The Future of Work Delivery & Services Procurement
Exploring how AI, workforce strategy, and evolving MSP models are reshaping the future of work. From services procurement and talent management to leadership and innovation, looking at how businesses can build smarter, more agile workforce solutions while keeping people at the center of transformation.
With Sam Smith, President, Pontoon
15:52 - The Rise of The Agentic MSP
39:54 - Utilizing Skills and Moving Towards Total Talent Management
48:38 - MSP and Technology Value
01:02:14 - Simplifying Services Complexity
01:17:20 - Suppliers and Strategic Workforce Planning
Episode Highlights
Transcript
Auto-generated. Please excuse any minor errors.
00;00;00;08 - 00;00;10;25
Jonny Dunning
Great. So I'm very pleased to welcome Sam Smith, President of Pontoon, to join me here live in London Bridge today. Sam, thank you very much for joining me. Welcome to the podcast.
00;00;10;26 - 00;00;26;07
Sam Smith
You are most welcome. Thanks for having me. And, yeah, I rode in on my bike. So I've got a helmet here for anyone that notices. But yeah, what a great spot. Really nice studios, great spot to get to. Great setup. Thanks for having me.
00;00;26;08 - 00;00;37;27
Jonny Dunning
When you said bike. Yeah, especially the fact that it was called Beyonce. I was assuming it was a bicycle. And so when you said, is there any bike parking? I was just thinking like a bike rack. Didn't realize it was a motorbike.
00;00;37;28 - 00;00;58;06
Sam Smith
Well, I mean, same motorbike is a little bit of a stretch. It is a MP3 which has two wheels at the front. So full disclosure, it's more of a mobility scooter for for a 52 year old lady. But I enjoy it and it gets me about it gives me a little bit of freedom. It's my third one now.
00;00;58;06 - 00;01;03;29
Sam Smith
So I'm a I'm a Piaggio MP3 advocate, I love it.
00;01;04;01 - 00;01;12;04
Jonny Dunning
Oh, perfect for zipping around London. And yeah, it's it's a different way to travel, but it's a bit more liberating. I would imagine it's. You like to do things differently.
00;01;12;05 - 00;01;26;22
Sam Smith
Don't you? I'm an eccentric, eclectic chooser of my own path, and that's part of it. People mock me on my bike. But you know what? As I sail by, I think mock me, I don't mind, I enjoy it, I really enjoy it.
00;01;26;23 - 00;01;27;21
Jonny Dunning
I like your style.
00;01;27;23 - 00;01;28;00
Sam Smith
Yeah.
00;01;28;01 - 00;01;32;25
Jonny Dunning
Thank you. Do you do what works for you? And. Yeah. Sometimes it's nice to do things a bit differently, isn't it?
00;01;32;26 - 00;01;33;05
Sam Smith
Yeah.
00;01;33;06 - 00;01;52;16
Jonny Dunning
For sure. So talking about doing things a bit differently, let's talk about your journey into the industry, because you've done some really interesting things. And, you know, we spent time together traveling to various conferences and things like that. And I've, I've heard some of the stuff that you've, you've done in the past, and I just find it really interesting and.
00;01;52;16 - 00;01;53;16
Jonny Dunning
It and.
00;01;53;16 - 00;02;17;00
Jonny Dunning
It gives me a very clear idea of kind of where you come from with your approach that is all about getting things done. And I think that certainly resonates with me. I very much in agreement with that. That's that's my philosophy as well. But would you just be able to give give our audience a bit of a background on how you got into doing what you're doing, where it all started, and what the journey has been.
00;02;17;00 - 00;02;17;16
Jonny Dunning
For you?
00;02;17;18 - 00;02;47;15
Sam Smith
Yeah. God, not a natural entry, but I suppose if you wrap our industry up into a word, it always comes back to recruitment. And most people didn't go to school or university with recruitment in mind. Everybody got it into it in an accidental way, and I'm no different. I very early on in my life, decided I was going to join the Royal Air Force.
00;02;47;18 - 00;03;09;12
Sam Smith
That was a fait accompli. It was happening. I didn't know what I was going to do in it, but that was my decision, and I think it was primarily down to growing up in a very sleepy little town in the southeast, Bexhill on Sea go Bexhill on Sea. But realizing that that wasn't where I was going to live my life pretty early.
00;03;09;14 - 00;03;45;02
Sam Smith
So I did during the Air Force and I became a mechanical engineer or a rigger, as they're known, which basically you spend most of your time lubricating different bits or taking things out and replacing them with other things. I loved it. I was on 60 Squadron stationed at RAF Benson, had an amazing time with, you know, a group of 80 odd uncles, brothers and granddad's, you know, who all took care of me in their own very special way, which included initiations and all sorts of things, which is how things were back then.
00;03;45;02 - 00;04;08;24
Sam Smith
And I don't regret it for a minute, I loved it. It was a short career. I can't pretend I was a 22 yearer. I mean, obviously I'd be 70 if that was the case, but it was great. I loved it and I specialized on helicopters. Wessex, the good old lady of the skies and had a wonderful short military career.
00;04;08;27 - 00;04;41;23
Sam Smith
Then I accidentally got into staffing and I worked in reading for an owner managed company called Gravity Personnel. Wonderful family owned business, and I learned the business. And I learned the business. And finding temporary workers to go and do the six till two, the two till ten, the ten till two at Waitrose, driving up and down the A329M. in a minibus full of people and figured out what staffing was.
00;04;41;24 - 00;05;14;07
Sam Smith
And, and after that I kind of evolved more into professional staffing, IT engineering, particularly railways, really, really enjoyed that and then kind of organically moved more into solutions, which made more sense to me. You know, I'm not an academic. I didn't go to university. I'm a people person, and I like to solve problems and found that that kind of grounding of understanding the job put me in a really, really good position.
00;05;14;12 - 00;05;45;28
Sam Smith
And now, even in the role I'm in today as a President of of Pontoon, which I'm incredibly proud to be. I'm really lucky that I had the journey I had. It wasn't easy. It was a lot of fun and I made hundreds of mistakes along the way, met brilliant people, learned a bunch, and figured out that now, in my role, there's probably not a job that exists within our industry that I haven't done in some way.
00;05;45;29 - 00;06;18;25
Sam Smith
So I'm never asking somebody or expecting somebody to deliver something that I haven't had some experience, either directly or indirectly, of doing myself. I've been on site, I've been a solutions consultant. I've designed solutions, I've sold them, I've done the RPO piece, I've been a recruiter. I've really been in every part of the workflow along the way. And I think that's why I'm I'm okay at what I do and kind of resonate with the teams that work around me.
00;06;18;25 - 00;06;26;05
Jonny Dunning
So yeah, that must make you very understanding. And also very difficult to make excuses.
00;06;26;05 - 00;06;27;12
Jonny Dunning
To.
00;06;27;14 - 00;06;53;22
Sam Smith
When you say understanding, you know, people listening to this or watching it, you know, we'll go, no, you know, she's relentless because, you know, when you have been knocking on somebody's door at 5:00 in the morning to get them to work for 6 a.m., you don't take no for an answer. You don't allow for excuses that don't get solved with a little bit of extra hard work.
