thought was really, really interesting. But just before we get onto that, so with your background as a practitioner, you know what, what are the types of conversations you want to have with customers in the sense of, obviously that that conversation, that kind of roundtable set up yesterday, perfect, allows you to talk about your experience and just draw the information out of
00;19;24;03 - 00;19;42;04
Jonny Dunning
other people and get people talking, that sort of thing. But when it comes to organizations out there that are struggling, you know, we've known each other for a little while now. I know you're not you absolutely not the sort of person. Your approach isn't just like, hey, let's dive in there and sell this. Typically, you very much seem like you just want to understand what's going on.
00;19;42;06 - 00;19;56;24
David Orme
You have to understand what their problem is versus what their pain point is. Or you take the consultative approach and you talk about the wheel of pain. That's the easy way to get somebody talking, really. You know, here's some things, you know, that we see that are common in the industry. Do any of these apply to you. Start there.
00;19;56;27 - 00;20;20;24
David Orme
Right. And then that really can really give you a place to start to say, all right. What's misclassification. Well is it an intake issue. Is it you know, is it a structure issue for your statements of work. You can really expand into really what what are the actual problems. What are causing the problems. And that's when you start building that solution and think, okay, well, well, I think I have something that would really solve that for you that could help you.
00;20;20;24 - 00;20;37;05
David Orme
Like we talked about Pathfinder for intake. Yeah. Right. Or or if you need you know, we're not able to build anything. We're not able to we don't have a capability. We don't have the resources. Well, we've got the Zivio that's got an awesome, you know, post intake or use let's say comes in through Pathfinder comes into Zivio.
00;20;37;08 - 00;20;48;14
David Orme
We can automatically do three bids in a buy. It's got automated project scope creation. So it's it really is that consultative approach. And listening.
00;20;48;17 - 00;20;54;06
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And so for people that, may not have come across before Pathfinder is your in-house triage tool, wasn't it?
00;20;54;10 - 00;20;54;24
David Orme
It is.
00;20;54;24 - 00;21;10;16
Jonny Dunning
And I know it's got a kind of a it's got quite a, complete scope in terms of you can do some pretty cool stuff, but ultimately it's helping people decide where to put the work, how to execute the work, and the considerations around, you know, regulatory side of things for where they where that needs to go.
00;21;10;18 - 00;21;25;09
David Orme
Well, regulatory. But it also incorporates their company policies. How do you define labor. Is it. Yeah. 1099 you know, IC, is it professional services. Yeah. So it takes all those factors into play for the recommendation that it then gives you.
00;21;25;12 - 00;21;55;02
Jonny Dunning
So going back to, the supplier angle, there was some really interesting conversation at the Talent Strategy Summit around supply chain, around the conversations that the procurement practitioners want to have with their supply chain around the benefits for their supply chain of these programs being organized. And also within the conversations yesterday at the Pontoon Supplier Summit, lots of things came up around, you know, the need for visibility, the need for structure.
00;21;55;05 - 00;22;07;13
Jonny Dunning
The fact that, you know, suppliers want to do a good job and there's a big range of what the supply chain can offer. It's not just the kind of usual suspects, the big, the big, very well known consulting firms.
00;22;07;17 - 00;22;29;24
David Orme
Well, and you're seeing that, right? You're seeing you're seeing your big consulting firms start moving into your traditional staff augmentation roles. Right? They're starting to offer services where they're giving you hourly, hourly employees billed at that staff augmentation. Right. And on the flip side, you see your traditional staffing firms moving into more of that consultative role of, you know, fulfilling statements of work.
00;22;29;27 - 00;22;53;03
David Orme
Yeah. So in, you know, it was a it's a big pain point for a lot of them where they talk about, you know, the MSP is a blocker for them historically, or not even historically it's currently blocked. But you know, more often than not it's based on company policy. Right. So like I gave the example for when I was at Cox you're either in the staffing layer or you're inside the services procurement.
00;22;53;03 - 00;23;14;18
David Orme
You don't play in both. You know, and the theory there is you want to maintain that neutrality. You want to be able to give all of your staffing firms the same, level that you're competitive with, playfield, which they wouldn't have. They were in both fields, right. Because, you know, just by the nature of the work with services procurement, you're you're working closely with the manager, you're defining scope, you're defining outcomes.
00;23;14;20 - 00;23;42;07
David Orme
So you're learning significantly more about the actual needs of, of them, from just a service standpoint and also potentially from some of the staffing point. And I think operating models are changing right. Technology's helping enable us. I think that we're also able, as an MSP to to manage that better and manage those expectations. You know, one of one, the young lady said, in order to do work doing services procurement, she had to create.
00;23;42;10 - 00;24;10;02
David Orme
Yeah. Another company. Yeah. So that they would have two different entities. I mean, still the same ownership, right. But two entities, one doing the staffing side and one having the service procurement. And and to me, that just that seems like it's so there's a much easier problem or solution to that than going forcing a supplier to go through that entire process, especially when you're you clearly want them to do the work.
00;24;10;07 - 00;24;21;26
David Orme
Right. You wouldn't even be giving them this option. So I think that's where the MSP needs become more creative and become more of an enabler, versus a blocker.
