Solving Services Procurement One Step at a Time
Many organizations are still early in their services procurement maturity journey. This podcast explores how starting small and evolving over time can unlock value and build the foundation for more advanced supplier sourcing, analytics, and governance in services.
With Joe David, Services Procurement & Contigent Workforce SME
09:51 - The evolution of services procurement understanding
45:56 - Moving towards maturity in services procurement
54:39 - The possibilities in transforming the way you procure services
01:10:17 - How AI and technology can help to move the services procurement market forward
01:18:41 - Why operational service excellence is critical
Episode Highlights
Transcript
Auto-generated. Please excuse any minor errors.
00;00;00;10 - 00;00;32;20
Jonny Dunning
Fantastic. Okay, well, today I am really pleased to welcome Joe David to the podcast. Joe, you are a services and contingent workforce subject matter expert. We've known each other, for a little while. Kind of spoken through kind of work opportunities and been involved in the same sort of conferences and stuff like that. And, I know you've been just been off on adventures, which we can, we can talk about in a minute, but I'm so pleased to get you on the podcast, and I'm really, really looking forward to hearing your point of view.
00;00;32;21 - 00;00;36;22
Jonny Dunning
So firstly, welcome and thanks very much for joining me.
00;00;36;24 - 00;00;40;00
Joe David
Yeah, absolutely. I think thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
00;00;40;03 - 00;01;03;21
Jonny Dunning
Excellent stuff. So one of the things that, I know is a deep area of operational expertise within services procurement for you is or deep area of expertise is the operational side of it. That's right. And I really want to kind of touch on that. In some of the topics we're going to be talking about today as a particular kind of focus, but there's loads of cool services procurement stuff for us to discuss.
00;01;03;23 - 00;01;24;29
Jonny Dunning
You've been involved in some really groundbreaking work in this area. I think it's fair to say, over the last few years and just to give anyone who was watching this who maybe doesn't it doesn't really know you, just an understanding of your background and what you've been doing. Would you be able to kind of like, summarize your journey in this area, kind of how you got into it?
00;01;25;02 - 00;01;29;27
Jonny Dunning
What was your background prior to this? And, and what's it been like kind of going through the journey?
00;01;29;29 - 00;01;58;22
Joe David
Yeah, absolutely. It was because it was very, it's a circuitous path to get to services procurement. But I, you know, I started in the staffing industry, others about 21 years ago, with one of the largest, probably, staffing companies in the United States, and actually had a very interesting start. I actually started out as a bids manager, so I actually helped with proposal responses for staffing contracts, as I had graduated, just a year before from the University of Maryland with an English degree.
00;01;58;24 - 00;02;19;04
Joe David
I was just incredibly excited to get a job, had an actual application of my degree at that point, but quite frankly, I had no idea of what the company really did. Until, you know, I kind of got into the meat of what staffing was all about. So I did that for two years, and then I had great leaders at the time that actually encouraged him to make the leap into actually doing staffing directly with the organization.
00;02;19;04 - 00;02;39;05
Joe David
So I actually made a move from the East Coast in the United States to the West Coast to San Francisco. And then I did recruiting for accounting and finance and mortgage skillsets for almost about two years. And then from there, that's when my journey into MSP, the managed service space, came in. I had a great boss from my original role that, asked me to join.
00;02;39;07 - 00;02;58;12
Joe David
At that point, one of the lead, is still the leading MSP, a managed service program for financial institution now in Washington, DC. So I came back to the East Coast, and that's really where my journey as an operator in the MSP space really started does by like 2007. And then from there, that was my my career for the majority of it.
00;02;58;12 - 00;03;21;25
Joe David
I ran, a variety of programs. Started out as an individual contributor, but then very soon became a leader for a large financial, MSP who's actually doing global rollouts. And then I moved back to the West Coast to do some other leadership and managed service, programs. And basically in all those, more than half of those programs at at least some sort of services procurement component.
00;03;21;28 - 00;03;48;01
Joe David
And actually the first program I joined back in 2007, 2008, we actually launched one of the first services procurement programs, although at that point people didn't call it that. That was just an add on service. It didn't have a name to it. Services Procurement. So really my, my journey in services procurement that started off with having that baseline, but then really having a flavor of that as I continue to evolve and grow and operations leading, many global accounts, doing many service procurement deployments.
00;03;48;03 - 00;04;16;24
Joe David
And then, for the past five years, my past employer, I was actually a leader of the product. So, basically called services procurement or procurement solutions really led the products in its strategy, its growth and really just evolution. And to your point where we did a lot of really cool things, especially working with enabled AI technologies to really provide some new services, but really just helping to deploy some even more complex and interesting services programs around the world.
00;04;16;26 - 00;04;25;09
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. It's, it's interesting listening to you talk about those early programs because like 2007, I mean, that's that's really early for these type of programs.
00;04;25;11 - 00;04;25;26
Joe David
Yeah. So,
00;04;26;01 - 00;04;33;20
Jonny Dunning
So that was like an add on. Did it actually have a name or was it just was it just like, say there's some weird random add on?
00;04;33;22 - 00;04;50;24
Joe David
Yeah, it was it really started off as on a really well was an add on. We deployed it with one of the leading VMS technologies, and they had just rolled out what they called basically like a headcount tracking module in addition to the staff augmentation module. And that was kind of the first functionality of just like managing head counts.
00;04;50;24 - 00;05;10;17
Joe David
And then with that client, based on their need, they rolled up this very You know, complex and comprehensive staff augmentation managed service program. But at that point, this organization did recognize they had thousands of other workers, so they didn't fit in the staff augmentation bucket. There were under outsource agreements and statements work, and they wanted to get at least some baseline visibility.
00;05;10;17 - 00;05;26;02
Joe David
And then at that time, there wasn't the technology in the VMS’ or going to manage the statements to work themselves. It really was at that point just going to be the headcount. So just getting a basic idea of the people, the supplier they’re with the needing some baseline tied to the statement of work that they're supposed to be supporting.
00;05;26;05 - 00;05;44;18
Joe David
And that's actually what we first launched the launch with. But then that was really right at the time where that same VMS provider was also developing an actual services procurement module. And so then a couple of years later, they deployed a true statement of work module. And then we deploy that with that customer. So we're able then to evolve that baseline headcount tracking solution.
00;05;44;18 - 00;06;07;21
Joe David
And to actually managing the statements of work in there. But I'd say it's interesting we manage those statements of work. But I'd even say at that point when managing SOWs in the program, I would still say it was very much still considered more of an administrative program. It was really just to eliminate the need to get statements of work on paper, getting it within the VMS, and just basically being the payments function for these SOW based workers.
00;06;07;23 - 00;06;27;05
Joe David
The whole idea of capturing analytics around projects, really good supplier performance data. The things that we talk about now and this really, really wasn't a thing at that point, or at least expectation wasn't there for services. So it was really interesting to start off with a program that at that time was leading. But, you know, now we think about what we did back then.
00;06;27;06 - 00;06;43;29
Joe David
It really is now what I consider a very baseline service. So it's been really cool to see the evolution, you know, to your earlier point of the customer's needs and desires to get more out of services procurements and get really more of that great data that you can capture to really make those really informed buying decisions.
00;06;44;02 - 00;07;05;17
Jonny Dunning
This is why I was so looking forward to getting you on the podcast, because I think this is fascinating, because there's not really many people who've been in this position that you've been in to be involved in these, like genuinely, like really leading edge programs from, from way early on. And I mean, it's interesting because that out of interest.
00;07;05;17 - 00;07;14;18
Jonny Dunning
What was the key driver for that company? Was it a misclassification concern or was it just general, someone who said, who are these workers? I want to know who they are.
00;07;14;21 - 00;07;48;02
Joe David
Yeah, it was very much baseline visibility. I think the idea of classification, I think it certainly was a concern back then, but I think it doesn't have the same amount of, knowledge of the risk as it does now. I think we if I remember, we definitely had some situations where we could move some of that work in to staff augmentation, but it was very a onsie-twosie I think at that point or something in the mid 2000, that type of supplier, there was still very much this mystique because almost like it professional services companies that while they wanted to get the baseline visibility, they didn't want to shake that
00;07;48;02 - 00;08;06;23
Joe David
relationship too much, because of SME sponsors. Because, you know, for the most part, these are like a very large agreements and they tend to have very executive level relationships. So anything that was perceived as too much of a disruption to either the business or a threat to the supplier, is very precious at that time. So we really had to be careful about that.
00;08;06;26 - 00;08;28;09
Joe David
And I quite honestly, I don't even think the idea of doing more was really, really in anyone's head because they knew that those relationships would be hard to overcome. And I'll bring up now because that was then. Now, you know, in the industry, all those types of suppliers are very much in services procurement. But I think it's that evolution of, you know, the suppliers appetite for joining the programs.
00;08;28;16 - 00;08;55;21
Joe David
The more important one is the buyers. Right. And the sponsors sophistication are saying that, yes, those of suppliers do agree to come these programs, but also just being more, you know, higher within the business and showing the business case of a services procurement program to executives to help executives, be your advocate, to drive these types of suppliers into services procurement programs, because ultimately, you know, that executive sponsorship is just a critical part of making these programs successful back then and certainly, certainly now.
00;08;55;24 - 00;09;27;25
Jonny Dunning
100%. This this just throws up so many questions for me because the crazy thing is, when you look at the kind of like maturity spectrum, even now, there are some organizations that are in exactly the position. You're just describing. Back in 2007 that was fully leading edge. Right now they're like lagging, but there are lots of big companies that are in that position, and that's their kind of thought process around it now, which is crazy when you realize that at the far sophisticated end of it, there are people doing genuine sourcing.
00;09;27;25 - 00;09;51;11
Jonny Dunning
You know, AI enabled front end and really sophisticated capture of back end data supplier performance analysis, you know, forward planning, you know, capability horizon planning, all that sort of good stuff. So it's really evolved. But it's crazy to think that's almost 20 years ago, and there's still plenty of companies who are that's still where they've got to, which is, pretty crazy.
00;09;51;11 - 00;10;14;12
Jonny Dunning
It is starting to move forward rapidly. But when you mentioned about the executive support, the other thing that brings to mind is, I've kind of had this approach for quite a while that really when I'm talking to people about this or potentially even to solve this problem, I'm looking to, it's not necessarily like a particular sector or a particular region or a particular type of company.