00;06;53;23 - 00;07;16;28
Sam Smith
And that can be hard, and particularly with the generational working that we have today, I think the way in which probably you and I, I'm probably older than you, Jonny, but the way we started out, it was a lot of elbow grease and running through walls and running across, you know, uncomfortable. You know, I call it a Lego field, right?
00;07;16;29 - 00;07;47;09
Sam Smith
That hurts. And it's really hard. But I don't think the expectation of younger generations is to have to work like that. So I think, you know, I perhaps sometimes my expectations are a little bit too high, and perhaps at times it feels relentless. But I won't apologize for having high expectations. I do bring them down a bit. I've got an amazing team around me and they're like, yeah, people are, you know, a bit tired now.
00;07;47;09 - 00;07;49;25
Sam Smith
And I'm like, oh, okay. So you.
00;07;49;25 - 00;07;54;10
Jonny Dunning
Know, but it's an attitude that breeds success. And and you know, you can see.
00;07;54;10 - 00;07;55;05
Jonny Dunning
It.
00;07;55;08 - 00;07;57;22
Jonny Dunning
Rub off on the team around you.
00;07;57;25 - 00;07;59;17
Jonny Dunning
And I think also if you look.
00;07;59;17 - 00;08;01;18
Jonny Dunning
Back at.
00;08;01;20 - 00;08;03;14
Jonny Dunning
The early start you.
00;08;03;14 - 00;08;04;06
Jonny Dunning
Had.
00;08;04;08 - 00;08;22;27
Jonny Dunning
Working in that military environment, you know, logistics is a massive part of it being organized as a massive part of it, getting things done on time and getting them done right. You know, making sure the aircraft is good to go. All the boxes are being ticked. Everything like that. It's it's this kind of failure is not an option mentality.
00;08;22;27 - 00;08;54;15
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. I had a brilliant mentor, two brothers actually, who were particularly fantastic mentors for me Eric. Eric Potts and Keith Potts. The Jobsite guys, that was very much their mentality is like, failure is not an option. They were always, what can we do better? What can we do next? Throughout your career, have there been I'm sure there have been many people who've kind of inspired you, but were there any kind of particularly memorable mentors that kind of you, you thought, yeah, I, I can see what they're doing.
00;08;54;15 - 00;08;56;27
Jonny Dunning
And they recognize that in sparking you as well.
00;08;56;28 - 00;09;05;04
Sam Smith
Yeah. Very much. You know, I probably go back to a secondary school teachers, you know, Mrs. Cross, for example.
00;09;05;06 - 00;09;05;29
Jonny Dunning
And great name for.
00;09;05;29 - 00;09;30;23
Sam Smith
A teacher I know, I know and, and I think husband's name was Bob. So being an immature child, Bob cross just sounded funny. But Mrs. Cross or Jackie Cross really inspiring, you know, and also somebody that I think kind of got me right. But then in the Air Force, Neil Warner. Wolfie, what a guy. Right? Somebody that also got me.
00;09;30;25 - 00;10;05;02
Sam Smith
I'm then there are also friends along the way that have have been not just friends but also people that I'm inspired by that have given me an opportunity to think about who I am, how I want to show up. And you know, Theresa Carol previously Kelly OCG and then of course, at Magnit. There have been many I'm not not just women, but also men, colleagues, friends, but also people that I've looked and watched from afar that perhaps I've never spoken to, but I can be inspired by.
00;10;05;04 - 00;10;33;11
Sam Smith
I think the other part of that, Jonny, is when you grow up in office locations like I did, and you also learn not just from those people you want to be like or you are inspired by, but you also see and observe those that you think, I don't want to be like that. And I think that's equally as helpful and as powerful as being inspired by people.
00;10;33;11 - 00;10;53;10
Sam Smith
It's like, yeah, I don't I don't want to be that person. That doesn't work for me. So I learned my leadership styles and, you know, and I've not always got things right. I've learned some painful lessons along the way. But ultimately, I think it comes down to understanding from a human perspective again, how you want to show up.
00;10;53;10 - 00;11;17;10
Sam Smith
We talked about failure not being an option, but also learning that failure is okay. You have to allow for failure in the process. Firstly, that's how you get better and people don't need to be in a place where they think, oh my God, I didn't get that right, or I screwed up or that didn't work, that's okay. It's okay to fail.
00;11;17;10 - 00;11;38;05
Sam Smith
And that's one of the big lessons. It took me quite a long time to figure out, particularly after the military, which was on time, you know, jump how high? Yes, yes. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Whatever it might be, you then get into Civvy Street and the attitude is entirely different, which is quite an adjustment to, to deal with.
00;11;38;06 - 00;12;08;06
Sam Smith
And look, my military career was a really, really long time ago, but it was a formative period that I think put some discipline into how I think as a human, that's been very helpful. But then those people that you mentioned, being mentors, being inspirational, but also just being this kind of steady stream of people that I've taken learnings from along the way have been really important.
00;12;08;07 - 00;12;31;24
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, definitely. I agree with you. We're saying about the kind of, you know, it's it's fine to get things wrong. It's fine to make mistakes. It's all part of the problem solving exercise. And I think that is that is something that works really well with a team where you're all trying to solve a problem. Yeah. And, you know, the value in the team is I know you value very highly.
00;12;31;27 - 00;12;52;16
Jonny Dunning
When you look at the, the journey through that staffing sector, once you got into that, I mean, staffing is problem solving and it's problem solving with the most complicated product you can possibly have, the human being. Yeah. And, and I know that there's a lot of evolution happening at the moment, and there's been a lot of change over the last few years.
00;12;52;19 - 00;13;12;05
Jonny Dunning
But that does require that flexibility in adapting to problem solving. So when in terms of that journey through the staffing industry, when you got into the MSP side of things, what was the main thing that was kind of the really struck you as being different about that? How did it? How did it change and expand what you were doing?
00;13;12;07 - 00;13;34;14
Sam Smith
Reporting and analytics. You know, I think when you're looking at scale and customers that have bought a solution or a framework of a solution, back in those days, it was still very analog. You know, everything was on spreadsheets. VMS technologies were very early days. You know, we were dealing with technologies like Brass Ring. That's how old I am, right?
00;13;34;21 - 00;14;03;08
Sam Smith
And Step Stone and, you know, all of those which were fantastic beginnings of difference. I think what's really interesting with the technologies on the ATS and the VMS side is the advancement that they gave in reporting and analytics became somewhat arrested. So it then came down to the solution provider to fill the gap in. How does the client want to see data?
00;14;03;08 - 00;14;36;26
Sam Smith
What does the data mean? Are you looking at workflow milestones or of time to hire? Time to fill CV quality conversions? That acceleration of a customer then having an interest in data, I think was the first point because everything prior to that, it's very transactional. You know, it's job person, put them together. Does that work? Yes. Fantastic. If it's a permanent hire, it's a one and done.
00;14;36;26 - 00;15;06;17
Sam Smith
If it's multiples and then you're getting to scale, you're getting to hundreds or thousands of requisitions. Then in the contingent space, particularly in the area where I was in, which was predominantly railway engineering back in those days. You're then talking about systems of record around compliance, competency management systems. Back then it was LinkedIn or Sentinel not LinkedIn, Link Up and Sentinel.