00;24;21;28 - 00;24;52;10
Jonny Dunning
And I guess it's also where the more the MSPs can bring the services side of it into their offering under their remit and do that effectively. They can they can remove those blocks to a certain extent with their processes. And obviously it's not just the suppliers that are also staffing suppliers, it's all of the suppliers. And I think this idea of, you know, the issue around visibility would apply across pretty much anybody in the supply chain, including big consulting firms.
00;24;52;12 - 00;25;10;20
Jonny Dunning
You might be working with a particular part of the business doing an incredible job. And, you know, even if it's competition within those big, big consulting firms, you know, if a particular organization is doing a great job for their own, for their own customer, other people within that in customer need to know about it. That's where you get into the performance tracking.
00;25;10;20 - 00;25;27;24
Jonny Dunning
That's where you get into the kind of sentiment analysis around, you know, not only did they hit their milestones, did they stay within costs, did they, did they avoid having loads of changes and scope creep? But also did they do a good job? Did the stakeholder feedback and say that they were delivering value for money?
00;25;27;26 - 00;25;51;24
David Orme
Well, and that's that's a hard thing, right. Because stakeholder feedback it's hard to get. Yeah, right. Let's be candid. It is difficult. And honestly I feel like that's another place the MSP can help. Right? I mean, not necessarily just to chase a stakeholder but to help provide feedback because often they're talking to those managers already. Managers like, oh yeah, they did a good job.
00;25;51;26 - 00;26;11;03
David Orme
Well, they could put in that information for us. All right. I'm going to give them four out of five stars or making it a simpler process. You see some of these feedback questions, the automated surveys that come afterwards. And they want you to write a book, right? Yeah. It's like you've got to make it quick. You got to make it easy because it's all about time with managers and ease.
00;26;11;05 - 00;26;34;03
David Orme
And if they don't have that, they're going to they're going to ignore it completely. And and I'm not saying it's going to solve the problem because it's, it's I don't know, it's always been an issue. Right. And it probably always will. But if you could lump it from, you know, a 20% response rate to a 50% response rate, that's more data you have that really can drive better decision at in the future.
00;26;34;05 - 00;27;00;23
Jonny Dunning
So on that data angle, that kind of brings us on to the the technology element of the services procurement space. And just be interested to kind of get your view on the landscape in the sense that you've got triaged platforms, you've then got, vendor management system platform. So kind of more traditional, like contingent workforce type platforms that have service procurement capabilities.
00;27;00;26 - 00;27;24;08
Jonny Dunning
Then you've got dedicated services procurement systems like Zivio and others coming into that market as it's kind of growing, you've got autonomous sourcing platforms, then you've got your kind of source to pay, procure to pay, type platforms. There are options, right? But it can seem like a bit of a confusing landscape in your head. How does that kind of landscape breakdown?
00;27;24;11 - 00;27;48;03
David Orme
So it's you break it down by need for the client, right? I mean, it really is understanding their solution, and understanding their problem. I you're talking about your traditional, you know, Coupa’s, Aribas; is really great at goods. Yeah. Really great. But when you start looking at services. Okay, I can get a P.O. But it's a service.
00;27;48;05 - 00;27;53;00
Jonny Dunning
It's like something someone said yesterday. It was like you end up with this one line, a one line PO
00;27;53;00 - 00;28;11;11
David Orme
And you don't know anything about the service. You don't know what it is. You don't know. You know what? You paid for it. You know, no performance. You don't know what the actual service provider was. You don't know how many people were wrong to do it. So beyond just the lack of visibility, you also have a compliance issue.
00;28;11;15 - 00;28;11;29
Jonny Dunning
Where are you?
00;28;12;03 - 00;28;15;10
David Orme
Right as well. So it.
00;28;15;13 - 00;28;16;07
Jonny Dunning
It.
00;28;16;10 - 00;28;32;05
David Orme
I view it as really kind of like I said, understanding what their problem is, but it's ever changing. Right? Like. And the changes can make even faster now, like you said, the autonomous sourcing platforms. SPSs., traditional VMs is, you know, they all have their place.
00;28;32;05 - 00;28;32;14
Jonny Dunning
Yeah.
00;28;32;21 - 00;28;55;01
David Orme
And it's all trying to find what is the best solution for that client. You know, a lot of your clients already have or a lot of our clients already have a VMS in place. So is it easier for them to have the same VMS if they wanted to roll out services procurement? You know, because a lot of, you know, source of single source of truth, it's a real benefit.
00;28;55;03 - 00;29;14;08
David Orme
Others are more willing to try something new. They want something that's more AI enabled, more, more full end to end life cycle where they can do the bid management or effects management and the performance management as well. Or they just want a front end for the, you know, like the autonomous sourcing platform. So you want the front end for the mid piece and they don't want anything else beyond that.
00;29;14;08 - 00;29;27;11
David Orme
They want it just to spit out into their traditional VMS or into their traditional ERP that they have going straight into Oracle or somewhere else. So it's really trying to understand what they're trying to solve for and then helping them do it. Right.