00;10;14;19 - 00;10;33;00
Jonny Dunning
It's definitely obviously larger companies. It's not tiny organizations. But for me, the thing that stands out is where you get a person or a department or a group of stakeholders, who just say, this isn't good enough, we can do it better. Or there's a strong driver where they say, we've got this risk and we've got to sort this out.
00;10;33;02 - 00;10;59;18
Jonny Dunning
And we we talk about those people as being the enlightened ones when it comes to services procurement in your experience, has the the the people in the organizations who’ve got the momentum, the executive sign-off the business case, the kind of, the motivation and compulsion to really move on this. Has it been tied to any particular sectors, locations, type of company that sort of thing?
00;10;59;21 - 00;11;23;11
Joe David
Yeah, I think it's a good question. I think it's, not just any specific industry that has a monopoly on, you know, wanting to start in services, at a higher level sophistication. I think it really just depends on the organization and the dynamics. You know, obviously in MSPs, managed service providers, the sponsorship or the key sponsor has always been either HR procurement, sometimes both.
00;11;23;13 - 00;11;47;28
Joe David
And, you know, those leaders are great and I know they're trying to move the needle. But I think ultimately, you know, those, departments also have their own internal clients and those end up being the business. So from my perspective, especially most recently, the thing that's been really heartening to see is that outside of the procurement HR sponsorship, you know, circles, I've seen business owners start understanding the services procurement space more and the value that can join.
00;11;47;28 - 00;12;13;11
Joe David
So like example, just last year, working with a retail prowler here in the Portland area and the person identified a need to manage service procurement was not in procurement. She wasn't in HR. She was actually within the IT organization essentially kind of process excellence, almost like a vendor manager. And it was her. And having that direct line to the CTO and identifying, hey, there's something here that's not right.
00;12;13;13 - 00;12;33;00
Joe David
That their procurement HR groups are providing great, valuable service. But also she was actually the owner of these IT supplier relationships and seeing day to day and her team dealing with the issues of not tying workers to SOWs issues with payments. When her CTO asked me, hey, this big I.T. outsourcer like, where are all the people? And she's not having an answer.
00;12;33;02 - 00;12;57;16
Joe David
She chose to have a look at the staff aug MSP that exists has all this data. Why can't I get this for this population I actually more directly manage? So through credit for her, she actually helps with, making those connections work with her freshly developed a business case. And I think in my experience, that was one of the fastest, platforms to get directly to the CTO because of the fact that she was already ingrained within the business.
00;12;57;18 - 00;13;18;05
Joe David
And I say this not to, downplay the role of our sponsors and HR procurement. They are obviously very important. And certainly there are CPOs CHROs that care about this could also, you know, move the needle as quickly as that. But I think it's a really good example whether you're, provider side or within the sponsorship circles of just ensuring that you solicit that business owner.
00;13;18;05 - 00;13;31;02
Joe David
Right, and getting those advocates because especially when the service procurement space, like you really need that like end business owner to really want and need the solution, to make that business case in the deployment of the solution, much more effective.
00;13;31;05 - 00;13;50;09
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, it's definitely I agree with you. It's definitely something that, for example, we as a business, as a tech provider in this space, we've learned over time, if you're trying to approach companies to solve problems and, you know, make make procurement life easier and make things people don't care, companies don't, companies that they should care more about procurement.
00;13;50;16 - 00;14;18;11
Jonny Dunning
But there's almost like a bigger issue to consider, which is what about the buyer? What about the organization. So the organization needs to engage these services so that they can deliver their product or service to the market. It's yeah. So a decent chunk of how they get their work done isn't it. So so that's why we we say making it easier, safer, faster for the people that need to buy the services to do it and have value in mind because that is the actual business driver really, isn't it 100%
00;14;18;17 - 00;14;37;09
Joe David
Yeah. And I think with a key thing is and actually getting understanding the business's key pain points. Right. And then creating a solution that is specific to their needs. And that can be different from organization or organization. And I bring it up because I know from, you know, MSP space from our HR procurement sponsors. You mentioned, you know, that you have classification.
00;14;37;11 - 00;14;58;27
Joe David
You know, first, like I think we in the you know, services procurement staff staffing industry like we understand like workforce classification. Our sponsors do as well too. But I think it's hard and challenging to then go to an IT business owner, or a marketing director and tell your hey this with the way that you've been doing business all the time, it's not correct.
00;14;58;27 - 00;15;26;02
Joe David
And I'm going to force you into either picking deliverable milestone or it needs to be staff augmentation. Obviously there are some companies that have enough of, sway within the sponsorship organizations to make the type of change happen. But what I found is a lot of times you have to meet the business where they're at, right? So you have to create a custom solution that still drives, you know, a lot of the goals of, the MSP program or using a technology to help guide the right buying behaviors and classification.
00;15;26;05 - 00;15;44;03
Joe David
But a lot of times you could start off with maybe some more hybrid solution. Maybe you allow, for example, maybe some T&M based statement of work and making sure it's not, misclassified, then turn to some other risk, mitigation points. Maybe there's like, a hold back in the statement of work or something else that the supplier is taking on some risks.
00;15;44;03 - 00;16;02;08
Joe David
So it's not purely just a veiled staff augmentation play. And I only say that because that could be the at least a. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'll say the word compromise, but something to meet the business where they're at to at least get that into the program. And then once you get in the program, you can use that data, then help really make those transformational, changes.
00;16;02;08 - 00;16;19;08
Joe David
Like maybe truly then mandating anything under statement work has to be deliverable. It'll be a journey, right? But a lot of times you have to get people in first, right? To really show that this is actually a real thing that can be successful. The same thing for sourcing too, We've had a lot of clients where, you know, they, they love the idea of sourcing or procurement.
00;16;19;08 - 00;16;48;05
Joe David
Sponsors love that idea. But the culture of the business isn't pro sourcing. It's more let the business owner pick the supplier and go from there. I think there's ways that you can show them kind of these small steps of like doing spot bids or maybe just throwing out a negotiation at the point of renewing an existing SOW, instead of trying to hand this a mandate on competitive sourcing, and then finding the businesses running away from that mandate because they feel like they're not being heard or they don't have time.
00;16;48;05 - 00;17;02;02
Joe David
And they're not being engaged in the conversation. You're like, yeah, I understand you're saying that you don't have time, but let me show you what the technology can do to condense the sourcing process instead of months that let's just take a week, two weeks, whatever that situation might be.
00;17;02;04 - 00;17;19;17
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And it's when you look at most organizations and where they are with service procurement, I would still say the vast majority of organizations are still at a low level of maturity. Clearly, there are some companies that have moved on and, you know, some of the some of the great companies that you've done work with certainly have got to a sophisticated level.
00;17;19;19 - 00;17;39;25
Jonny Dunning
But if if I think of it in my head is like ten notches on a volume switch of like, you know, where these companies are, this there's, say this ten notches of value they can add from being at baseline, very unsophisticated. They don't necessarily need to be turned all the way up to ten straight away. You know, they can they can start hitting three four.
00;17;39;25 - 00;18;01;00
Jonny Dunning
They're getting massive value out of it. And they can ramp it up as they go and like add in more sophisticated things. So yeah, I think the, the interesting thing that for me that you mentioned around that was a particularly interesting thing is pain points and that is that is another one. And this is, this is something where sometimes it's a struggle.
00;18;01;02 - 00;18;29;25
Jonny Dunning
You certainly from as a tech vendor point of view, when you're talking to, you know, these client organizations, sometimes organizations just say, show me the shiny, you know, show me a demo. And it's like, really? We we've learned over the years that the most effective way to support customers or even just have that conversation is to understand those pain points, because they are going to be there's going to be a ultimately, I feel like the same.
00;18;29;25 - 00;18;44;23
Jonny Dunning
Probably 10 or 15 pain points are going to exist for kind of for everybody. But but the recognition of which pain points are actually important seems to really vary from company to company. Have you experienced that as well?
00;18;44;25 - 00;19;02;14
Joe David
Yeah, 100% I'd say. You know, my last role, I would say at least 25% of my time was actually doing like workshops, right? For that same situation, we initially talked about our service, and they want to see the tech demo and, you know, you know, at that time we were like the service component of the technology component.
00;19;02;14 - 00;19;18;25
Joe David
So for me, I was like, oh, you know, the technology is great, but, you know, there's people there doing all the work. Let me show you what we can do there. So I think to kind of nipped in the bud, we started taking the position of like trying to do workshops first, right, to really tease out what the issues are and then coming back, or at least in that event, you can even do it in that point.
00;19;18;25 - 00;19;37;08
Joe David
The workshop. Okay, so there's a lot of people, we're all impatient now. We want to know, like what could it be look like? So, I then led these workshops where we start using it. First half of it is really to understand what the overall organizational objectives are right, then teasing out the pain points from the stakeholders. And to my earlier point, that workshop would be with those key sponsors.
00;19;37;15 - 00;19;53;24
Joe David
We always, always encourage them to include some of the key business owners as well. So they can hear it from the business. And it's been interesting that in a lot of those situations, we would hear some debate between the business owners and our procurement HR sponsors, on what the issues actually are. Right. So and that's good. That's a good outcome.
00;19;53;24 - 00;20;16;22
Joe David
And that, conversation for them to really start hearing each other as much as it as them hearing us. Right. As, providers, but then in that, once you start teasing out what the pain points are, if you're ready for an MVP prep, well, you can actually then. Okay, great. Now that I hear that XYZ, that you're the actual major issues for you, let me now focus on your point in the demo on these functionalities versus having this very generic demo.
00;20;16;22 - 00;20;35;28
Joe David
Right. And same thing for on the service side. Great. Like let me show in addition technology this is what the people component of this could do on their behalf. Right. So we provide a really great, great solution. So I think whenever possible, like having that dialog, I know that that takes a lot of time right from prospective buyers, but I think it's certainly worth that time.
00;20;35;28 - 00;20;59;26
Joe David
And I think it truly is more engaging. You know, solution based conversation versus it being this transactional pitch that probably isn't going to really hit right or on both sides. It doesn't hit for us. But it also it's it it doesn't really help the buyer think through and really kind of deep dive into like what their core issues are to help them with their business case for what they're trying to do.
00;20;59;28 - 00;21;34;27
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, I agree with you 100%. We, we created, this mechanism, effectively this thing called the Wheel of pain. And it's it's funny, I've even got some like, you know, stand up ones that we use around tables and stuff like that just to get people talking about the pains, whether it's like, misclassification, you know, poor scoping, you know, the, the need to use AI, lack of governance and control or, you know, lack of, visibility over change requests or, you know, rogue spend, whatever it might be when you start drilling into the pain point.