00;15;06;17 - 00;15;31;24
Sam Smith
I can't remember or don't know if they're still relevant today, but all of those components within the technology framework and managing competencies and certainly safety certification and onsite trackside certifications, that was all a big part of it. And as the MSP or a service provider responsible for scale, that was then something that I'd not seen as a recruiter.
00;15;32;00 - 00;15;52;16
Sam Smith
So that transition from being a recruiter or even a manager of teams of recruiters across to customer facing expectations, surrounding wanting to be able to see everything that meant data and that meant reporting. And that was quite new.
00;15;52;18 - 00;16;18;03
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And I look at the the way that the MSP space has evolved to over the last few years in terms of kind of being required to look at a broader and broader and broader remit. It ultimately comes down to capacity and capability. And this is where it's interesting. And we can discuss later how that's expanded into the the services procurement world as well.
00;16;18;03 - 00;16;42;03
Jonny Dunning
But ultimately, organizations are wrestling with the problem of how do they get stuff done. And, you know, you guys are trying to help them solve that problem. So so tell me a little bit more about kind of where things are now, because I know with what you're how you're envisioning the future of the MSP, that's something that's really developing at a pace.
00;16;42;03 - 00;16;53;08
Jonny Dunning
I've heard you talk about agentic MSP. Do you want to just talk a little bit about what that is and what your kind of vision is for this agentic MSP model?
00;16;53;10 - 00;16;56;28
Sam Smith
Yeah.
00;16;57;00 - 00;17;28;17
Sam Smith
So I'm not the expert here, but I do have a vision and I'm really lucky that I've got brilliant people within the business that can then take that vision and use their expertise. So if I clunk my way through this and Christian and my team, if you are watching, I apologize. But the vision is really clear. You know, with the advent and speed at which AI is having an impact on our lives and the ability to do things perhaps better and perhaps faster.
00;17;28;17 - 00;17;56;17
Sam Smith
I say perhaps because I do believe that there will be humans within the business. Humans play a significant role as part of the process, but I believe that moving to an agentic MSP is the future of MSP. Now, anybody that knows me will have heard me over the last ten years speak about our industry having not evolved, right?
00;17;56;19 - 00;18;42;23
Sam Smith
You know, you look at 25 years ago and you look at an MSP today, there's really not a great deal of difference. It's a blend of technology, people and process. That's it. Now that's not going to change, but the way in which technology is leveraged to change the experience, I think is really important. When you look at the HR tech landscape, including MSP, VMS, ATS, procurement technologies, procurement from a PO perspective, finance approval, all of these things, somebody can be dealing with upwards of 25 different technology engagements on a daily basis.
00;18;42;25 - 00;19;10;02
Sam Smith
You then start throwing in expenses and travel and you know how you do your work. Then that becomes really overwhelming. From a technology perspective, I'm of the belief that we can and know we can because we're in that space now. Change the experience for the customer to get to a native experience for them. Use your operating system that is your native system within your business today.
00;19;10;02 - 00;19;46;12
Sam Smith
If you're a Microsoft user, then we should be able to deliver our service through teams, through Copilot, without the need for you to have to interact with multiple technologies behind the scenes. And, you know, I think the deployment of agents within that process will give a much enhanced user experience as long as it is bookend bookended, dovetailed, whatever the right terminology is with humans, because I don't want to lose the human component.
00;19;46;14 - 00;20;18;06
Sam Smith
I have 1011 employees today. It might be 1012 today at Pontoon. The introduction of AI is not going to mean any of those people lose their jobs. What it does mean is I can double, if not treble and quadruple the spend under management and the service that we deliver to customers around the world without having to double and triple and quadruple the headcount in the business to service that.
00;20;18;09 - 00;20;54;16
Sam Smith
It also means that there are opportunities for people within our business today to learn an entirely new job. You take the Ikea story of 8000 customer services representatives that were replaced with an AI solution. Those people didn't lose their jobs, AI didn't impact their income. But what I recognized is you had a huge volume of people that knew their catalog better than anybody else, so they repurposed and gave an alternative opportunity to those people to deliver a different role.
00;20;54;16 - 00;21;15;04
Sam Smith
And that created, I think, over €1 billion of additional revenue. So 8000 people didn't lose their jobs. And I might be getting my numbers wrong. By the way, apologies if I'm wrong. It might not be 8000 and it might not be a billion. But the story is as it was, same with other organizations. And and we're going to be no different.
00;21;15;04 - 00;21;41;12
Sam Smith
So I'm, I'm in a place where. Going back to your earlier comments, failure isn't an option. I am of the belief that an agentic solution is the evolution of MSP. And as I say, you know, I've been saying for ten years, get a grenade, throw it in the middle of MSP, blow this thing up because it's an antiquated model.
00;21;41;14 - 00;22;10;03
Sam Smith
But whenever you do that, you set a challenge to a customer that is used to a particular commercial model, typically a supply chain managed or supply chain funded model that pays for it. Net zeros out the cost to the customer. If you try and change the way in which it happens and the customer buying journey isn't aligned to that change, it then becomes very difficult.
00;22;10;06 - 00;22;40;17
Sam Smith
Many of our VMS providers try to change to licensing fees and move away from the percentage of spend. Commercial methodology. It's been really hard to move away from that because the client keeps pulling it back to know we want supply funded and this is the only way we want to see it happen. So at some point with an agentic service, we're going to have this SaaS component and the service component.
00;22;40;18 - 00;23;10;18
Sam Smith
How do we bring that together with a better commercial modeling that supports supply chain? Suppliers have been squeezed over time and continue to see their margins erode, with MSP fees and service fees then coming to them to to fund these solutions. It then becomes more margin erosion. And, you know, I think there's this space for everybody to do well, the space for the client to save money.
00;23;10;18 - 00;23;36;29
Sam Smith
There's space for the MSP to not be seen as a not for profit organization, and this space for supply chain to do very well. And I say supply chain, not just staffing providers, because of course, a huge part of what we're doing is very much outcome based. So we're talking about service providers, professional services and outcome delivery is more and more prevalent.
00;23;37;00 - 00;23;39;22
Sam Smith
In fact, over and above staffing would you know?
00;23;39;23 - 00;24;05;14
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And I think it's really interesting because what this requires is a greater understanding and recognition of value within the client organizations, which again, comes back to what you were talking about earlier, data insights, predictive analytics, that sort of thing. Because the more sophisticated the buyer is in understanding the opportunity, the more they can see the value that they're getting, the savings that they can make.
00;24;05;15 - 00;24;30;02
Jonny Dunning
And what we're talking about here are, you know, the the traditional kind of MSP contingent workforce only there's a lot going on. There's a lot of people involved in the process. There's multiple agencies. There's lots of things happening in a fairly complicated process. So by bringing in effective process governance supported by technology, that's just making everyone's jobs easier to do and making the whole thing more efficient.
00;24;30;02 - 00;24;52;07
Jonny Dunning
When you start expanding that out into the the services procurement supply chain as well, you've suddenly got a supplier looks different. What the supplier interface looks like is totally different. And actually supplier sourcing and selection is then very important. Whereas on the contingent workforce side, the agency suppliers, the staffing suppliers are taken care of that. But suddenly it's now direct to the to the MSP to sort that out.