00;29;27;14 - 00;29;49;20
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And I think the way you've laid that out is, is really interesting. It ties in with some of the conversation yesterday where people were talking about like needing agility, needing options. And I think that's what's exciting about the services procurement space at the moment, because I feel like now there are options previously that weren't really options for people know.
00;29;49;23 - 00;30;07;05
Jonny Dunning
They're either they're either stuck in they're kind of just that source to pay environment, which is, as you say, is generally just going to be two top level. It's not going to get into the granularity of statements of work and the requirements. And then and the downstream delivery, that's where you end up with this, SOW in a file repository and it's just a one liner PO
00;30;07;05 - 00;30;31;03
Jonny Dunning
And when it when it goes to execution, you know, is it captured anywhere. No. And it's like all the milestones in the maybe but maybe they've changed and they're not digitally captured. So that presents these problems with procurement where they just that they just don't have any granular data. And I mean, again, volume came up yesterday when people were saying that you've got this particular procurement stakeholder that they're trying to deal with like 500.
00;30;31;05 - 00;30;52;00
Jonny Dunning
SOWs going through a year or whatever it was, it was just like impossible to stay on top of that volume. Or alternatively, previously the only route was maybe a few of the 1 or 2 of the VMS Is that introduced kind of like resource tracking, worker tracking type functionality to approve milestones and do all that sort of good stuff.
00;30;52;03 - 00;31;12;02
Jonny Dunning
But now the market is broadening out, and also offsetting many times it's not a zero sum game. You know, everybody's going to people are going to need to do things differently. But the most important thing for me, this is kind of like evangelizing in this market. Is it better to capture it digitally in some sort of system and get a proper process in place?
00;31;12;02 - 00;31;29;00
Jonny Dunning
The benefits to the organization are so huge, the how each organization needs to do it might be slightly different. But the benefits are there. And and that's the thing that having these discussions, it's like kind of pretty clear that the benefits of that and people are realizing that.
00;31;29;02 - 00;31;51;15
David Orme
They are they are. Right. And I think we touched on this in one of the other podcasts. I mean, you're seeing a lot of focus now on services procurement, you know, especially now in the age of, you know, AI replacing a lot of people, a lot of people being laid off. There's switching that work being done from internal FTEs to your services procurement.
00;31;51;18 - 00;32;10;18
David Orme
And they're realizing, oh, why did my Cost grow four times? Well, you know, you don't have an internal resource doing that now. Now you're paying somebody else and that cost typically is going to be more expensive. You know, your FTE, you know that work is now being shifted somewhere else and they don't know who's doing it. They don't know what services.
00;32;10;21 - 00;32;19;15
David Orme
I mean, they know who what they got. Then they know how much they're paying, but they don't know what is the outcome that they're trying to achieve inside of, of of services procurement engagements.
00;32;19;18 - 00;32;41;01
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And it's also this shift more towards like outputs, an output based mentality. So as I said in a, in the conversation yesterday, some interesting conversations I've had recently around AI and pushing things more to an output mentality, because if it takes me five days to do something as an employee or as a contractor or whatever, and then how long does it take me with AI?
00;32;41;01 - 00;33;02;29
Jonny Dunning
Well, maybe only takes me three days. Then is the best thing to measure my performance. Is it? How many days did Jonny work? Or is it like what did I achieve is it the outputs? And it's it's definitely moving more that way. So I think yeah, this this kind of mentality around the value of it, even just using the phrase services procurement has been over the last couple of years.
00;33;02;29 - 00;33;26;24
Jonny Dunning
It's really like, crystallized the conversation. It made it kind of from this, the fog has coalesced into something that's really clear, and that's why I think it's so great when you are able to talk to people about, for example, your experiences at Cox where this is interesting for me when I see you talking to somebody about it and and you sort of say, you know, there's like a $1.5 billion program, whatever it was.
00;33;26;24 - 00;33;45;03
Jonny Dunning
And, when they say what percentage of that was service procurement and you say 90 to 95%, people look shocked and they're like, okay, wow, that's that's pretty amazing. And also there that you can see that mindset shift to say, okay, when people are out there and they're managing big programs with a really good level of sophistication around services.
00;33;45;06 - 00;33;48;05
Jonny Dunning
procurement maybe we can do that too.
00;33;48;07 - 00;34;10;10
David Orme
It is right. And we talk about this is the education piece. It really is. It's really saying, you know, it is being done. It's being done. Well, now how can we do it for you? Right. And it's then you get into that solution and you figure out what their problems are. You know, honestly, it's also a mindset shift for a lot of your traditional, procurement folks.
00;34;10;12 - 00;34;31;22
David Orme
We'd be like, go back to the, you know, the example earlier, you know, it's not my problem anymore. Once it's gone, once I have the SOW signed and back to the business. But, you know, there's so much more inside that organization that's happening with that SOW on on the downstream effect of this signature that, I mean, I would argue that the bulk of the work isn't the negotiation up front.
00;34;31;27 - 00;34;47;04
David Orme
And then the in getting it signed in the signature, it's all of the management beyond as a management of the deliverables, management of the people, management of, you know, the suppliers, ensuring that the everything's being performed and done in the way it's supposed to be done.