00;21;34;27 - 00;21;58;15
Jonny Dunning
So you give people the chance to say, what are the things that really are the key issues for you as a specific organization? Again, it plays into what we were talking about before. The fact that this is it's a it's a common problem and the set of problems are probably common across every organization, but the specific drivers are going to be different from organization to organization.
00;21;58;18 - 00;22;20;05
Jonny Dunning
And they're also going to depend on, you know, the organizational culture, the structure of what's the existing technology, how a team set up where those responsibilities lie for different parts of the process of buying and and executing, you know, their service engagements? Which takes me to the second point that you brought up, which I think is really critical, which is this idea around solutioning.
00;22;20;07 - 00;22;39;02
Jonny Dunning
And I just think is so important. And you said to me previously something that I, I've really I really liked it, which was you were talking we were talking about the kind of evolution of services procurement within the market and the evolution of people's understanding. And, and I was talking about the enlightened ones, which is all kind of terminology that we use.
00;22;39;02 - 00;22;59;06
Jonny Dunning
And people that go, I know we've got this problem, but, I, I'm going to take ownership of it or I've got ownership of it, I want to do something about it. And I'm going to get, you know, the buy in and I'm going to move it forward. And to when we were I was talking about that, you said it's all about the people who are open to solutioning.
00;22;59;09 - 00;22;59;25
Joe David
That's right.
00;22;59;28 - 00;23;36;13
Jonny Dunning
And that's a it's a great point that you make with that, because being open to solutions means also being open to having that dialog about what's the actual problem in the first place. And and I've seen and I'm sure you will have seen this as well, but I've seen plenty of companies really benefit when they've got a group of people on a call and the vendor, whether it's a solution provider or a tech provider or both, and, you know, working together, asking the questions around that pain statement and really drilling into it and almost getting the answers for the company for the first time, where they're hearing somebody from compliance say, but hang on
00;23;36;13 - 00;23;57;18
Jonny Dunning
a minute, but this is an absolute nightmare for us. Or, you know, actual, engagement managers talking about the need to speed to market or what's stopping them getting the work done or whatever it might be. It I think it helps companies work through the process of getting their own minds in order as to the problem can seem, tangled, complicated, really massive.
00;23;57;18 - 00;24;21;00
Jonny Dunning
But breaking it down to those pain points. And that is part of being open to actually then solutioning because as you say, otherwise, just from a pure tech point of view. But the same applies to a service. You've got this big service that can effectively do, you know, the dial all the way up to ten of like absolute excellence, top level, you know, super sophisticated or but it starts from one.
00;24;21;03 - 00;24;45;14
Jonny Dunning
You're going to show everybody all ten. It's like you know that not everybody's ready for that. And it's not it's not every single pain point that they want to address at this moment in time. So if you've got that information up front as a solution provider, whether it be service tech or combined, that is the real, the magic in this stuff where you can really look at that and say, okay, well, let's just show you what you need to see and have a much more engaging conversation.
00;24;45;16 - 00;24;52;09
Jonny Dunning
But it's a do you feel like more people are open to that type of solutioning conversation now?
00;24;52;11 - 00;25;14;13
Joe David
I think nowadays, yeah, I think there's nothing more. It's like we talked about before, you know, obviously like within the core HR procurement sponsorship ecosystem, you know, that the concept of this is really here now, right? I think it a lot of it ties based on the experience of those, folks in the circle, but also the level as well too.
00;25;14;15 - 00;25;34;02
Joe David
You know, I think these solutions I’m 100% with you the, the solutions are absolutely launch there is complexity to it, but I think the key to it is having great partners to unpack complexity. Right, and kind of deal with it in kind of a long term roadmap. Right. These aren't none of these are solutions that you flip on and it magically meets all of your goals.
00;25;34;04 - 00;25;50;21
Joe David
It's like I said before, a lot of times on, you know, these services procurement solutions, they'll probably be like a baseline starting, you know, combination of services that are right for the customer. And then they need to evolve after that, because the baseline is what gets you the data right, or at least the initial buy in, or at least a pilot population who to start showing.
00;25;50;21 - 00;26;24;24
Joe David
Hey, we had a really great outcome for this. Now let's truly roll this out and transform it. That's something that's completely enterprise wide, right? And it's only possible by doing it in that first phase. You know, I've seen, you know, some of these customers that. Well, hey, if I'm going to do this, I want to do big bang that can potentially be, you know, something that can work, but that requires such a heavy amount of buy-in from so many different stakeholders, not just executive sponsors in HR procurement, the the business could be a lot of technologies because know all of our solutions touched all these other technology integrations and payments and contracting things like that.
00;26;24;26 - 00;26;45;12
Joe David
So those things can definitely happen. But if you're in an organization where maybe you're not quite there yet, maybe starting off with more of like kind of minimal, viable product first to get it in will really be more of a way to then show that this is something that really happens, really can happen, in our organization. And that's kind of advance it mature it from there.
00;26;45;14 - 00;27;13;27
Joe David
Let's go back to your original question. I think now it's definitely gotten better. For sure. I think just because people have heard the term services procurement and they want to know more about it, but I think it is really getting to the people that they want to know more about it, but they also are prepared to understand that I need to then be engaged in, like these workshops, right in these dialogs to really understand and solution for it versus an expression of someone's, okay, I've heard about the services procurement thing, you provider, tell me about it.
00;27;13;27 - 00;27;25;15
Joe David
And I'll just say, yeah, it doesn't seem right for us. Like you know, and they kind of deal with it in a more transactional based way. It's like a technology to flip on or off. And that's certainly not what this, what this is. So I think a lot of it's just like getting people to be more receptive to.
00;27;25;16 - 00;27;35;13
Joe David
Yes, there's definitely need let's get you into that mindset of you've identified an issue. What's kind of now going the journey of solution together to create a really great solution for you?
00;27;35;16 - 00;28;01;08
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. I mean, if I was if I was going to, if I was suddenly put in the position of being in an organization and not having the background that I've got in services procurement and think I'm being tasked with that and thinking, how the hell do I even wrap my head around what the problem is? I would actually take advantage of people like yourself, people like me, and providers like those that we, the we work for.
00;28;01;10 - 00;28;20;01
Jonny Dunning
And I've worked for and actually used those conversations to really just like, work out what's going on. And I would advise anybody to do that in the sense that, you know, there is expertise out there, and as long as you're not just going into a situation where someone is just going to be selling at you, which doesn't work for this.
00;28;20;03 - 00;28;38;05
Jonny Dunning
You know, I don't in fact, that's the last thing that people like us want to be told is, hey, you know, sell it to me a bit like you say, you know, the situation you're describing. Because the amount of times I've heard people say, we don't have a problem with services procurement, and then you show them a wheel of pain and they go, oh, that's a nightmare that's really causing this problem.
00;28;38;05 - 00;28;44;29
Jonny Dunning
This is an absolute disaster. You know, our C-suite are really worried about that. And you're like, well, it's just a different way of looking at it.
00;28;45;01 - 00;28;53;10
Joe David
Yeah, 100%. You know, you thought as you're saying that I brought this other point I was thinking through, too, is,
00;28;53;13 - 00;29;13;03
Joe David
You know, we certainly have clients that maybe they are asking for their external help, but maybe it was what those more typical, consultancies is, right? Like the big four, because they certainly provide these types of guidance. And, you know, I always strike a balance. These sort of suppliers come to services procurement programs. They can be 100% great partners, as well.
00;29;13;05 - 00;29;30;26
Joe David
But I'd say to to give us credit, I think what differentiates us, as, you know, consultant partners compared to those big consultancies, is that I've seen the output of some of these recommendations that, it is big four consultancies, provide some of our clients where it comes to the services procurement space if they're trying to get maybe some big cost savings.
00;29;30;29 - 00;29;49;03
Joe David
A lot of times it can be it's honestly like a very generic recommendation upgrade. You're looking to make cost savings really done in self augmentation on the services side, consolidate these hundred suppliers into these three master vendors. Right. And it's just like very yes, that could work. But in my opinion a lot of it could be a bit of a hamfisted recommendation.
00;29;49;03 - 00;30;06;02
Joe David
And then honestly, then a lot of times those consultants are just plopping this recommendation over to the procurement sponsors, and they're not going to execute it. The consultancy, they're kind of leaving procurement to do that. And so the the sponsors left. Well, okay, I understand that this could work, but I need help and actually getting it done as well too.
00;30;06;04 - 00;30;24;14
Joe David
So I think that's where we can sit in. Like we actually are experts in the specific space can provide some more nuanced recommendations on technology functionalities, on services that can get to a more prescribed way of getting cost savings, whatever that goal is. Outside of a more generic recommendation, and probably then the most important thing is, actually executing it, right?
00;30;24;15 - 00;30;45;18
Joe David
As a technology provider, your technology actually does the execution of it service provider, same thing as well. To be part of the people actually do the work on their behalf. And I think that's really what the differentiator is when you're kind of if you're on the buyer side, you're trying to think of partners to engage with this as like coming to the specialists to really to get the solution that will really work for the organization.
00;30;45;20 - 00;31;08;03
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And, yeah, without that execution, with just a nice big kind of report dumped on somebody's desk, that's very generic. It's really potentially a bit of a waste of time and money, if that sort of thing is happening. And I think this is where it's interesting to see more of the kind of workforce solutions traditionally would have been regarded as staffing companies.
00;31;08;03 - 00;31;34;12
Jonny Dunning
But now more workforce solutions type organizations have really up their game when it comes to services procurement. You know, the idea of, workforce solutions companies having people within their organization who are actually like genuine procurement folk with expertise in this area, you know, I'd say that was very rare, back in the day. Yes. But but now it's it's something that people are really addressing and kind of saying, well, hey, we have to do this.
00;31;34;12 - 00;31;49;24
Jonny Dunning
This is this is table stakes. Now we've got to have internal expertise, people that understand this and can sit down with the client and can talk about it and can listen to them and say, and how are you doing this? And they can say, well, at my previous company, I did it this way, or at X and Y.