00;24;52;09 - 00;25;16;22
Jonny Dunning
So I think it's really interesting to look at how that's changed over time. And I think, you know, more and more organizations are starting to get a better understanding of value. And I think that's a procurement, a procurement wide legacy issue where it's just cost has always been the thing that they're addressing rather than value. And that is something that procurement have been talking about changing for a long period of time.
00;25;16;24 - 00;25;35;28
Jonny Dunning
This is where things like AI are making a massive difference to hurdles like that that traditionally existed. It's too difficult to calculate that. Well, you know what? It's not anymore. That excuse has gone. And I think the other thing that just just to touch on what you were saying there around user experience, I think that's a very good insight.
00;25;36;00 - 00;25;57;01
Jonny Dunning
That's exactly the way that we as a technology company view AI, where the value is it's user experience on all sides. It's making the process easier. It's stripping out the, the, the annoying stuff that shouldn't be there, that you shouldn't have to worry about so that the human in the loop can then do the important thinking, and they can do the relationships and they can manage that.
00;25;57;01 - 00;26;31;10
Jonny Dunning
And if you look at supply chain, whether it's staffing suppliers with contractors and temps coming into the business, or whether it's professional services, IT services, facilities, engineering services, etc those services suppliers or those staffing companies, the relationship needs to be good. So by bringing up rating the whole experience for everybody. It allows them to be more focused on that, those relationships, which is critical when there is more and more competition for the skills that are required and the capabilities that are required, because everything's just moving so quickly, particularly in technology.
00;26;31;11 - 00;27;12;10
Sam Smith
Yeah it is. I think we've also got this false narrative, and I'll be brave in saying something of a false narrative. We're already seeing within procurement questions coming in from an RFP perspective around AI and cost savings. And there seems to be this almost inability to recognize that introducing AI is costly. It's very expensive to build agents and, you know, build and maintain your technology systems to then run agents.
00;27;12;10 - 00;27;47;09
Sam Smith
It's not free. So organizations that are getting ahead of agents and solutions, we're then coming up to a buying community that are already expecting cost savings to be driven by AI. Now, what I think is more reality is we're replacing some of that headcount costs with investments in technology, which are going to take some time to realize. So there's immediate cost savings for the customer are not not they're not there yet.
00;27;47;09 - 00;28;14;15
Sam Smith
And really they know that in their own businesses, you know, so using the commercial hammer on an already commoditized industry in saying, well, AI, you know, you can do this a lot cheaper. Now I'm, I think, well, let's not forget about the investment that's having to happen here. And that is not insignificant. We really need to balance the commercial piece.
00;28;14;15 - 00;28;44;17
Sam Smith
And we're already seeing a lot of organizations that took out a lot of headcount say, well, actually it's costing us a lot more to do this now or it's not the best experience. We need to bring some of those people back into the business. We're seeing that globally. We're seeing that with some significant brands. So my I have a proximity promise, right, in balancing being where our customers are walking the halls, being there for them.
00;28;44;22 - 00;29;15;24
Sam Smith
Right? I don't want to call it a white glove service because I think that's an overused term. But, you know, being there, being seen, being able to speak to or engage with your buying community, your user community or stakeholders, I think is really, really important. And stakeholders also include, of course, suppliers. That's really, really important. Looking at your geo location strategy is really important.
00;29;16;01 - 00;29;48;11
Sam Smith
And your agent strategy. So now we've got these three channels of proximity to customer geolocation. Being able to do some of those repeated repetitive tasks offshore in different locations with groups of people in and on location that are learning from each other. And then your agentic strategy bringing those three things together, then I think in time is going to change the commercial model.
00;29;48;11 - 00;30;15;18
Sam Smith
But I worry that the particularly procurement, I love procurement, by the way, I'm not hammering the procurement community, but we have to get a balance on understanding and recognizing the infrastructure and investment in different types of skill types to build and execute the agentic strategy isn't free.
00;30;15;21 - 00;30;44;04
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, I think that the phrase investment is an important one to consider there, because what you're trying to do is you're trying to build the capability for scale. And for me, from a technology perspective, and I think this applies very much to the service perspective for you guys, enabling your customers. I think what organizations should be worrying about is how am I going to compete in my market?
00;30;44;07 - 00;31;10;18
Jonny Dunning
You know, it is such a tough, competitive market out there. There's so much change. Organizations are under more pressure and stress than ever. How do you compete? And you know, the long term value of being able to compete effectively by far outweighs short term cost cutting. That doesn't necessarily benefit the business in terms of how it operates. A scale operates in the future.
00;31;10;18 - 00;31;31;13
Jonny Dunning
And that is, I think, where the real partnership opportunity lies in terms of that relationship, to be able to push out to an intermediary like an MSP and say, we need to compete effectively, how can you help us do that? Yeah, it's part of that logistical setup that I was talking about earlier in terms of how do we get stuff done?
00;31;31;16 - 00;31;57;20
Jonny Dunning
And I think that's where this whole kind of work delivery or workforce agenda gets pushed up effectively to the C-suite. I once had a really somebody I really respect, a CEO who said, look, the most important thing I want to know is what's the most effective use of my resources. And if you're carrying out any kind of campaign, you're trying to get things done, I don't know, you're trying to get your family to help you dig a pond in the garden.
00;31;57;20 - 00;32;13;01
Jonny Dunning
It doesn't matter what it is, but basically understanding what resources you've got and how to deploy them effectively is so critical. But when you take it to that level of looking at competitiveness, I think that sometimes can get missed where there's a bit of a short sighted approach to it.
00;32;13;03 - 00;32;57;27
Sam Smith
Agree. And competitiveness cannot just be about price. No, no, it's got to be about so many other components. And I think that's really important. If it's just about price, then, you know, some of the behaviors in the market that we've seen, you know, across many providers has really hurt the pricing methodology. You know, a race to the bottom, really, really difficult, particularly organizations that have alternative revenue streams that can be leveraged, that then make it okay to win the MSP at zero or a loss because, you know, you've got alternative channels to lead in and make your revenue or your money.
00;32;57;27 - 00;33;37;29
Sam Smith
But ultimately, I think that competitiveness story is really difficult. You know, I used to laugh quite a lot when clients would put in an RFP or ask a question, which is, you know, what's your what's your unique selling point? What differentiates you? And the only thing people can say is people, because everything else is the same. And I remember saying to a customer earlier this year, you know, they were coming to RFP and I said, look, I want to bid for this.
00;33;37;29 - 00;34;07;09
Sam Smith
I think we would be an amazing partner for you, but not in the not in the mindset of just changing our jersey. If you imagine a football team, there's no point picking the red team and then going to a black team or a green team or a blue team, I will bid on this work. If you'll accept a bid that takes us from the solution as it looks today to a future state.
00;34;07;15 - 00;34;31;09
Sam Smith
Different scenario, some of which doesn't exist today. But you're, you know, have to trust me on the journey. And they said, yeah, we'd love to hear about it. Now, do I think we will win that solution? Do I think that's a bit of a stretch for a large organization to accept a solution that's not quite built yet for anybody in the marketplace?