00;34;47;06 - 00;35;10;03
Jonny Dunning
Well, it was interesting hearing some of the stakeholders in the TSS yesterday. One one company representative in particular was talking about having a dedicated team that was kind of like following that lifecycle, was taking on that downstream responsibility. And I completely, completely agree with you. And it's sort of it ties into procurement having more responsibility and more focus on, well, the business outcomes.
00;35;10;05 - 00;35;34;14
David Orme
Well, in that example they were talking about direct spend. Yeah. So you're talking more about your goods. It's not that's part of the problem. It's like if you look at the good side the tracking, the management, that's so much more mature. You know, and rightfully so in some cases. Right. If you think about the goods, if I don't get these 20 widgets on time, made the way they can, it's more revenue impacting than your services side.
00;35;34;17 - 00;35;42;19
David Orme
You know, the services side, they didn't give me exactly what I need. I can go back, tweak it and make it work. Right. You can't do that.
00;35;42;19 - 00;35;43;26
Jonny Dunning
With good, right? That's a good.
00;35;43;26 - 00;35;49;03
David Orme
Point of things. So there's a lot more involved, you know, because I think he said, well, they had 350 people.
00;35;49;03 - 00;35;49;22
Jonny Dunning
Something like that.
00;35;49;22 - 00;36;12;11
David Orme
Had a large amount. Right. And then just for your your services procurement, the indirect 30. Right. And you're managing more spend or just the same Yeah. So, so I think it's, it's kind of that mindset there as well. It's like realizing that your services, you can't be treated the same as goods right. They need to be tracked separately.
00;36;12;11 - 00;36;29;13
David Orme
Tracked differently. I mean honestly if you want to if you want to equate is it goods, you've got to track the quality of the product. You've got to track the performance of the supplier to delivered on time. So I mean, you could you could argue that they're very similar in that regard, but it's not being done on services side.
00;36;29;15 - 00;36;52;05
Jonny Dunning
And also you've got to cope with the just the fundamental nature of services, the intangible, they're hard to define. They're not, you know, if you it's always a great widget using descriptions. But if you're buying 50 red widgets, you know what size they'll how much they weigh, what they cost per unit. It's easy to compare. And services are so nuanced that pretty much every project could be different, even within the same organization.
00;36;52;07 - 00;37;07;07
Jonny Dunning
And so just understanding that complexity and understanding the nature of the fact that they will change the subject to change as well, which is that's where the upfront process of like scoping. And that was one of the things that came out on the wheel of pain for a few people.
00;37;07;07 - 00;37;26;23
David Orme
That you may find it in. Yeah, yeah, making that scope is crystal clear as possible, because at the end of the day, even when that service is finalized, it's still that that leaders that business leaders, you know, their sign up for their approval. They're saying, yes, that's the product. It's their opinion. Right. It's really them saying, yeah, I think that they did.
00;37;27;00 - 00;37;28;21
David Orme
I asked them to do.
00;37;28;24 - 00;37;54;22
Jonny Dunning
And it was interesting yesterday. I know obviously some of the some of the stakeholders that were in the meeting, in the discussion already Pontoon customers. But but the idea or the, the, the mindset around outsourcing this to an MSP and bringing in MSP to assist with it. I mean, all of the teams are lean Let’s face it, all of the procurement teams, all of the people, the representatives that that teams are, you know, pretty much pushed to the limit.
00;37;54;24 - 00;38;13;16
Jonny Dunning
So so it was interesting looking at the mindset around will we want to bring in help? We don't want to try and do this all ourselves. The MSP can bring in the process. They can bring an extra, extra bandwidth and they bring in, you know, tech enabled solution, whatever that kind of solution might look like for that particular organization.
00;38;13;18 - 00;38;32;25
Jonny Dunning
Obviously having someone like yourself within the MSP, steering it from a practitioner point of view and very much building strategy on that service and being able to consult with the client on the more nuanced, practical and technical parts of the procurement process. That's something that, I think the trust is really building in that sort of service.
00;38;32;29 - 00;38;35;05
Jonny Dunning
Certainly. Think about that in the conversation yesterday.
00;38;35;07 - 00;38;54;04
David Orme
It did it did. Right. And and we had like we said, we had a good mix. We had a few that we've had clients for 20 plus years. Right. And and a few that are newer clients, brand new clients actually. And we're rolling out services procurement for them, in some cases others it's just your traditional staffing that we're doing for them right now.
00;38;54;06 - 00;39;14;25
David Orme
But it is it's the support. It's the support needed, the expertise, the extra hands. I mean, you talk about resourcing it, it's a zero sum game in procurement, but you're never going to have the the amount of people you need to manage on the services on the side, to, to manage the entire spend.
00;39;14;28 - 00;39;16;06
Jonny Dunning
And especially if you're doing it manually.
00;39;16;08 - 00;39;34;06
David Orme
Especially if you're doing it manually. And then on top of that, because the expectation is you're not just doing the sourcing and the contracting, you know, often your business as well. You're also you should be doing the vendor management too. You should be doing the escalation management. You should be doing all of the things that people bring an MSP in to do.
00;39;34;09 - 00;39;47;07
David Orme
But procurement doesn't have to do that. They don't have a lot of time. The capability, it's a different skillset to do escalation management to do, you know, working with finance and everybody else on the downstream activities.