00;31;49;24 - 00;32;30;24
Jonny Dunning
Other companies that I've worked with, these are the ways they address those problems. Oh, okay. That's an interesting but I can talk the procurement language. And, and people like yourself who although you're not necessarily, you know, from a procurement background originally your expertise in services procurement is something that the way that people, learn about procurement and the way that procurement teams are structured or historically have been structured wouldn't necessarily have given that many people the type of expertise that really just focuses in on what are the problems that exist when you're actually trying to buy and manage outsourced services and it's just got so big now because, you know, it's a more service
00;32;30;24 - 00;32;57;17
Jonny Dunning
based economy globally. Work is moving towards more outcome output based, scenarios. You know, organizations need this flexible external capacity and capability. It's, it's it's like such a massive part of how organizations get work done. And on average, 50% of organizational spend across all sectors, across all locations. So it's just too big for people to ignore.
00;32;57;17 - 00;33;19;04
Jonny Dunning
But the way that it's kind of crept up on companies. Yes, because organizations haven't been structured in procurement to say this is how we buy goods, this is how we buy people and this is how we buy services. Whereas I feel like that's that there's more of a conversation going on around that now, because the contractual mechanism by which you engage these suppliers is different.
00;33;19;04 - 00;33;42;18
Jonny Dunning
If you're buying services generally it's something like a statement of work type, you know, output driven, arrangement versus goods and materials where might be a bill of materials or standard goods based contract versus, you know, people based, stuff where you're either hiring someone who's an employee or you are hiring a contractor or an individual, you're hiring Jonny Dunning, Joe David, for a period of time.
00;33;42;18 - 00;34;03;29
Jonny Dunning
And it's that individual that, that with no, you know, and you're managing and controlling it, etc.. So, I think the emergence of this expertise within the MSP world, and some, some of the kind of BPO and consulting firms we're seeing moving more towards this, but but definitely the MSPs have been, are focusing on it now.
00;34;04;01 - 00;34;25;18
Jonny Dunning
And I feel like that it's really ramped up in the last two years, significantly ramped up. But the yeah, that that idea of you can only get this kind of you can only have this conversation with one of the big four consulting firms, but it definitely wouldn't be the only the only suggestion I would give to an organization.
00;34;25;18 - 00;34;48;05
Jonny Dunning
I would say, hey, look, there's some specialist providers out there now who you absolutely should be talking to, and maybe you should be talking to a few people to get your head around this. But I think that's also the value of having this type of conversation with somebody like you, with your level of expertise and just exposing that to people to sort of say, hey, look, there's people out there who have run multiple programs, who dealt with lots of customers and have seen this stuff.
00;34;48;07 - 00;35;08;28
Jonny Dunning
These are the people you need to be engaging with. If you were even thinking about doing this, because the expertise out there is out there, which kind of leads me on to the the area I want to come on to next, which is just the fact that it is actually possible to do this, you know, is is going from something that a lot of people just sort of think is too hard.
00;35;09;01 - 00;35;24;24
Jonny Dunning
You know, other people don't seem to be doing it. We're just going to leave it in the too hard to do bucket and that we can just walk away from that. It's too difficult. Forget that. That is very much no longer the case. But before we get onto that, just a couple of, points you made, which I thought were really interesting.
00;35;24;26 - 00;35;51;19
Jonny Dunning
You talked about the different stakeholders that you've engaged with in these organizations. And for me, again, that comes back to this concept of the enlightened ones, because you can't always say, in my experience, it's going to be this type of company in this location, in this industry sector, and it's going to be the CPO or it's going to be the head of indirect, because firstly, procurement teams are structured, they're not uniformly structured in any way.
00;35;51;21 - 00;36;14;12
Jonny Dunning
You know, even finance teams across organizations are structured differently but not that differently. Procurement teams, there can be a huge variation in my experiences and how they structured. And also because services procurement is not something that necessarily every company has got a dedicated team or a dedicated person who's like, that's your responsibility, which I think will be the case in the future.
00;36;14;12 - 00;36;38;26
Jonny Dunning
I'm seeing more of this coming along. The responsibility is kind of diffused within teams. So sometimes it might be, somebody who is reporting into the CTO procurement excellence, CPO it could be, the CIO, it could be the CFO that's driving it, or it could just be a really smart, switched on and driven, global category lead for professional services, for example.
00;36;38;26 - 00;36;50;12
Jonny Dunning
That's saying, hey, guys, we can do this better. But it's it is that something you've noticed that kind of diffusion of responsibility and lack of kind of standardization?
00;36;50;14 - 00;37;14;24
Joe David
Yeah, 100%. As you're talking, I was thinking, that's right. Because I, I probably say 25% of the procurement sponsors that I've worked with, the services piece was just maybe one of three different categories of management. The funny thing is they always seem to be traveling expense and then maybe like events and things like that. And, and I always thought I'm like, that's such a weird combination of like and what the honest reaction was like.
00;37;14;24 - 00;37;31;22
Joe David
Well, that was just kind of the combination of when we added the numbers. So the spend the this, this and this, this kind of made sense. So there really wasn't necessarily a true strategy behind this. Like, hey, this person has more capacity. Let's add on these other categories of spend. It really has nothing to do with professional services, at all.
00;37;31;22 - 00;37;52;09
Joe David
But I think it goes to your point where we have a lot of sponsors that they're they're great in there. And I'd say what they want is they really see the opportunity in the services procurement space. And that's why they're excited about the solution, because they could blow that out more and make that their full time job, but then offload the time and expense management to somebody else on their team.
00;37;52;09 - 00;38;10;07
Joe David
Because, you know, quite frankly, I think those are the more interesting category to be in. Anything that has a combination of services and people, I think is super dynamic, that a lot of, you know, programing sponsors want to be part of. Right? Again, going engages a lot of and skill sets outside of it just being, you know, transactional buying of widgets and things like that or managing software contracts.
00;38;10;10 - 00;38;35;21
Joe David
So I definitely have seen that. And you're right, I think based on the organization, you know, maybe it's not even the CPO this rolls into. It's like I said before, a lot of times it actually is for the IT organization. Right. Because, I've seen enough of previous clients where the IT providers have so much, critical ness to their business that they've actually separated that relationship from the procurement organization, not completely that previously had.
00;38;35;21 - 00;38;55;08
Joe David
So like a support role, but, true ownership, they created their own internal I.T vendor management teams, like all their own kind of internal function, because they needed to control of a spend and suppliers themselves. So it can really change from customer to customer. Right. And that just goes to the whole idea of really hearing that, that specific client's unique needs and understanding.
00;38;55;09 - 00;39;08;02
Joe David
To your point, there likely are over the ten overriding pain points, are experiencing the problem and spending a lot of these. But what's specific to them that now you can create a bespoke solution for it?
00;39;08;04 - 00;39;27;28
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, and I feel like with the people that you're talking about where this is, they're really grabbing hold of this, and then maybe they want to focus on services procurement and drop some of those other areas. I feel like is a huge opportunity because it's it's still early in the maturity of this market. So I feel like there's a real opportunity for people to make a name for themselves.
00;39;28;01 - 00;39;47;13
Jonny Dunning
And, and some of the people that I've seen go through and run successful programs, you know, they're going to be the ones who are on the speaking circuit. They're going to be the ones that are going around all the conferences, and people want to hear what they did and and understand it and try and replicate it and learn some of the lessons that they've learned by then, kind of taking a risk, putting their head above the parapet and just going for it.
00;39;47;15 - 00;40;18;19
Jonny Dunning
And I think the the other side of it is getting hold of that services procurement element is, is going to be very good for their careers for another reason, not just because people haven't done it and it's new and they'll get loads of benefits. But for me it's because it's truly strategic in the sense that this is what they're what they're trying to optimize, I would say is a significant part, a significant element of how competitive that organization is in their own market.
00;40;18;22 - 00;40;36;26
Jonny Dunning
Like if they can get really good suppliers and they have great relationships with them, and they've got a fantastically resilient supply chain and they've got the new, capabilities that are, you know, required covered through their supply chain. They can get to market quickly and they can get good value and they can get good performance out of it.
00;40;36;28 - 00;41;00;25
Jonny Dunning
They're going to outcompete other players in their own market, who is still stuck in the dark ages and maybe thinking about doing a bit of headcount tracking. So, so I think there's huge rewards for people and, and I'm sure you've probably seen cases where people have built up excellent reputations in their own organizations by doing something that maybe people thought wouldn't work or would be really difficult and actually getting great results out of it.
00;41;00;27 - 00;41;22;00
Joe David
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, this is just an it's a dynamic, interesting space like services. And to your point, it's the combination of people. The service would be provided. Almost everything that's in this category has a direct even that's called indirect spend ties. Usually what the end business of that company is right. The manage the technology providers of that provide the infrastructure of the technology that your company provides.
00;41;22;00 - 00;41;50;20
Joe David
Right. Or managing these consultants to provide really important value for the key critical business decisions your executives are making for their own products. Right. These are all things that, you know, if you're looking to become a leader in the space, there's so much like dynamic parts of it that make it like incredibly interesting that I'd want to be in if there's on the buyer side of the house, but it just it just a lot more interesting to say like, you know, obviously I'm not downplaying all the other important parts of procurement, those, you know, the transactional, you know, you know, widgets, things like that.
00;41;50;20 - 00;42;10;28
Joe David
But I think for a certain type of person that likes that dynamism, this is a 100% great opportunity. And to your point, if you get a couple of really good success stories of launching a successful services program, for their career, there's so many other organizations are looking for that, subject matter expertise to do the same thing when their organization to your point.
00;42;10;28 - 00;42;29;09
Joe David
I think there's sort of this mystique of it's too complicated to do this, but I know that's on a, for a case that's not, that's not the case. Yeah. When I was with, you know, my former employer, half of our, client base had at least some sort of service procurement solution. Right. There are different levels of maturity, right.
00;42;29;09 - 00;42;49;21
Joe David
And sophistication. But even those clients were still at that baseline. They were still in a better spot of least having a foundation to eventually go into that. More sophisticated space when they’re ready Right? Right. But then the clients were in that really leading edge, you know, doing competitive sourcing, using AI to address misclassification. They really end up being the stars that we see in the circuits.
00;42;49;21 - 00;42;57;28
Joe David
Right. ProcureCon and CWS was there there really you know, being able to, you know, show and highlight their expertise for the entire industry.
00;42;58;00 - 00;43;19;25
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a it's that huge opportunity there for people. One of the things that they also find interesting is when, when I look at this from a kind of like traditional procurement point of view, you mentioned about a lot of the time that's being kind of seen as being lumped into indirect spend. I find that fascinating.
00;43;19;25 - 00;43;41;24
Jonny Dunning
Obviously I've not come from that. I've come from a technology, you know, procurement technology background rather than a practitioner type background. And I know there are obviously clear reasons, clear value in this kind of direct versus indirect analysis, partly from a financial point of view and partly from a procurement point of view. But but from a running the business point of view.