00;34;31;09 - 00;34;58;16
Sam Smith
I don't think so. But what it did do was forced us to think differently, forced us to invest and accelerate our own journey on this path much, much faster. Because I don't think that there is any value in a client changing vendor just to change the football kit. There's no there's no value anymore, particularly if it's a second or third generation.
00;34;58;16 - 00;35;23;25
Sam Smith
It just comes. It comes down to people. So do you not like your program team that much that you want to change, or is there real differentiation in what you want to achieve as a customer? With your workforce model over and above what you have today? Because the cost of change is significant. So if you're going to do it, there has to be a really, really good reason.
00;35;23;25 - 00;35;33;01
Sam Smith
And it can't just be price. Because if you if you if you go down that pricing methodology perspective, nobody wins.
00;35;33;03 - 00;36;08;03
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And I think it's I think it's a really good juncture in the market in terms of what's changing to move away from that commoditized approach. Like you say, drill down to the lowest common denominator kind of race to the bottom type scenario, because when you start bringing in the broader work delivery discussion around that broader capacity, and you bring in things like service, add services, procurement into the mix, what you're talking about is a significant unlocking value that suddenly this greenfield scenario where there are massive gains to be made.
00;36;08;05 - 00;36;35;26
Jonny Dunning
And that's sometimes where I think, you know, these, you know, organizations should understand the broader context of this in the sense that it's more a true conversation about total workforce, total capability, total capacity, because it knits everything together and it brings these these areas together, which are very different. But it's that value unlock. That means it needs to be a different type of conversation.
00;36;35;26 - 00;36;55;20
Jonny Dunning
And as long as the the MSP can share, they're bringing the value to that. Then I think it's a perfectly rational conversation. But like you say, otherwise, if it just gets commoditized, it just becomes low value transactional. And that's the thing is, low value transactional stuff is where AI is kind of.
00;36;55;23 - 00;36;56;14
Sam Smith
Exactly.
00;36;56;15 - 00;37;22;08
Jonny Dunning
You know, allowing some stuff that is really low value and really transactional, which should be automated to be automated. So it's like, okay, how do we get cleverer? How do we move up the value chain with this? And I think I've been at I'm sure the same for you, been at plenty of conferences over the years where there's somebody doing a talk about total workforce or total talent, and people kind of go, yeah, yeah, you know, it's just kind of words.
00;37;22;08 - 00;37;50;27
Jonny Dunning
It's the same old thing that's been trotted out for five years, ten years, whatever. But now I feel like we're really getting towards a point where if you look across all of the channels perm, headcount, contractors, temps, freelancers, gig workers, agents, services, procurement, if you can manage all of those different channels effectively, then you can orchestrate it. And that's when you can start to really look at the data and make smart decisions about what's the most effective way for us to get this work done.
00;37;51;02 - 00;38;12;24
Jonny Dunning
What's the most effective use of all of our resource channels or work delivery channels? I always call them. So I think that's really exciting, and I've seen real world evidence of it within organizations where they are actually looking at total workforce. And it was just they couldn't really do it before because some of the channels weren't there and they had no way to consolidate the data.
00;38;12;24 - 00;38;35;28
Jonny Dunning
So I think that's a really exciting opportunity. Dow Chemicals is, is a company that I'm thinking of in particular. And I had a really interesting podcast with one of the senior procurement ladies at Dow Chemicals, and that was the bit that was always missing was the service became a bit. Once they nailed that, they really could start looking at this within their engineering divisions and say, well, okay, we've got these different options.
00;38;35;29 - 00;38;57;22
Jonny Dunning
What's the most effective way to do it? So I think with what you're talking about with this, agenetic MSP set up and the focus on that data, and certainly from my position where I see it in relation to services procurement is different data. But if you can capture that and you can start bringing it all together, it really opens up some exciting opportunities.
00;38;57;22 - 00;39;18;05
Jonny Dunning
And I think another area that's really exciting is just actually having to go almost through the process of understanding the client's problem new, because if you look at the way that the the MSP and that contingent workforce model has been fairly fixed and static over the last number of years, it's just it's just assumed it's just the same.
00;39;18;12 - 00;39;35;10
Jonny Dunning
But now it feels like almost organizations need to go back and revisit the problem statement. And so so I know you guys have been doing some work, with what Jay is doing around instinct. So how does that fit into the model with what you're doing?
00;39;35;14 - 00;39;45;15
Sam Smith
Well, very much. Well, firstly, congratulations. I think for both of us, we've been together since, what, 10:00 this morning. So two hours and neither of us said the word orchestration.
00;39;45;16 - 00;39;46;16
Jonny Dunning
Hey.
00;39;46;18 - 00;39;47;05
Sam Smith
So for.
00;39;47;05 - 00;39;53;05
Sam Smith
Those of you playing buzzword bingo, you got your orchestration in,
00;39;53;07 - 00;40;30;13
Sam Smith
The the up. Right. Let's talk about skills first. You know, when you talk about total talent management, the understanding of skills, I think is a baseline that not many organizations have really nailed. You look at skills, you look at internal mobility, you look at all of those different channels, as you mentioned, right. You've got your pre payroll, you've got consultants, freelancers, independent contractors, temporary workers, outcome based services, procurement professional services.
00;40;30;13 - 00;41;01;21
Sam Smith
And and it goes on when you look at all of those channels and how skills are represented within those channels, whether it is outcome based or otherwise. And you know, I'd question a lot of the outcome based SOWs that are out in a lot of businesses. They are delivered by staffing providers under TNM and wrapped in to a document to get around a hiring freeze or on onboarding problem or whatever it might be.
00;41;01;23 - 00;41;28;12
Sam Smith
But ultimately, when you look at skills and how some organizations have already moved along this path, and when you look at organizations with people and culture functions and how TA and HR are working together to look at skills, I think that's part of the game change for total talent management.
00;41;28;15 - 00;42;04;05
Sam Smith
Is no secret to say that over the last five years, staff augmentation or staffing spend has continued to go down in the majority of large, mature MSPs. Services procurement spend has gone up. Now is that a balloon squeeze? Right. So using Theresa Carol's analogy of the balloon animal, is that a squeeze? And those people are literally just running through tunnels and popping up under professional services, which is less visible, less manage, less controlled.
00;42;04;10 - 00;42;28;14
Sam Smith
There's a celebration from the C-suite and saying, oh brilliant, well done. Your contingent labor spend has been going down. That's the tip of the iceberg that is so prevalent in the business. They see it. And then 12 to 18 months later, the services procurement or professional services spend balloon has then become really, really visible. And then there's this consistent.
00;42;28;14 - 00;43;03;22
Sam Smith
And this is what we've seen, the trend of the cycle of bringing that down. And then we see contingent labor go back up. I think normalizing and getting to correct classification of what is a services procurement piece of work, what is a valid and compliant SOW, Who are those vendors? And some vendors can bridge the gap. You know some vendors can deliver staffing and can genuinely deliver outcome based work.
00;43;03;24 - 00;43;36;03
Sam Smith
But oftentimes, the unregulated spend of those SOWs valued below 500,000, for example, whether that be dollars or pounds or euros, that is a long, long tail of unmanaged spend that builds up to be a lot of money for organizations. So again, when you look at the skills and you look at who is being onboarded in that ecosystem, then I think we're missing a gap.