00;39;47;10 - 00;40;14;28
Jonny Dunning
Okay. So we talked about, the aim of create understanding the problem and creating the right tailored solution for a particular organization. One of the thing that I thought would be interesting to discuss is, you know, why, you guys partnering with us and what we're kind of doing around that. And I think it ties into firstly, achieving best fit in the sense that you guys need options, right?
00;40;14;28 - 00;40;33;13
Jonny Dunning
You need options for your customers. And that's what need you guys to to work pretty hard and have a strong strategy, driven by, you know, coming right from the top, driven by Sam Smith to say we need the options to serve our clients and deliver the right things for them. That's expanded what you guys can take to market and how quickly you can do it.
00;40;33;13 - 00;40;33;28
Jonny Dunning
Really?
00;40;34;01 - 00;40;51;26
David Orme
Absolutely. I mean, you hit the nail on the head. It's about more options, right? And we've got to be able to stay current as a provider as well. And if we don't have those options, our competitors will. So so we you know, partnering with you you as an SPS is is a logical next step in my mind.
00;40;51;26 - 00;41;17;23
David Orme
Right. Because you know, with with Zivio I mean, honestly, I can do the outsourcing piece with Zivio or you could to the full and lifecycle management. You can do you know you're, you're IA generated your AI generated, scope creation, the performance, the supplier, performance management, it's already native within the system. So from an end to end software, Zivio is a logical next step.
00;41;17;23 - 00;41;30;13
David Orme
Right. And and it's something that we can lead with, with clients, especially in our mid-market space, or even in our large enterprise space where clients aren’t utilizing VMS.
00;41;30;16 - 00;41;49;23
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And it's interesting. I mean, you know, we we work alongside VMS as a lot of the time where there's where there is the right scenario. It's like, well, okay, the contingent is going to be captured within a VMS. And either the VMS doesn't have the capabilities and sufficient capabilities for, for services procurement or for whatever reason, the organization don't want to use it for services procurement.
00;41;49;23 - 00;42;15;07
Jonny Dunning
Or maybe they want to make sure they're using those kind of upfront. AI the kind of post pre-contract stuff as well as the post contract downstream stuff, and they want a end to end solution. Then we just simply run alongside the VMS. And it doesn't have to be complex. And when you've got a nice intake process, using something like Pathfinder or a triage tool to bring it in and then put it down the right path, it's just about nice user experience.
00;42;15;07 - 00;42;44;23
David Orme
Absolutely. The user experiences, I think we are there to enable, but a user could come in fresh, never had seen the system and could walk through and on Zivio You know that's not as easily done by their traditional VMSs You know, another thing that I love about Zivio is multi-client instance that we've, we've set up with you guys, you know, so that's a live instance that we curate that we could set a client in up in, you know, 30 minutes to hour onboard some suppliers.
00;42;44;26 - 00;43;02;22
David Orme
We could do scopes of work. We could do smaller scopes. You can't do that with the traditional VMS You can't come in and say, hey, let's, let's let's do a pilot, let's test it. Let's run one SOW through, let's pick a $500,000 SOW there's something wherever you're having a problem, see if this helps and run it through.
00;43;02;22 - 00;43;18;19
David Orme
Simply for for procurement team you're in and you can do it quickly. That's right. You're not talking about a 19 week implementation timeframe. You're talking about setting somebody up within a week or two and getting them into that instance. And running through.
00;43;18;22 - 00;43;41;20
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And you know what I feel I, I love the fact that you guys are taking that approach because it brings that kind of innovation into it. It brings agility into it. The the fact that you guys genuinely can move seriously quickly and just put these POCs through run pilots of people break things down into manageable chunks. I feel like that kind of approach is a game changer.
00;43;41;22 - 00;43;59;19
Jonny Dunning
You know, I've seen to be extremely successful in kind of like public sector environments as well, where you have frameworks where that type of operation takes place. And, you know, as we were discussing yesterday at Cox, you were proving the case in one part of the business, taking it to the next part of the business, maybe making some tweaks.
00;43;59;22 - 00;44;21;08
Jonny Dunning
I had a great podcast recently with one of our clients, a lady Nic Everett from, Telent Technology Services. Exactly the same approach. Prove it in a particular area. Take it to the next area, build it, build, build, build the trust, get the stakeholders on board. And it's just, when you look at this kind of big, complex services procurement problem.
00;44;21;08 - 00;44;26;08
Jonny Dunning
Breaking it down and being able to move quickly. That's where a lot of people seem to be getting success.
00;44;26;10 - 00;44;53;20
David Orme
Oh, absolutely. And honestly, you're seeing a lot of especially in the UK and EMEA, you're seeing a lot of firms start wanting to use services procurement, whether it be a VMS or something else, because a compliance compliance is driving it. Right? I mean, when you talk about, you know, the rules are much more strict and you need that capability to report on, manage, classify correctly because it's a it's a hefty burden if you don't.
00;44;53;22 - 00;45;14;08
David Orme
And and so it becomes really it becomes a use case for where did we have a mis. Right. So that's where you start and then you build that solution. You're not wrong. Is going from business to business, understanding the nuances of their business. And how it fits into the system, how the system can enable them to be faster, smarter, and more.