00;43;41;27 - 00;44;05;25
Jonny Dunning
But I do find it I do feel like it's possibly, it's overly, kind of simplistic or, you know, binary in the sense that if you're talking about, BMW, then the majority of their direct spend, a lot of their direct spend is going to be goods, materials and engine parts and bits for cars. And your indirect spend is going to be services that help run the business.
00;44;05;28 - 00;44;35;15
Jonny Dunning
And other and other stuff. But there will be a definitely a bit of crossover. But if you're like a big global, building consultancy like WSP, your direct spend is all services, you know, build and building consulting firms, architectural consulting, surveying, consulting, all that sort of stuff, which is basically becomes your end products, subcontract services engagements and your direct spend, your indirect spend is goods not for resale.
00;44;35;17 - 00;45;10;23
Jonny Dunning
So I find it really interesting when you actually, because that's one of the things that I'm kind of a little bit challenging to say, should you be thinking about goods, people and services, or should you be thinking about direct versus indirect? And I think that the world is moving so rapidly and the services are growing so rapidly that it's, I think this that's why this emphasis on services is really growing, because and the only reason that people like you and people like me have been involved in it, the only reason why we built a technical solution, for example, is because there was a problem and when we started off in the public sector, but
00;45;10;23 - 00;45;30;28
Jonny Dunning
there was a problem where there was this professional services and consulting frameworks and there's nothing to underpin it. People couldn't do it. Like you said, in those early programs, people are going, well, what about if we need to manage a statement of work? So I think that's been really fascinating. And, and, and I agree with you. Of course, other areas of procurement are hugely important direct materials, for example.
00;45;31;01 - 00;45;56;25
Jonny Dunning
But on my argument on that is I feel like that's a pretty well solved problem. You know, you've got this Amazon style buying experience, you've got catalog buying, guided buying, the technology. I would argue from a technology perspective, the procurement technology, the suites the source to pay procure to pay suites have been predominantly geared towards that kind of they come out of the ERP manufacturing.
00;45;56;27 - 00;46;26;27
Jonny Dunning
And it's very much geared towards goods and goods and materials and services has always been this thing that's kind of like too difficult or it's secondary, but in the meantime it's been growing. So I do feel like of course those other areas of procurement are super important, but I feel like they're pretty well catered for. It's like it's like if you look at the, contingent, contingent workforce market, I mean, obviously the big VMS providers and the MSPs solution started in kind of like very earliest late 90s, kind of like beginning of the 2000.
00;46;26;29 - 00;46;38;00
Jonny Dunning
That's a pretty well buttoned down solution these days. Whereas if you compare the services side of it, you know, it's still at that early age of maturity, I would argue.
00;46;38;02 - 00;46;54;14
Joe David
Yeah. No I agree. Yeah. No, it's actually bring it up because I, you know, when we talk about the value of services procurement, we talk about that whole rubric of you don't think about direct and direct people this, you know, versus, you know, goods or you know what that how to differentiate that. But I think you're right.
00;46;54;14 - 00;47;19;24
Joe David
I think, the more that we can get organizations start thinking about it in those terms, I think it actually hit more on the way that their businesses are looking to engage with these type of services. I think there's probably some legacy, into your earlier point where some of the original kind of mind, I guess architecture was direct, indirect, maybe like CapEx, OpEx and needs to in a bucket from an accounting perspective.
00;47;19;26 - 00;47;48;20
Joe David
But I think that's something I sort of I kind of support your point. Or maybe they sort of think about, don't let these kind of existing technologies hinder your way of thinking about how a really great services permanent solution can meet your needs. So I bring it up because, I think there's been certainly many instances where we've talked to customers about a services procurement solution, where the technology and a lot of times the take the for our indirect category, we already use the enterprise ERP right to manage all this.
00;47;48;20 - 00;48;05;03
Joe David
And so okay, I understand that. But when you say you're managing, what are you actually doing on the services space. And it's like oh we can get a spend report for it, you know. Is that right? Is that with and then start poking into that any level of granularity and certainly nothing about the people aspect of it at all.
00;48;05;03 - 00;48;21;28
Joe David
But I think, you know, a lot of times, maybe those operational, maybe legacy leaders in this space like, oh, we've already trust it. And we also don't want to in their head introduce, in their view, like another technology to complicate the solution, which I think I think it's our job to poke more holes into that because I think at this point, yeah.
00;48;21;28 - 00;48;44;00
Joe David
So maybe it's the reintroduction of the technology. But you and I both know there's a lot of great, obviously, integrations within the place that you can still see that data into a more enterprise ERP. So you have all that spend altogether. I just truly don't believe that argument. It's like not wanting to complicate things is enough of a value to not dive more into services.
00;48;44;00 - 00;48;59;23
Joe David
With all of the benefits, you can get into that with a huge amount of spend that's untouched. Because at your point, yes, the enterprise ERP has really good a whole lot of goods and services, but you have all the levers, all the cost savings mechanisms, very well oiled. There's not much more you can do in that space.
00;48;59;25 - 00;49;15;11
Joe David
But now there's other categories they're managing in ERP that you admittedly say that you don't have a lot of visibility into. So let's kind of get the other enabling technologies, get more out of it so we can get even more cost savings. So we don't squeeze everything you can. And I've made that same argument now on that, you know, MSP space.
00;49;15;14 - 00;49;35;08
Joe David
We have so many. You know, customers I think they've done all they can on the staff aug side as far as like reducing rates and trying to do rate cuts. Really the bang for the buck will be in services for them. And the, the amount of spend and the way that contracting is done, it is not going to be as much of a disruptive change.
00;49;35;08 - 00;49;54;06
Joe David
I think a lot of potential sponsors think it can be because there's honestly so much margin. A lot of times, with certain contracts. Yeah, yeah, the service suppliers will still make good money. Right. And I, I as a provider, I was trying to strike the balance. The service providers are they're all great partners. They're not bad providers.
00;49;54;06 - 00;50;16;24
Joe David
I think also, they'll often say just do what the business thinks they need to do, but it just calls up like that. There is, an opportunity for people to understand, you know, these kind of different mechanisms to get really great cost savings, get better control, and really hone in the services supplier community into those true strategic partners that are providing demonstrated value to the organization.
00;50;16;24 - 00;50;33;28
Joe David
Right? And not just these available staff augmentation agreements or the suppliers that they're perfectly fine with not having any kind of accountability and charging a huge, huge markup on things. Right. That's that was our job. Right? Is, you know, the kind of, the experts and things to get really good engaged suppliers that they will benefit from it as well too.
00;50;33;29 - 00;50;43;05
Joe David
But really also we get it really well run cost effective, meaning the business needs services procurement solution for the end customers.
00;50;43;07 - 00;51;18;13
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And like we said earlier, you know, other organizations are getting on top of this. Well, I would urge anyone who's even considering this to think think about is, can you compete effectively in your market if you don't do this because you need to get work done. And this is where I think it's really interesting, the way that services procurement straddles workforce and workforce parts of the business, strategic workforce planning, kind of potentially H.R talent acquisition type functions or contingent workforce type functions and pure procurement functions.
00;51;18;16 - 00;51;36;06
Jonny Dunning
But from a CEO's point of view, they've got options as to how they get work done. I can use my permanent workforce, I can use contractors and temps, I can use AI, I can outsource it to my services supply chain. But if you haven't got if you've got a big chunk of that, that isn't buttoned down.
00;51;36;13 - 00;52;03;05
Jonny Dunning
And in large organizations, typically, what, 6 to 10 times the amount of spend as contingent workforce in in smaller organizations might be 4 to 6 times. So not it's a massive liability. It's a massive, commitment if you haven't got that buttoned down. I personally think that you know, as a CEO, I would be, you know, that would give me sleepless nights thinking, okay, have we got the capacity?
00;52;03;05 - 00;52;16;24
Jonny Dunning
How good is that capacity? What are we wasting the money? Do we even know what's happening? Do we even know who the suppliers are? What if something happens in the market? That means I suddenly need them to do something else for me. Or I suddenly need them to do more for me. Is that going to work? Are they going to do a good job?
00;52;16;26 - 00;52;38;00
Jonny Dunning
Are we going to be able to get it done in time? It's like, that would keep me awake at night. I would want to have this stuff nailed because as an organization, they're spending a lot of money on it and it is a significant factor in driving their success. So I just think that's where I think it's become more of understood around those facets of the market, which is why.
00;52;38;07 - 00;53;02;06
Jonny Dunning
And it's kind of coalesced into this thing that is services procurement and, and people can't quite get away with now just going, oh well we've, we've got that PO level information and I've seen it on calls myself where one stakeholder might be kind of edging towards that argument. And another stakeholder at the same company might say, hey, that's not good enough.
00;53;02;09 - 00;53;22;29
Jonny Dunning
And I find that really interesting. When companies are starting to like, you know, have a bit of an internal dialog where they're saying whether people are like kind of saying we really should do something about this. And that's not something that I'm definitely seeing. Accelerating. You probably would have seen that. I certainly saw that less when we was kind of starting out, say kind of like five, six years ago.
00;53;23;04 - 00;53;29;17
Jonny Dunning
But I'm sure for you, if you look back right to those early programs, it probably wasn't anything like that kind of discussion.
00;53;29;20 - 00;53;48;25
Joe David
Yeah. So I definitely agree. I think, to your point, a lot of it is like, hey, yeah, even five years ago, a lot of individual stakeholders like the baseline visibility is good enough. But and I think it's also at that time they still had other levers they could pull. Right. Maybe there was still at that point, more leverage over cost savings and staff aug like other categories.
00;53;48;27 - 00;54;08;26
Joe David
It's like for like build out that stone cannot be squeezed any more. And they need to be creative and have more tools at their disposal. Right. To an add, you know, difference in the cost savings or just like management, more sophisticated management spend. And this is the area that, you know, and without the wild wild west versus, but there's just a lot of, untapped opportunity, right?
00;54;08;26 - 00;54;17;15
Joe David
If you just get the right technologies and services in place, that can really kind of unearth those opportunities and then have the execution strategy on top of it.
00;54;17;18 - 00;54;37;21
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. I agree. And like you say, kind of don't be too kind of like, you know, over the top. We're saying it's the wild, wild West, but we ran a, we run a survey every year on services procurement. And what people's main concerns are, rogue spend and miss savings is number one has been number one for the last two plus two years.