00;43;36;05 - 00;44;10;09
Sam Smith
And we're often seeing people onboarded in those areas that are also have been badge holders in other areas too. And I think it's just messy. And until an organization sets those parameters and almost turns those toggles on of what a configuration of your workforce looks like and what is classified here and here and here. And some have got it right, and some have done an amazing job in creating those classifications.
00;44;10;09 - 00;44;44;08
Sam Smith
And it's working really, really well, others less so. And there are we see conflict. We see conflict between to the business procurement and other functional areas, because they don't want to give up this part of their portfolio or their spend or their remit, but that's just creating this consistency of the balloon contraction and then expansion. I know I've gone off tangent on your actual question, but I think it's it's connected in the broader scheme of things.
00;44;44;08 - 00;45;09;05
Sam Smith
I think at some point in the near future with the advent of AI and how are you guys using it in your technology is really changing the game. And, you know, when you think about being AI first in some of those areas, I think that's really, really important. And again, keep driving back to the experience layer for everybody in the process.
00;45;09;08 - 00;45;35;22
Sam Smith
I find it really interesting when we talk about services, procurement, people talk about the hiring manager. We're not hiring manager. You're not hiring a person, you're buying a service. So it's it's it's the crux of the problem of misclassification being so ingrained in the DNA of how people procure or use or engage services that that for me has got to be fixed.
00;45;35;22 - 00;45;51;06
Sam Smith
And misclassification shouldn't be underplayed, you know, when you're buying a service. But really what it is, is T&M and you don't have those controls, it's creating risk for the business.
00;45;51;08 - 00;46;15;29
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, it's growing massive risk. And I think, you know, even just having the wrong type of terminology within a platform, we've certainly learned this as a as a dedicated services procurement system that only deals with that if we use the wrong language. You just put off the procurement user, you put off the economic buyer, you put off those engagement managers, those buying managers who are used to going through a procurement process when they procure a service.
00;46;16;01 - 00;46;36;21
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. So I think it's critical, you know, I agree with you. It's it's there's a certain extent of it. There's going to be a balloon squeeze where headcount freezes or the fact that I can actually just get services budget through over here, as long as it's under 250 or whatever it might be. And miraculously, every project turns out to be $249.
00;46;36;24 - 00;46;54;28
Jonny Dunning
And whether it's just that or whether it's actually a combination of that and the fact that there is a bit more of a shift towards outcomes where organizations are saying, I don't want a team of people working on the never, never. I want to know what we're doing, how it ties in with the overarching strategy of the business or your department strategy.
00;46;54;28 - 00;47;19;27
Jonny Dunning
Within the overall strategy, what are we're going to get out of it? And I want more of a fixed cost understanding of it, which is one way of doing things. It's not necessarily the right way. It depends on the situation. It's horses for courses, as it always is with this sort of thing. So I think allowing those different work delivery channels to operate in the way that they're meant to is something that is going to really enable organizations to actually use them most effectively.
00;47;19;29 - 00;47;40;05
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, it takes on that misclassification issue, which is becoming a is a big risk. And I think it's becoming a bigger and bigger risk. But it also it also ties into this just this kind of you haven't got control over your spend. You haven't got control over what your people are doing now. You know, it depends culturally.
00;47;40;05 - 00;47;56;01
Jonny Dunning
And I'm sure you see this in your client base. Some organizations have quite a free culture where it's just like, you know, get on with it, make the decisions, do the right thing. We're all working towards the same objectives. Another companies cultures are very rigid, very mandated. Depends what sort of industry they're in. For one thing.
00;47;56;02 - 00;48;38;13
Sam Smith
It does. And, you know, perhaps I'll answer your actual question around Pontoon instinct, which will be helpful. But but that narrative, you know what we've just shared in the last 90s two minutes is really why pontoon instinct is so important to the business. So we've got Jay Eardly, who's an SVP leading Pontoon instinct, very, very experienced and was leading our operational excellence organization, which was an in business BAU group of very clever people supporting our programs and supporting customers to continue to evolve, tackle some of those challenges.
00;48;38;16 - 00;49;15;29
Sam Smith
You know, misclassification. We're seeing a balloon squeeze. Where is the spend going? Is that become rogue spend? How does that organization help those people? And those programs do a really, really good job. So there's a a field base in side the business piece of work that Pontoon Instinct delivers to our program teams. Then there is the external piece of perhaps customers that don't have an MSP could be self-managed, or considering an MSPs have a problem to solve, might not even know the problem that they're trying to solve.
00;49;15;29 - 00;49;45;15
Sam Smith
And Jay and his team, from a consultative perspective and advisory perspective, can help them. You know, we've got a lot of data, a lot of experience, a lot of tooling available to us where we can go in. And, you know, beyond the traditional maturity assessments, which I smile about because I think they too need, you know, really looking at, you know, anybody talking about a maturity assessment today is almost like a manual car, right.
00;49;45;16 - 00;50;15;29
Sam Smith
Getting next to a Waymo, it's like, okay, yeah, we both go on the road. You both do similar things. But the way you get there is a very, very different experience. So digitizing an experience for a customer in saying, okay, we can understand the challenges that you're facing. And under our advisory organization with Jay and his team, bring Pontoon Instinct into the frame and say, yeah, look, here's your VMS technology.
00;50;16;00 - 00;50;42;01
Sam Smith
You're utilizing only 30% of its capability. Here's some additional technologies you might want to consider within your ecosystem that solve for these problems. And this is how you can go from, you know, a let's say generation one to a generation five without changing vendor or without changing what you're doing. So for us, it's not it's not really a sales organization.
00;50;42;01 - 00;51;11;02
Sam Smith
It's about really trying to help customers and potential customers or folks in the marketplace understand what's your roadmap? Where do you want to get to? Do you have an agentic strategy as an organization? What can you absorb? You know, you talked about, you know, some organizations being mature, some highly regulated banking customers can't take our technologies into their own environments.
00;51;11;04 - 00;51;34;11
Sam Smith
They just can't do it. It's, you know, not going to work for them. So how do we then create an ecosystem within our environment that gives them the same value and impact without compromising their own security? So, you know, highly regulated industries like pharmaceutical, for example, what can they accept? What they can they adopt, what can they accommodate?
00;51;34;11 - 00;51;51;09
Sam Smith
We can come up with great ideas, and we often do. And they're like, yeah, that's great, but we can't do that. So how do we then allow that consumability? Is that a word? Did I just make up a word.
00;51;51;14 - 00;51;52;01
Sam Smith
Consume.
00;51;52;01 - 00;51;54;04
Jonny Dunning
Ability I like it. It's yeah.
00;51;54;05 - 00;51;54;17
Sam Smith
We're run.
00;51;54;17 - 00;51;56;16
Jonny Dunning
With it like bounce back ability isn't it I like it.
00;51;56;19 - 00;51;59;29
Sam Smith
Oh yeah. Ability.