00;45;14;08 - 00;45;34;19
Jonny Dunning
Innovative. Yeah, and you know what? I've for a while I felt like, when you go to the conferences and, you know, the services discussions come around now, they're suddenly all accelerating. But for the past five years, plus maybe even ten years, it seems to me like the same things have rolled out year after year. And like, when is this going to move forward?
00;45;34;25 - 00;45;53;07
Jonny Dunning
And I felt like when it comes to services procurement, it wasn't clearly enough to find there weren’t enough, kind of like case studies coming out there. A lot of people like yourself coming out and talking about what you've done. Cox and coming into the MSP world and bringing in that expertise. But I felt like the industry was like locked up, stuck.
00;45;53;10 - 00;46;12;04
Jonny Dunning
You know, it's too big to move people in their heads of thinking, if there aren't enough options around the MSP service, the expertise they can provide and what their service actually looks like and the technology piece, if there weren't enough, if there aren't enough options that people just go, it's going to have to be really big, it's going to be really expensive.
00;46;12;04 - 00;46;20;28
Jonny Dunning
It's going to take ages. I'm going to need every stakeholder in the company to agree on it. We're going to have to eat the whole elephant at once and surprise, surprise, people don't do anything.
00;46;21;01 - 00;46;46;05
David Orme
That's the biggest issue is your traditional implementations for a services procurement software or software. But the VMs take so long and there are so many stakeholders involved. Yeah. And what we're doing with that multi-client instance we can bring in get one finance person just integrated to their you know, generate a PO back, we can bring in that SOW honestly we don't even have to do payment at the SOW
00;46;46;08 - 00;47;08;24
David Orme
We can say look we're just going to bring it in, show you how you can track it. You know the supplier can be onboard or they can invoice against it. Then we'll send you that invoice and send it over to your your AP team. And then they get they can do the traditional payment versus going through the system where there's so many different ways you could do the proof of concept, but it's really just trying to enable that client, that end user to experience it and see it.
00;47;08;27 - 00;47;18;01
David Orme
And that's been one of the biggest blockers. I feel like it's one thing to have a demo to see, oh, here's the capability. But how is it really going to impact something I'm working on?
00;47;18;04 - 00;47;39;12
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, 100%. And when people actually see, see real results, I mean, it's like, you know, to I'd say, as you said earlier, it's it's not, one size fits all. It's horses for courses. And there are there were people in the room yesterday talking about what they're doing with their VMS They're using for contingent and services procurement. And and giving great feedback on how they've made great strides in it.
00;47;39;19 - 00;48;02;26
Jonny Dunning
And so I think that the fact obviously, as you say, you guys, you were tech agnostic. And as a tech provider, you know, we work with various MSPs and different types of partners and stuff like that. But what I've been really grateful for, with the partnership with you guys, is the close level of collaboration, but we've really been getting our heads together on it and trying to solve these problems with customers and getting the customers in the room and having the conversations.
00;48;02;26 - 00;48;31;20
Jonny Dunning
And I just think the, you know, it's the industry. There's there's opportunities for everybody. There's so much scope in services procurement, it's such a big problem. It's so large within so many organizations. I feel like it just needs to or it's getting to the point where it's kind of like it's going over the tipping point now, and getting these sort of conversations out there, getting people to understand the, the possible and doing things like the disruptive approach you guys are taking of saying, well, hey, you know what?
00;48;31;22 - 00;48;52;17
Jonny Dunning
We are going to turn things around quickly. We are going around proof of concepts. We can be agile. That is, in my opinion, really going to disrupt the market in a very, very positive way because it's just going to open it up for everybody. But but also it's the commitment that Sam and Pontoon have made to bring in your expertise as well.
00;48;52;20 - 00;49;21;13
Jonny Dunning
Because that is something that I think where, you know, previously, maybe some of the trust has been lacking are like your, you know, your staffing company or you are an MSP, you know, why would I let you loose with my procurement information? Whereas when people can get into a conversation with an SME like yourself, and I know this is something that's happening more in the MSP market, people bringing in services, procurement expertise, and, and there are people out there who been doing it for a while, you know, that's where the conversation can really flow to that next level.
00;49;21;16 - 00;49;44;05
David Orme
What it becomes really understanding and telling that story. Right. And and understanding the actual pain that they've been through, what are they living through? Right. And and really relating at that level is what it becomes that becomes to. Yeah. And to your point that builds that trust. It says, all right, you've done this, you've seen this issue. I think we can actually build something together to actually fix the issue that I have.
00;49;44;07 - 00;50;09;25
Jonny Dunning
So basically the services procurement is becoming much more of a tangible thing for organizations to think about. It's becoming much more of a topic of real conversation, which is fantastic to see. There's there are more options available to, to organizations in terms of how they do it. And there are more options available to you guys as an MSP as to how you execute it for a specific customer.
00;50;09;28 - 00;50;12;28
Jonny Dunning
So everything's really moving in the right direction, isn't it?