00;54;37;24 - 00;54;56;16
Jonny Dunning
We'll see what comes out in 2026. But it's this kind of chaos, that there is going on in a lot of companies that they are trying to get on top of where it's Excel spreadsheets, word documents, scanned signed PDFs that may have milestones that may not. The milestones have probably changed, and none of it's in a system.
00;54;56;16 - 00;55;20;10
Jonny Dunning
And you'd have to look at the actual document. You know, all that sort of stuff is, is, as you and I know, far too common. And these are the types of problems that the switched on companies are really trying to get on top of. And they are they are doing that. And that's that's kind of what I wanted to come on to next, in the sense that, you know, you and I have seen the market evolve, but also I, I certainly have that.
00;55;20;10 - 00;55;39;04
Jonny Dunning
I'm sure you have as well, seeing some great examples where when people do get this right, it's all the justification in the world for what they set out to do, in the sense that, you know, the it's a greenfield and it's not like tweaking a contingent workforce program. What sort of value you're going to get out of it.
00;55;39;11 - 00;56;06;01
Jonny Dunning
The value that organizations get out of doing this is immense. And on a on a and should be interesting to hear your view on, how you would kind of articulate to people in the market that are thinking about doing this, that are thinking maybe it's not possible or it's not going to deliver the results I want? What what would be your message to them in terms of where you've seen this, where you see this has been successful and and doable?
00;56;06;01 - 00;56;28;27
Joe David
Yeah, yeah. I think, for our customers that we're starting off and that's services procurement journey. I think a lot of the reason they're going to do this is the early get some quick wins. Right. But the biggest thing was around cost savings in a couple different areas, like, my very first success as original client talked about back in 2008 when we first released that services procurement, solution, we had this really interesting opportunity.
00;56;28;27 - 00;56;48;12
Joe David
We had just rolled out the service procurement solution. Like I said before, it was a very baseline solution. Just managing the statements of work. But our procurement sponsor had an opportunity of this consulting supplier that did both staffing and IT consultancy They already had essentially a verbal award for very large IT contract. But we were about to load.
00;56;48;12 - 00;57;04;10
Joe David
Right. This SOW into the VMS. think that's about the baseline, you know, data input the workers, load rates, things like that. And I actually was a individual contributor was a special at the time when I saw when I was actually loading it into about to load into the VMS, when I realized, like, hey, the rates here just seems super off.
00;57;04;10 - 00;57;18;02
Joe David
Like, I don't know why they agreed to pay this one, because this company all sorts of stuff aug side. But I know for a fact there are a bunch of other companies that could do this work much work competitively. So I actually had the opportunity just based on the relationship to one, probably on our partner at the time.
00;57;18;02 - 00;57;34;25
Joe David
The very first one I called like a quick bid And at that point I was actually a complete manual. There was no sourcing technology yet in the VMS to to do that, but we basically did this quick and dirty mini RFP where we're like, hey, this is the or you invited that same supplier to actually formerly bid with rates.
00;57;34;27 - 00;58;00;13
Joe David
These, you know, different roles as collection of it, services. And then we engaged based on our data right in the staff aug MSP, these two other IT staffing suppliers that basically provide really competitive rates with the understanding of their basic getting now like a bulk award right of work. So we did it. And when they actually went with a different supplier, they realized a huge amount of cost savings for an IT project that was gonna be there for two years that their CPO at the time actually use.
00;58;00;13 - 00;58;17;22
Joe David
Like, hey, this is an amazing outcome of actually doing competitive sourcing. And this is what at the time they organization where it's like so before the idea of actual competitive sourcing, they liked it, but they just simply weren't able to do it because it's still very reactive to the business. They just need to get work done. But we're able to do that over the course of a couple of weeks.
00;58;17;22 - 00;58;43;24
Joe David
So I brought that as an example, because that actually then was a true demonstrable example that the CPO brought to other business units of, hey, give the program a chance, right. Let's kind of get more of this data in the services procurement program, because I'm sure that story is repeating itself multiple times in different business units. And that really kind of helps drive more adoption, because those, business units, the other managers of the business unit and other business units, they wanted to see similar results.
00;58;43;24 - 00;59;05;26
Joe David
Right, because they obviously had cost savings goals, like had to, have. So I think a lot of it is, you know, starting off with those quick wins and that will then be those little mini case studies that bring the rest of the business along. And we have another example where it wasn't even competitive sourcing. We just were able to get some, really, great cost savings just through negotiation of extensions.
00;59;05;28 - 00;59;24;12
Joe David
It's the same thing. Like we were loading these SOWs within the VMS. We got some baseline visibility. what's going on. It just had one of our specialties being just curious right Okay, great. I've been working with this manager. They've asked to extend this three month statement of work four times already. It's now into year two. Why does it continually get extended?
00;59;24;12 - 00;59;44;00
Joe David
And after doing some conversation right with the business, you start really It's kind of just an open PO Or in those cases, the supplier. Actually it was not meeting their deliverables. Right. The point in the VMS at that time. But in the business agreement between the supplier and the manager, they weren't meeting their expectations, and the supplier was just kind of getting away with extensions, with additional budget, right, for something that was their fault.
00;59;44;00 - 01;00;00;19
Joe David
And that really shouldn't be the case. Right? It's a statement of work. The supplier should get some risk. And then we had some great negotiation opportunity to to have no cost extensions. Right. And even that in itself saved a good amount. But it's also really just an example for the procurement sponsor to show this is a business behavior that we knew was happening.
01;00;00;19 - 01;00;16;10
Joe David
But we never had the data to show it that we now are using as a way to advance the program forward. So again, I think a lot of it, if you're in a space where you want to do services procurement and you think it's too complicated to start off with a small quick example and that really help advance things further.
01;00;16;13 - 01;00;41;19
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, it's really interesting. It comes back to what you were kind of talking about earlier with regards to like where the people go Big Bang with these programs. I've seen a lot of success. You know, you talked about like having a baseline solution. I've seen a lot of success where people have gone piecemeal through different categories or different departments or different functions with that kind of baseline approach rather than a big bang approach.
01;00;41;22 - 01;01;02;17
Jonny Dunning
And I think for me, what can unstick the market, where I feel like a lot of companies have sort of said, oh, it's too difficult, it's too big to move. There's too many people who have to be involved in it. It's too much spend to try and get your program free. I feel like those things have like choked up the market a bit where people have just got stuck.
01;01;02;19 - 01;01;27;06
Jonny Dunning
And for me, agility, innovation, speed to market are the things that are going to free that up. Where where people need to be enabled to do things on a smaller basis, get moving quicker, help build their business case to to some of these companies, if they if they look at it and go, yeah, we've got 4 billion in services procurement spend, that's a pretty big thing to get kind of signed off.
01;01;27;12 - 01;01;50;04
Jonny Dunning
Maybe you don't want to start with the whole 4 billion. But like you say, if you've got parts of the business that are trying the stuff out, if it's like the I.T organization have got a really strong driver to get this sorted out, if they're doing really well with it, then it's certainly logical that someone who's in procurement excellence or operational excellence could look at that and go the way that that department are handling statement of work engagements is amazing.
01;01;50;06 - 01;02;19;14
Jonny Dunning
We've got all these other statement of work engagements in these other categories. Why aren't we doing that? So I think you can get that kind of spread from that solid base of that baseline offering. But I agree with you in terms of the kind of value drivers, it's, you know, it starts with things even like scoping, just like the time savings, like if you're helping people with scoping, whether it's the tech or the service provider that's doing it, you know, you can take people from taking three months to write a scope because they can't get round to it.
01;02;19;14 - 01;02;39;14
Jonny Dunning
We all know what it's like when you got to start something from scratch. AI massive, massive help on that side. And then when you're talking about the kind of competitive process, you know, we see people making savings just by putting a target price against the project. So rather than just saying, here's the budget, they could just say, well, specify a target price.
01;02;39;14 - 01;02;58;13
Jonny Dunning
And in a, in a in a system or for a service, they could just say the company might say target price is always 80% of budget, right. Or even just making the supplier feel like they're going through a formal process rather than just getting an email from Joe or Jonny to say, hey, here's a piece of work, you know, write the spec for me.
01;02;58;16 - 01;03;13;14
Joe David
Yeah, I think that's a key part of it, too. You know, the whole idea of trying to get more adoption for current competitive sourcing, you know, we always tell customers that we're a little apprehensive about it. We’ll invite your incumbent or your chosen supplier into it. And at the end of day, if you still decide to go with them, that's totally fine.
01;03;13;14 - 01;03;30;09
Joe David
We're not versus, you know, go on this journey of this effort because at the very least, it could help them just sharpen their pencil. Right. That's so good outcome in itself. And as a tangential outcome that that makes that buyer a little bit more aware of other suppliers that can do similar types of work. That is a great outcome.
01;03;30;12 - 01;03;49;11
Joe David
But it's to your point, there's other benefits of certainly in that scenario that incumbent supplier and the buyer, to your point, maybe when they thought the deal was just going to be sole source, they didn't have a heavy amount investment of actually creating a properly scoped up statement of work because it was essentially just a PO Yeah, but that exercise of like, hey, this is going to go to bid
01;03;49;11 - 01;04;09;16
Joe David
You now have to actually define what your requirements are, how the supplier provide the response, and then turn that into a well written statement of work. There's a lot of power in that and having the definition of the scope. And that goes into that other example where we did show in those patterns of these habitual extended statements of work that there was really no defined scope at all.
01;04;09;16 - 01;04;31;03
Joe David
So just in the sole practice of enforcing templates, right? And just like, hey, if you said this was a professional service agreement, it needs to use this template that has these specific milestone deliverables. Or it's like I said earlier, at least something that has some sort of supply risk on it that is enforced by the technology and by the process, and not just allowing, the business, which quite frankly, they don't want write statements of work themselves.
01;04;31;03 - 01;04;50;02
Joe David
Right. They probably just having the supplier do a lot of the work and they just kind of rubber stamp it, just providing some governance to help the business get that signature, which is important, out much more quickly. So that becomes, not a resistance to that. Like, they're not saying I don't have time for this because this contracting process can be a lot shorter than you think.
01;04;50;02 - 01;05;01;04
Joe David
It is even more, more effective than you passing this email back and forth with a supplier of a statement of work, and it just being on supplier paper with all the risks that are associated to that.