00;52;00;04 - 00;52;30;07
Sam Smith
How do we get them to be able to consume the value of that advancement without compromising their own environments, or their own ability or risk levels of accepting connectivity? You guys have done an amazing job on your API work, right? Making it so easy to connect. But the way in which bilateral connectivity drives so much more value. A lot of clients still can't go bilateral.
00;52;30;08 - 00;52;55;26
Sam Smith
So we've got to figure all those types of things out. And I think the the speed at which we're operating might be a bit too fast for some customers. So we have to slow down. But I never want to be in a place where an incumbent customer, and I've heard this before in my career, says she are just not very innovative, right?
00;52;55;27 - 00;53;40;23
Sam Smith
And that's so frustrating, particularly in today's market where this is why, again, Pontoon Instinct is so important. It's working with our service leaders. You know, David, on the services procurement side, Francis, and I'm not going to say surname because I always brutally Lubitsch. Thank you. They are responsible for understanding what the art of the possible is, but also testing us and pushing us further and faster when you connect them from a service line perspective with innovation and product, getting those two together and then with a customer in the middle is really, really important.
00;53;40;23 - 00;54;11;11
Sam Smith
So the speed at which we can move in the adoption cycle of what we can and can't do, I think is dictated by the customer risk profile and the customers own IT landscape and how they can and cannot consume or adopt external technologies. Again, I've kind of pivoted a little bit, but that is a big part of the instinct service, offering a number of pillars, technology being a key one.
00;54;11;11 - 00;54;36;23
Sam Smith
But then how do we consistently evolve as a service provider where technology plays such a significant role in who we are? We're not a tech company, and we're not going to pretend to be one and don't want to be one, but we also then have to be positioned in this agentic world as not a tech company, but a company providing technology solutions.
00;54;36;23 - 00;55;02;17
Sam Smith
So there's this dichotomy of how do we position ourselves. And I think the MSP provider of today is going to have to be really, really different in how we show up. And my analogy is running shoes. You look at those carbon running shoes today, they I look like if I was going to put that, I think I'd roll my ankle.
00;55;02;20 - 00;55;03;14
Sam Smith
You know.
00;55;03;16 - 00;55;06;15
Sam Smith
They look really uncomfortable.
00;55;06;17 - 00;55;18;03
Sam Smith
But we've just seen the TCS London Marathon break a record that it's just almost you think about that ten years ago. How much of that was the shoe.
00;55;18;04 - 00;55;22;24
Jonny Dunning
The person that came second broke the two hour marathon and they didn't win. Yeah yeah.
00;55;22;25 - 00;55;47;04
Sam Smith
Can you imagine that? Yeah. But the shoe played such a role. But they're a runner. They're not defined by their shoe. And I see the MSP world as the runner defined by the technologies that they're deployed. And I think they become more and more and more important. But I still wouldn't put one of those sneakers on because I'm absolutely sure I would roll my ankle.
00;55;47;05 - 00;56;06;21
Jonny Dunning
Well, it's how the MSP leverages the technology and how they leverage it on behalf of the customer. You know, you talk about security environments. We we do some really interesting work in some secure sectors, and it's required a lot of work on our behalf to be in a position to be able to do that. But it's unlocked some really interesting opportunities.
00;56;06;21 - 00;56;27;03
Jonny Dunning
And you do get these situations, particularly in highly regulated safety critical type industries where they need to push the problem out to somebody else to say, we can't bring this in-house, it's just not going to happen. But as long as the correct security parameters are in place, we can pass that problem on to somebody else and get them to to make that happen.
00;56;27;05 - 00;56;50;17
Jonny Dunning
So I think that's really interesting in the way that the technology is an enabler. That's how I view what we're doing around services. We're enabling an enabler for an MSP service provision to to organize and manage a client's services procurement spend. We are the enabling technology within a solution. As our other technology providers in the industry, they're enabling that solution.
00;56;50;20 - 00;57;22;05
Jonny Dunning
So I think that is part of the value. And it's and it's a big part of how MSPs, as you say, show up and take their proposition to market. But I think the other element to it, which you were discussing earlier, problem discovery, you know, surfacing the problems really, you know, helping other organizations understand themselves. It's like, you know, I think a lot of the time if people go and have some sort of therapy, if they're struggling with someone, a big part of that journey is understanding themselves more, better, more effectively.
00;57;22;05 - 00;57;43;19
Jonny Dunning
And I think when you look at certainly from a services procurement angle in new areas like how organizations manage agents, and when you look at the total workforce scenario, it's very important to go back to that problem statement. What are we trying to achieve? What are the things that are holding us back? What are we scared of? What don't we understand that just helps shape the solution?
00;57;43;19 - 00;58;24;26
Jonny Dunning
I really certainly with services procurement, as I know you and I have discussed this before, we've learned over the last few years you don't you don't try and just sell a solution to somebody. It's really about understanding what their problem is, going through the journey with them. In services procurement, there are probably ten major pain points that almost every organization will have, but different organizations will recognize them very differently in terms of priority, different people within organizations, someone from an operational perspective or a procurement perspective or a compliance perspective or the buyer's perspective will have very, very different views on whether misclassification is a bigger pain than writing a scope of work or, you know,
00;58;24;28 - 00;58;47;16
Jonny Dunning
managing, you know, avoiding rogue spend or standardizing compliance or whatever it might be. So I think just understanding the problem, that's where it's not it's not a cookie cutter service that we're looking at here. When you look at how an organization gets work done, it's quite unique to that organization, how they leverage these different channels, as you said, their level of maturity, their level of sophistication.
00;58;47;17 - 00;59;10;28
Jonny Dunning
They need intermediaries, like you guys in the MSP world to be innovating at a very high level. It doesn't mean they can start there. But but in terms of that advisory capability and what you can bring to them, maybe you can help shape how they adapt to some of that innovation, because some of it is easier for them to adapt to than they might realize, but they just don't have the capacity to do it themselves.
00;59;11;02 - 00;59;36;15
Sam Smith
Well, I think there's also this habit of over complicating matters. You know, I often joke. I'm not I'm it's not a joke. I am not an academic. I'm never going to be the smartest person in the room. I'm wholly reliant on much more cleverer people, much more clever. You see, that's brilliant English. That just explains everything you need to know about.
00;59;36;16 - 00;59;37;27
Jonny Dunning
I say much more cleverer.
00;59;37;29 - 00;59;58;21
Sam Smith
Cleverer, smarter individuals than me. But we have, as an industry, I think, this history of making things complex, you know, really complicated. I don't know why. Maybe it's feeds this sense of making our roles feel more important.
00;59;58;24 - 01;00;28;17
Jonny Dunning
Do you think it's like the fact that you get that in areas like banking where it's just in most industries, the some stuff that's cloaked in terminology, I think where it gets too cloaked in terminology that says to me like insecurity is the value that you're providing. Yeah. And I think that's interesting because if you look at it really honestly and you really break it down, if you can be confident in the value you're providing, whether you're a service provider or whether you're a technology provider or any kind of provider, it puts a different spin on the conversation, really, doesn't it?
01;00;28;17 - 01;00;32;17
Jonny Dunning
You don't have to try and make a complicated. Actually, you're trying to make it simple.