00;50;13;00 - 00;50;40;07
David Orme
Absolutely right. And now it's just continuing that conversation. I mean, we've talked about it. It's education, education, education. I mean, it really is really enlightening. People beyond the, well, an MSP can handle transactions. Well, no, it's more than that. We can handle customers. We can handle suppliers, we can help enable your business. So and like I said, it's been clearly matured in the staffing side.
00;50;40;07 - 00;51;03;20
David Orme
And that's been understood there. And now it's starting to your point starting to happen on the service procurement side. And it's moving faster. Like I think we talked a little bit yesterday. I mean, almost every RFP that I've seen since I've come here in the last six months has had a component of services procurement in it. If it wasn't something that was a focus now and something they wanted to make sure that we could provide them in the future if if they decided to go down that path.
00;51;03;23 - 00;51;26;28
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, it's it's very noticeable and it's a real thing. And getting people together like yesterday, you know, again, hats off to you guys and Sam and yourself, for making that happen with those customers and getting that conversation to take place in a kinda long form environment. That's that's what's really going to move things forward. Opening it up.
00;51;27;00 - 00;51;57;13
David Orme
Well, it it was fun, right? Yeah. Yeah, it was so fun just being able to get them in the room like, I mean, for my part, I have a, you know, my, my part where I just leading the discussion. I think I probably did maybe 10% of the talking, which is, which is, is the point. Right. Because we're trying to bring, you know, peer groups together so they can talk about what they're doing within their company, the pain they're experiencing, you know, how they're solving problems, you know, or how they could possibly solve a problem over here with you, you know, with one of the other companies.
00;51;57;13 - 00;52;03;25
David Orme
And, it was fun to see. It was fun to see the excitement. Right. And the engagement. So.
00;52;03;27 - 00;52;23;25
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And and, you know, as we both kind of alluded to, you know, it's not a zero sum game in any way. It was just a big opportunity. So the more that's why it's great to try and get this type of conversation out there. You know, I would encourage anybody who's kind of worried about services procurement, you know, wondering what's the all the possible get involved in peer to peer discussion.
00;52;23;29 - 00;52;26;17
Jonny Dunning
Come and talk to somebody like yourself who's been there and done it.
00;52;26;22 - 00;52;48;16
David Orme
Well, I mean, you talk like yesterday we had Beeline Fieldglass. Simplifi. I think you all your VMS is a representative and you've got people. And we had a good conversation about AI they’re on Azure, you know, copilot Microsoft, Google. So it's, it's it's not to your point, it's not a zero sum game. But we're not trying to sell something specifically.
00;52;48;16 - 00;53;10;00
David Orme
It's really just especially when you talk about experiences, you know, in services procurement, it's not necessarily what technology are you using. It's how are you using the service that we provide or how are we just what are you doing from a process perspective? Is it a top down? How did you convince your executives to do, you know, to go, you know, give you approval to do this?
00;53;10;00 - 00;53;32;22
David Orme
Or how are you influencing your business stakeholders? Are you doing it through engaging your compliance teams, your finance teams, your corporate security teams? It's just fun to have that conversation and see how different procurement teams have matured and where, where they have a lot of room for improvement and then helping in helping them connect and say, yeah, well, we did this, and this is what really works for us.
00;53;32;24 - 00;53;52;08
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, I love it. I mean, it's it's really not that long ago, the being and some of the kind of like workforce conferences and people were just like talking about statement of work and, you know, and now this conversation has matured so much. I remember I did, roundtable at one of the workforce conferences two years ago, might be three years ago.
00;53;52;08 - 00;54;13;21
Jonny Dunning
And I was literally the only person with the services procurement or statement of work based topic at that point. And then, you know, fast forward and now that it's blossoming out and the conversations are springing up and the practitioner conversations is bring it up, which is which is what's great. And, you know, for people that are interested in it, they can they can suddenly come in and there's this much more like information available that.
00;54;13;26 - 00;54;33;17
David Orme
Well, and your point, especially in the MSP world, it's always been a statement of work focus, right. If you talk about, you know, the different industry conferences, it was as yeah. SOW services procurement it's so much beyond the SOW Right. It's it's that blended life cycle like we talked about. It's the intake. It's the sourcing.
00;54;33;17 - 00;54;53;29
David Orme
It's the supplier management the performance management at the moment. Management making sure they're able to get to the part, making sure they're ethically scoped. Is it the right vehicle or is it a T&M. Is it is it fixed fee or should it be staff aug should it be somewhere else. So it starts even moving into that broader total talent conflict conversation as well.
00;54;54;00 - 00;55;19;07
David Orme
Right. So it's it's you're getting more people coming to the table with an interest because they're realizing they are part of that process. Right? That you mean total talent? I feel like total talent for so many years because you didn't have HR talking to procurement and talking to the business. Right? It's like it's a three legged stool. And if any one of those is missing, it's going to fail every time.
00;55;19;09 - 00;55;38;04
David Orme
And look, you need all three of those to really say, all right, where are we putting this work? Is it FTE. Is it here being a part of that upfront process with your business? Because ultimately driving you know, those decisions they're saying, you know, this is the work I need. This is how I'm defining it. All right. It's a five year time frame.