01;05;01;06 - 01;05;23;16
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, a fundamental level. You know, you're going to have every every companies have their key suppliers and they don't want to upset them, but there's no reason why they can't keep them honest. Because, you know, just by applying the correct processes, as you say, cutting out these unnecessary variations and stuff like that. The I've seen companies save millions per year just in reduced settlements where where stuff gets the end of the project, no one's happy.
01;05;23;16 - 01;05;40;00
Jonny Dunning
There's a big extra bill and it's not even a good result. But they still there's still all this cost. I've seen organizations bring that down to like basically zero from being it being a significant cost. So so I think yeah. And understanding those sort of things like okay, well we love this supplier and we think they're doing great work for us.
01;05;40;00 - 01;06;02;19
Jonny Dunning
But what's their actual win ratio. Oh they win ratio is pretty high. What's their average cost overrun. Oh that's interesting. So how are we contracting with them. It's just you know I just think it would be, in my opinion, negligent for companies not to take that approach. They can still love that supplier. And if they're measuring the performance of that supplier effectively, they should hopefully get the results.
01;06;02;19 - 01;06;13;20
Jonny Dunning
To say that supplier is amazing. Let's give them more work. Let's get other departments, make other departments aware of this supplier, because we should be doing more with these, this, this lot because they're doing a great job.
01;06;13;22 - 01;06;36;14
Joe David
Yeah. So it's interesting too because I, I agree with that. And I think it's starting I'm not going to say it's there yet, but when we talk about the benefits for buyers. Right. But I also do think that we're getting more since we're getting more of these, you know, value added services procurement programs we're getting to a point where I don't think suppliers or some smart services suppliers are seeing, you know, the wins and the change.
01;06;36;14 - 01;06;58;23
Joe David
And they're saying, hey, for me to, this is what the client is putting in place. And versus being this big detractor and trying to complain to whatever executive level relationship you have, here's some things you can do to actually just kind of go and play with the program. They can get a lot of massive benefit to to your point, if they start demonstrating through that data that we get to the program they’re in fact, one of the best suppliers for meeting deliverables on time.
01;06;58;25 - 01;07;21;22
Joe David
Right. Not having all these, ridiculous extensions, right. For, for cost, using all that milestone project data to show that they are one of the top suppliers, we can arm them with that information to to get more business in the organization or actually for other companies that they're working with as well. I think, I bring that up because that was definitely when staffing MSP came in place right in the 90s, early 2000.
01;07;21;24 - 01;07;43;26
Joe David
It was the exact same situation, right where probably only started with more of the transactional skill sets. And then there's this whole idea that IT staffing suppliers were this amazing thing that can be touched and no one wanted to do it But then obviously now every staffing company works in MSP space. I think that same evolution will happen right in the services procuremnt space with the buy big four the IT outsourcers.
01;07;44;02 - 01;08;05;08
Joe David
They're already in services programs. I manage dozens of programs with these companies and there. But I think at some point it's going to be more this like understood thing that yes, they do will always in fact play in these programs. And it goes to the, you know, the other point around, difficultness the point services procurement programs, I do think there's a lot of potential sponsors, but that's actually their main worry is the relationship with these suppliers.
01;08;05;11 - 01;08;28;00
Joe David
But the idea of these programs is not a foreign thing anymore for these type of companies. So their strategies obviously still need to first have the executive sponsorship on the buyer side, the whole strategy to get the suppliers to understand the benefits and get them on line. But I want to see the industry get to a point where those same service suppliers are seeing that same value that really good staffing companies have seen from staff aug MSP.
01;08;28;00 - 01;08;45;10
Joe David
It's right. It's going to happen. And a lot of it's going to be through giving the data, not the buyers but also the suppliers and showing them the benefits hey if you’re a top supplier, here we can get you these opportunities at XYZ other companies. Right. And that will benefit you as well. It's these solutions. It's a huge complex supply ecosystem.
01;08;45;10 - 01;08;51;08
Joe David
It will only be successful if all of the best players on both sides are seeing benefit from it.
01;08;51;10 - 01;09;18;19
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, I totally agree with you. And I've I've sometimes you know, we'll get clients ask us you know do you experience resistance from suppliers. The honest answer is no. You know we we've had incredible feedback to our to companies that we work with from their suppliers when they've rolled out these, services procurement programs in the sense that you know, there's more clarity for them, there's more organization, it's easier for them to communicate.
01;09;18;21 - 01;09;39;06
Jonny Dunning
They're not getting caught out by contractual gotchas and things awry in the projects they're getting paid quicker. You know, they got more visibility on stuff, that sort of thing, which is, you know, the amount of times that suppliers just, you know, some suppliers just forget to invoice the project, go by they just have an invoiced it And it's just, you know, it's we've seen a lot of support on that.
01;09;39;08 - 01;10;11;14
Jonny Dunning
And you know, it's like when when organizations are concerned I think, you know, what about my top level strategic suppliers. We've seen like won’t necessarily say like all of them but you know, most of the big guys, they're already running through programs in our system with different customers. They're actually they're they're running fine with it. And it's and it's and it's and it's great for them in terms of increasing that visibility, making their process more efficient and actually building a better relationship with the business rather than necessarily just with an individual like you still have that C-suite relationship.
01;10;11;16 - 01;10;31;19
Jonny Dunning
But they can also, you know, prove how good, you know, a service they're actually delivering to people. So, yeah, I think I think the value does sit on all sides, but that's also where for me, AI and technology can play a part. And I'll be interested in your viewpoint on that because for me, AI has done two things.
01;10;31;19 - 01;10;57;22
Jonny Dunning
So that technology is required to support this process because you can't do it manually digging complex high volume data, lots of unstructured information, all that sort of thing. But a lot of organizations back in the day, when we say it's just too difficult, I would say AI has done two things. One is it's made the fundamental argument of service procurement is too complicated, basically invalid.
01;10;57;25 - 01;11;20;22
Jonny Dunning
So know dealing with huge amounts of unstructured data, lots of it text based. Well guess what AI is brilliant sorting that out. So sorry that excuse gone. And people know that but also companies are saying what are we doing with AI in procurement why aren’t we utilizing it. This is a great area to take advantage of it. So it's take it is taking away the excuse for procurement teams that this is just too difficult.
01;11;20;24 - 01;11;44;19
Jonny Dunning
The second thing it's done, it's enabled tech providers like us. And by virtue of that, service providers like yourself it's enabled that service to have a much better user experience. And it's enabling much greater levels of adoption because you're making life easier for the buyer to write the scope. You're making it easier for the supplier to manage their interactions and keep on top of their projects and stuff like that.
01;11;44;21 - 01;12;05;22
Jonny Dunning
So for me, it's really about that kind of adoption and user experience. But in your when you look at the transition of kind of technology and AI in this space, what would you say is the, the ways that AI and technology has already and can in the future, help move this market forward?
01;12;05;24 - 01;12;24;12
Joe David
Yeah, I mean, it's been a huge impact. And I think fortunately, I've worked with a couple of programs We launched these AI solutions. You know, in the past five years. I mean, I think there's different ways that it's impacted the solutions in a really positive way. One is obviously like just the enablement for people to just focus on the more important things.
01;12;24;14 - 01;12;49;05
Joe David
You know, the example that I always brought up, we, were able to develop a solution where, you know, this whole idea of misclassification, right, has been been around for quite some time. And in the 2000’s 2010’s, I had projects over with customers where they'd give us these soft copy statements or work where we would literally have to highlights, you know, through the highlighter or something, just a piece of paper, the the specific data points or clauses.
01;12;49;05 - 01;13;05;07
Joe David
That points, it's a misclassification. And really it's okay. I only have like three people I'm borrowing right from an operations effective, we can maybe only tackle a couple hundred of these in the time constraint that we have. And we still have like a really good output, but it's a very small sample size, very intense, like the potential cost savings is less.
01;13;05;09 - 01;13;34;03
Joe David
But nowadays we have technologies that tend to your point, analyze hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of these statements of work the unstructured data highlight those key points that really then allow the people to focus on like the patterns. Right. And the pictures and really realizing really, huge cost savings and a much bigger, chunk. Right. And I think we got to the point where that technology has been able to show enough of a big opportunity that is really raising the ears of executive level individuals.
01;13;34;03 - 01;13;49;15
Joe David
Right? Like, oh, this is a huge amount. Whereas before like, yeah, that's nice. That's maybe like a couple of million cost savings, but oh, based on this, all this data we analyze, there's millions and millions potential risk or cost savings that are available to us. Right. So one, having technology to be able to enable that has been huge.
01;13;49;15 - 01;14;13;28
Joe David
But there's also not like thing on the front end from like a sourcing perspective that has added a huge amount of value, right to your point of this whole idea. And I think that's the reason why a lot of this resistance history is in place for competitive sourcing is a presumption that if I, as a business owner and agreeing to run an RFP, I am, basically losing three months of my life, right, to run a very specific it's a complicated IT project, right?
01;14;13;28 - 01;14;31;12
Joe David
It could be just so much and so the just build on it, right. As a procurement, practitioner, you know, if they don't have the right templates and things like that, it could take, you know, weeks if not months to go through a very complicated RFx whereas like using AI, enabling technology to actually write those RFPs much, much faster, right?
01;14;31;12 - 01;14;55;22
Joe David
And then also then use that to potentially recommend suppliers to invite into, the RFP exercises. It condenses the timelines so dramatically that that whole resistance becomes a non-factor. Right. So those business owners, and if anything, it becomes more interesting to them because like that technology and helping to build a really comprehensive RFI, RFP and then internal create a much more developed scope of work, right.
01;14;55;26 - 01;15;13;16
Joe David
Takes that, effort off the business owner to have to put all the effort building that statmeent of work as well too. So I think that's huge. And there the other thing that I think it's been interesting, it's been, the concept of it's been around for a while, like in the MSP space, VMS space. We've had this whole idea of like guided buying solutions, right?
01;15;13;16 - 01;15;30;10
Joe David
Which I think for the longest time was really just if then else logic. Yeah. Answer these kind of very, you know, linear type set of questions and based on how you answer the questions, were staring at a staff aug or services. I think there's been a lot more opportunity now, right, to actually have, like these agents.
01;15;30;10 - 01;15;47;05
Joe David
Right. Or like an orchestration solution using all the data and other factors to provide these recommendations of different channels to, to go through. Now, I it's been interesting to see those roll out, but I'm still, you know, obviously I have a bit of a bias because I'm people part of it as a service provider, part of it.
