SOW spend management – CWS 2024 Survey Results

Executive Summary

SOW spend management is the biggest opportunity for anyone working in or around contingent workforce right now. Every year, $trillions are spent by businesses on services categories and engagements contracted under statements of work, and the opportunities to make hard savings, reduce misclassification risk and improve efficiency are everywhere.

To explore this topic and understand what people think about SOW spend management, we attended SIA’s CWS Summit in London, and surveyed attendees and their peers on LinkedIn. We gathered opinions from procurement professionals including category managers, heads of Procurement and CPOs from a range of categories including IT, consulting, and marketing, and a variety of industries such as Telecoms, Banking, and the Public Sector.

Over the course of the summit, we asked questions to discover who owns the SOW spend problem, how it is currently managed, what is pushing businesses to address SOW & service categories spend and what barriers are they facing.  What we found was surprising. As you’ll see, the majority really had no means of managing SOW spend effectively and while having the ambition to start, the barriers seemed too difficult. Behind the data, however, there was a belief that once you scratch the surface, it’s possible to make an effective start and build momentum.

Compiling the results shows there’s an appetite to continue the debate, to build a comprehensive understanding of the opportunities locked up in SOW spend. To do this, I’m proposing an SOW spend focused community, with physical and virtual meet-ups, to allow us to continue this discussion. I’d love for you to be involved. I’ll be in touch.

Best regards

Jonny

CEO

Zivio