00;55;38;07 - 00;55;55;12
David Orme
All right. Let's say it's an FTE. You know talk to make sure we're talking about it or SOW Same thing. We think it's going to be a three year time frame. Well but is it is it so is it a skill that we think that would persist in the business that we need beyond you need somebody challenging back saying doesn't necessarily should it be an SOW
00;55;55;18 - 00;56;06;06
David Orme
You know, we might actually need it FTE for this to do the work because even though it might be a 2 to 3 year project, that skills are still going to be needed for more projects that you have afterwards.
00;56;06;08 - 00;56;33;19
Jonny Dunning
So we've got more clarity, more people realizing this is possible, more options in the market from a technology perspective, from a service offering perspective, more flexibility, the desire to really go out and make this happen. This is exciting times. And this is, it feels like a let's go moment. And certainly the last couple of days here in New Orleans has been fantastic for that other really great coming together of people talking about these subjects.
00;56;33;21 - 00;56;55;19
Jonny Dunning
So, yeah, I think it's super encouraging. And, I really appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation and, and have the previous conversations we've had to, to get your, your view and your input out there. And, you know, let's let's bring on more discussion and more activity and opportunity within the market because this is going to change the game for companies.
00;56;55;22 - 00;57;14;26
Jonny Dunning
It's a big opportunity for MSPs to add huge amounts of value. The world's, you know, heavily weighted towards services. We know that it's going more in that direction. What to a certain extent it's moving more towards outputs and outcomes. And if organizations don't get this under control, they're not going to compete. The speed, the things are changing.
00;57;14;28 - 00;57;19;26
David Orme
They won't I mean, their competitors are doing it, so they need to figure out how they can do it too.
00;57;19;28 - 00;57;36;12
Jonny Dunning
So it's a chance for everybody to really level up. And I think it's a chance for procurement to level up and become more strategic as well. And, you know, it's interesting listening to you and some of the other delegates talking about, token talent and even kind of saying, you know, it's been a failing thing for a while.
00;57;36;13 - 00;57;42;01
Jonny Dunning
I think you referred to is you like unified workforces. Is that because you want to get away from the kind of like total talent.
00;57;42;01 - 00;57;51;27
David Orme
Where because it's got such a bad stigma attached to it. So calling it unified workforce Management, I feel like is a you talk about total talent and it's been that buzzword for so long.
00;57;51;27 - 00;57;54;05
Jonny Dunning
But it's actually sort of not moving.
00;57;54;11 - 00;58;10;16
David Orme
So it's like, well, how do we change the narrative? Well, one, you've got to change what you call it because people immediately hear that they're like, it's not, it's it's not possible. We're not going to do it. We don't have it going. You call it something else. You don't even have to call it unified workforce management. Just call it workforce management or advisory or whatever you want.
00;58;10;18 - 00;58;19;13
David Orme
But it's absolutely possible. And it's something that companies could do and they could do well. I feel like with minimal effort, yeah, I've got to be intentional.
00;58;19;13 - 00;58;53;11
Jonny Dunning
I agree, and it is a real thing. Now, I had a really interesting conversation with, Lisa from, Dow Chemicals, and, she's really passionate around the whole kind of unified workforce total talent management. One of the things in the conversation with her that was she was really kind of passionate about is the emotional, if you want to do total talent or unified workforce, you've got to have every workforce channel under some sort of control and visible before you start trying to then build on the complexity and aggregate that up and do all the cool strategic stuff to coordinate it all and, orchestrate it.
00;58;53;13 - 00;59;20;01
Jonny Dunning
And for most organizations that services procurement. So who knows if the service as a service procurement work will move forward and the growth and opportunity expands and the sophistication because it's a lower level of maturity compared to like continued workforce as that ramps up, which I believe it's going to happen very rapidly. Over the next year or so, suddenly total workforce management actually does become reality doesn't become.
00;59;20;03 - 00;59;41;02
David Orme
That quickly, right? I mean, because you you're really managing skills that you need to do the work. Right. And to your point, if you're not tracking your services procurement, you're missing out on a large, large spend. I mean, if you if you're looking at large organizations, we talked about that. You're often 9 to 10 times the spend in services procurement of what you are in, actual staff augmentation.
00;59;41;06 - 00;59;58;28
David Orme
Mid-sized companies, probably 4 or 5 times. So. And with that spend comes people. Yeah, that are all doing that work. Right. So if you don't have visibility into what those people are doing, the skills that they bring to the table, how are you ever going to do total talent management?
00;59;59;00 - 01;00;14;25
Jonny Dunning
The time is now for change. I think, you know, again, thank you so much. I would just encourage, you know, anybody who's interested in this. Anybody got questions? Just get involved in the conversation. And, you know, the more conversation that we see happening in the market in all areas, you know, I applaud that, I welcome that.
01;00;14;25 - 01;00;29;27
Jonny Dunning
And, I think that's what's going to really make a difference. The people who are trying to do this and the people who've got questions about it and people like yourselves, you've got expertise. Get together, have the conversations. And, you know, it's a huge opportunities and exciting times ahead.
01;00;29;29 - 01;00;32;00
David Orme
Absolutely. Thank you for having me
01;00;32;00 - 01;00;32;23
Jonny Dunning
Thank you so much.