01;15;47;07 - 01;16;00;27
Joe David
I do think that those guided buying solutions have a lot of and these orchestration solutions can have a lot of value. But I still think there's a need to have like a human in the loop. And I know for a lot of like AI diehards that's like, don't say that type of thing, like the AI will do it.
01;16;01;01 - 01;16;22;05
Joe David
But I think we're at a point still in the world that people are still concerned about. Yeah. the AI can do a lot of great things, but I still need to have at least some touch of people, somebody in there. So I trust not only is it just the technology saying this, but there's somebody that's providing a human look at this and giving me a really good combined, piece of advice.
01;16;22;05 - 01;16;51;05
Joe David
So I think that's where you still can have like a really great experience of, like condensing a guided buying solution. So a lot of it is on technology, but still having a touch of a person, whether it's an MSP or maybe somebody in the procurement organization that provides a hey, great. Based on what the AI said, it says that you should probably go down this path, but let me let me take this and have a conversation with you, Mr. Missus Manager, because it could be that you could have just been saying the the answers that you think get you and the outcome that you thought you needed versus having a really good dialog and actually
01;16;51;06 - 01;17;06;01
Joe David
help me understand exactly what are you trying to accomplish, right. And teasing out other details that you probably aren't going to get through the AI on its own, because you're only kind of feeding data that you want the the AI to consume. Right? It's kind of like bad data, and you can't expect it's going to give you an amazing outcome.
01;17;06;01 - 01;17;13;14
Joe David
Need to get a lot of waff data from the data input, but also the additional data you get from the conversations that you have with those individuals.
01;17;13;16 - 01;17;41;09
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And in that kind of three point scenario, procurement buyer supplier, you've got people on the end of it in each case. And it's those relationships and those individuals that need to be dealt with. So yeah, I think you make a really good point. But it's really exciting to start seeing this stuff being utilized. And, you know, the, the people's reticence of using AI or nervousness using AI or even people thinking AI is just going to take my job, but do I want to resist that?
01;17;41;11 - 01;18;13;28
Jonny Dunning
You know, it's it's melting away in the sense that people are becoming more used to, using AI. And actually, if AI is behind the scenes making the user experience better rather than it just being we're just going to use AI if it's used as an enhancement for a process of, for a system and for a, a service, then I think that's, that's the most effective way to use it, because you're saying in every and every part of this lifecycle, what is the most effective way that AI can be used to make it easier, faster, safer for that buyer to engage with that supplier?
01;18;14;01 - 01;18;41;04
Jonny Dunning
And as you say, they there's people on the end of these people and IP based services. And the people that are buying them and the people that are trying to help manage it. So I do think that a really good point. I guess just to kind of wrap things up, really one of the the last thing I wanted to really kind of pick your brains on, although I do think we could have probably about 3 or 4 other conversations to talk about.
01;18;41;06 - 01;19;04;19
Jonny Dunning
Can you just give me a little bit of your take on the operational side of it, in terms of when you look at it as a service provider, what are the what are the how does that component of it really, add value? Because I sometimes feel that's a little bit taken for granted, maybe by organizations when they're going into this or when they're looking at a service provision.
01;19;04;26 - 01;19;07;28
Jonny Dunning
What what's your what's your take on that.
01;19;08;00 - 01;19;24;26
Joe David
Yeah. I mean, you know, operations. That's my entire career. It's near and dear to my heart and to how, I really got all this experience. But, you know, I think whether, you're an organization that you don't, whether you have an MSP or not, right. The people that are on the ground actually executing the work are key on the actual success.
01;19;24;26 - 01;19;41;17
Joe David
So, you know, I talked about a couple examples, to doing these, you know, misclassification projects. Right. That's a real, the whole point of doing a misclassification project is to make the moves happen, right? Move it to staff aug, get the cost savings. The technology right enables that and provides the great data, to do that.
01;19;41;17 - 01;20;03;28
Joe David
But it's the people that define the roadmap and the people that execute the work should realize the cost savings. So that's really that key combination. Right. So all of our solutions are a combination of our really amazing technology partners, but also people that know how to use that, data or that process that's enabled the technology to actually get the final outcome done.
01;20;04;01 - 01;20;25;00
Joe David
And, you know, misclassification projects I've done in the past couple of years, it was always a combination of us AI enabled technology that would, you know, point out the misclassification and provided that very high level analysis. But was then our people to create it based on analysis? Yes. There is a misclassification issue there using our people based experience and expertise.
01;20;25;03 - 01;21;00;11
Joe David
Now, this is the strategy to talk to these managers first, right at the sequence of conversations, the type of conversations, the for suppliers that we should target, right, for misclassification or reclassification based on our past history with them our relationships, those things will not happen with technology alone. It needs to be people that power the conversation and action and get that project over the finish line of getting the right negotiations, getting the restructure, the statement of work getting those workers moved to staff augmentation, you know, assignments and getting that final signature, all those things to realize the cost savings.
01;21;00;11 - 01;21;19;29
Joe David
So I think that's where a lot of this can fall If you don't have the right operators, you will get a lot of these, projects that the outcome ends up just being the data. Right. And then people are just like, yep, this confirms everything that I always thought, that's nice to know. But then you're like, I can't I don't have the bandwidth to do this.
01;21;19;29 - 01;21;34;17
Joe David
I don't have the expertise. And it just kind of sits up on the shelf and nothing really ever happens. So and I think that's where the frustration starts driving, right. With the sponsors, but also probably from the executive level as well too, like they great you want to go with the big four provider cost savings recommendation.
01;21;34;17 - 01;21;43;22
Joe David
They said this and now they're unable to actually execute it. So just having the right partners is incredibly important to making sure that actually happens.
01;21;43;24 - 01;22;07;04
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And it gets into that whole change management conversation, which is which is, you know, the critical part of it of like, you know, you can have the best ideas in the world, but if you can't actually get on and do it, then you might as well not bother. But now I think it's really good points. And, I think I, I personally think this conversation, your points that you're putting across, there's a wealth of knowledge there.
01;22;07;08 - 01;22;35;14
Jonny Dunning
I think this is hopefully should be really interesting and useful for people who are considering this, thinking about it. And and again, I would I would urge people that are thinking about this, have conversations with your peers, have conversations with service providers, technology providers, people who are expert in this space because there are more and more people, you know, developing that expertise and coming out of the woodwork in this space, particularly when it comes to peer to peer conversations.
01;22;35;16 - 01;23;00;19
Jonny Dunning
And, you know, that's how that's how this whole thing advances. And there's, there's so much opportunity for companies to benefit and also for service providers and technology vendors to to really build this market out and take it to the levels of maturity and, and value and savings and efficiency that you have in other areas, like the way that most organizations procure goods and like the way that most organizations run their kind of staff augmentation programs.
01;23;00;21 - 01;23;15;16
Jonny Dunning
So I think it's super, super exciting. So just in terms of from your own point of view, you, you you were sailing. I saw some stuff on LinkedIn. You looked like you were doing all kinds of fun stuff. What have you been up to most recently?
01;23;15;16 - 01;23;37;02
Joe David
Yeah, no. So I had a great career, an amazing. You know, MSP provider for 21 plus years. But, you know, I get to the point where I just. I need to just take a personal break. Right? So I took a sabbatical for about a year, and, travel has always been a huge part of, you know, what's important to me, throughout my entire life, to travel a lot for work to amazing places.
01;23;37;05 - 01;23;53;29
Joe David
But now I was able to take a whole year to kind of just travel to all types of places, like on my own terms and just not having, you know, this kind of, you know, looming worry that I'm missing something out at work going on. So, yeah, I, I was travel to seven different countries all throughout 2025.
01;23;54;01 - 01;24;10;25
Joe David
I'm based in the United States, so I also did road trips four times a cross-country trip with my dog. So a lot of our national parks is, just beautiful, national parks in the United States. And also just spent a lot of time with family. So I had a really great time to just kind of truly decompress.
01;24;10;27 - 01;24;33;29
Joe David
But with all that, it kind of just got me to be able to really appreciate the experience I've built in the industry over the 21 years, and we're really excited to get back into things, and that's what I'm doing now is just basically, working as a kind of consultant, right, for organizations that are maybe trying to figure out that business case for services procurement, also for for providers that are looking to mature their offerings.
01;24;33;29 - 01;24;53;22
Joe David
So, you know, services is, you know, what's happening in the future. And really just kind of taking that avenue. But it's been, it's been a really great time to take off, but I'm really excited to get back into things because to your point, there's a lot of cool, exciting things happening in industry. And I'm really, really excited to see what's going to happen in service procurement specifically in that couple years.
01;24;53;24 - 01;25;13;24
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, I think I think timing wise and you just at the right place at the right time, in my opinion, in the sense of the genuinely are not that many people with your level of experience and expertise in this area. And, you know, you've, you've, you've that's hard won experience that you've built up over the, over a, you know, a number of years.
01;25;13;24 - 01;25;30;26
Jonny Dunning
And I think that's really exciting in the sense of what you can bring to other organizations, whether it's end organizations or service providers or technology providers are like in this services procurement niche, you know, you I think you can bring some real value to it. And I and I really appreciate you joining me for a conversation.
01;25;30;28 - 01;25;49;24
Jonny Dunning
And it's just, you know, I want to celebrate the kind of knowledge and experience that you built up. Because I love it. I think it's fantastic. And it's really nice for me to talk to you and hear your take on things. Partly because what I'm listening to you talking about stuff, I'm thinking that's going to be really useful for people who maybe haven't had that type of conversation, at this point in the market.
01;25;49;24 - 01;26;01;09
Jonny Dunning
So. Yeah, look, I really appreciate you coming, and joining me for a chat today. What's the best way for people to get in touch with you as you kind of is it you know, LinkedIn, that sort of thing? Really?
01;26;01;11 - 01;26;17;27
Joe David
Yeah. LinkedIn is the best. You know, Joe David, it's it's like David, except I pronounce it differently. Just look that up. I'm on there. That's really the best way to get in touch with me. But no. Likewise. It's been. I always enjoy these conversations because we've been speaking for an hour and a half, but it didn't seem like it was just really very.
01;26;18;00 - 01;26;19;00
Jonny Dunning
It’s flown by
01;26;19;02 - 01;26;22;21
Joe David
Me. Yeah, well, so, yeah, it's.
01;26;22;24 - 01;26;28;10
Jonny Dunning
Been a real, real pleasure. And, Yeah. Look, I really appreciate you, Joe, so thank you very much.
01;26;28;13 - 01;26;29;11
Joe David
Yeah. Thanks, Jonny.