01;00;32;18 - 01;01;01;05
Sam Smith
Well, I think there's a confidence piece and integrity. Right. So one of the things I laugh about myself is there's and I'll say this and I'll say it for somebody very specific. If, if they are watching or listening, she may or may not be somebody I used to work with. I used to joke that there was a chap that I used to work with that used to say things so confidently, nobody would question him.
01;01;01;08 - 01;01;35;25
Sam Smith
So he would say something like, for example, 67% of CEOs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And because he said it really confidently, nobody is going to check whether 67% of CEOs think X, Y, and Z. His confidence in delivery of a data point was not questionable because he said it with such authority. Now that's part of that over complexity syndrome that I think we've had.
01;01;35;25 - 01;02;01;24
Sam Smith
And I'm not picking on him. He's brilliant guy. And I really he's one of those people that I found quite inspirational through my career. Because if you do have that confidence, then people believe in you and listen to you. But I'd much rather the data point be factual, then get through. So now what my teams know is if I say 67%, I'm lying, right?
01;02;01;25 - 01;02;05;22
Sam Smith
I've just made something up and it's a point in time.
01;02;05;26 - 01;02;06;22
Jonny Dunning
Specific number.
01;02;06;23 - 01;02;34;10
Sam Smith
It is 67%. I know like 67% of you aren't even listening to this conversation. It's the code word. Yeah. So the point is, is I think that that confidence, but integrity and backing up your knowledge with fact is really, really important. One of the things from a services procurement and a staffing perspective that clients are relying on is good quality data.
01;02;34;11 - 01;02;35;09
Jonny Dunning
Yeah.
01;02;35;11 - 01;03;08;19
Sam Smith
Rate data and benchmarks, I can't tell you. And I know a number of these of organizations that are creating and running with what they'll call dynamic or real time rate cards, but they're using outdated data. It's not up to date, so they're creating a narrative for a customer. That is not true. They have a max medium and low bill rate rate card methodology that's built in and built on redundant data.
01;03;08;25 - 01;03;43;19
Sam Smith
So how can you trust that? You know, that's a really frustrating position from an industry perspective to be in, because then if you are in an active, commercial, competitive position with a new service and you're coming in with actual real time rate data, the client is going to see a massive delta between that and go, well, no, we've got this rate card data from our incumbent that we've been working with for five years or ten years or 15 years.
01;03;43;22 - 01;04;10;06
Sam Smith
And what you've given us is really different. What's so I think this piece around data integrity, honesty and truth is also really important. And I'm not saying that people are actively or proactively not being honest or leading with integrity. You just think there is a lack of integrity in the data, in the process, in the systems, on the client side.
01;04;10;07 - 01;04;39;02
Sam Smith
Two. You know how many clients come to market for 500 million? You know US dollars or euros or pounds of spend under management. You go live with them and it's 122. Did they actively come to market with an untruth or is it just a lack of integrity in the data? I'd like to believe it's not an untruth. I'd like to believe it's a lack of integrity in the data.
01;04;39;04 - 01;05;07;20
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. And this idea of coming to market with maybe gaps in the information and gaps in the data is definitely something that applies to services procurement in the sense that what I was saying earlier about discovery, problem discovery, it's even more important in services procurement because it's an area that people haven't generally addressed effectively ever. Yeah. And so the the gaps in knowledge internally are potentially quite large to start with.
01;05;07;20 - 01;05;34;28
Jonny Dunning
And that's where getting those conversations of understanding what does the current process look like. I know you've got a burning pain and it's that you can't see it, or that there's this misclassification risk, or that everything overruns, or that there's an overspend or whatever it might be. But getting to that's why it's so important to have those discovery conversations with organizations to help them really get a better understanding of their own problem first.
01;05;34;29 - 01;05;58;06
Jonny Dunning
And I think, you know, things like going in and being able to do discovery audits and, you know, evaluating maturity and all that sort of thing. It does have its place, but allowing that organization to bring in the right people, not in a environment where they're being sold to, but in an environment where it's like a discovery of like, what is the problem even look like, like from a technology provider, we're not necessarily going to be the right fit for every problem.
01;05;58;10 - 01;06;21;18
Jonny Dunning
We'd rather understand the problem properly in the first place to see if we are the best fit for it or not. But I think it's the services procurement side of it where MSPs are. The MSP world is expanding their remit to take this on, and I see it in this kind of journey towards total workforce management, really, because it's like you have to have all the bits under control to be able to do proper.
01;06;21;20 - 01;06;44;24
Jonny Dunning
I'm going to say again, workforce orchestration or work orchestration or strategic workforce planning, where putting whatever you want to call it, you've got to have everything under control. You've got to be able to see all the data to bring it together and actually take that top level view. The risk is it's just another opportunity for people to come in and overcomplicate it and buzzword bingo the living daylights out of it.
01;06;45;01 - 01;06;45;26
Jonny Dunning
So I.
01;06;45;26 - 01;06;47;07
Sam Smith
Guess acronyms.
01;06;47;08 - 01;06;48;11
Jonny Dunning
Yeah. Acronyms.
01;06;48;13 - 01;06;50;11
Sam Smith
Let's create some more acronym health.
01;06;50;14 - 01;07;06;24
Jonny Dunning
There's a lot of acronyms in the market. So so just interested in your opinion on that from a services procurement point of view. Just in terms of trying to simplify it. And I know that partly comes down to the expertise.
01;07;06;26 - 01;07;38;23
Sam Smith
It does come down to the expertise. I think it comes down to the MSPs recognizing that services procurement is not a natural evolution from staff. aug Right. And I think MSPs traditionally have basically had people with recruiting and temp staffing and MSP contingent backgrounds then evolve into services procurement experts. Very few of them I think, carry that particularly well.
01;07;39;00 - 01;08;03;07
Sam Smith
No offense to anybody because it is very different. You're talking to stakeholders in a different way about different things. You're negotiating with suppliers that are delivering outcomes. This is where this kind of blend between staffing providers and SOW delivery outcomes. I think that's where there's this kind of call it a pickle.
01;08;03;10 - 01;08;04;11
Jonny Dunning
In some gray areas.
01;08;04;12 - 01;08;40;16
Sam Smith
It is. But yeah, look, you're right. I think to get to a fully orchestrated I've said it now platform that delivers true total talent management is the nirvana. Very few organizations probably count globally. Five organizations that have really done it and done it well. Some are on a journey to get there, but the pulling in of all of the stakeholders within a customer environment to adopt and support that is really difficult because it comes down to ownership.
01;08;40;22 - 01;09;16;15
Sam Smith
Who owns this and the traditional MSP has been, as we've already acknowledged, commoditized as part of a staffing story, which doesn't necessarily carry the brand equity or advisory equity in an organization where I see the MSPs today is not divorcing and not disrespecting the staffing organizations, but moving further up the value chain to be recognized as a an advisor.
01;09;16;17 - 01;09;27;10
Sam Smith
And I think the more and more we see services, procurement and outcome based projects.
01;09;27;13 - 01;09;54;22
Sam Smith
Coming under the management of an MSP organization, the more we have to simplify the conversation, make the buying experience really easy for the organization. We also have to respect that for some procurement departments and strategic sourcing departments that have been built on this need to manage spend in a particular way by category and so on and so on.
01;09;54;23 - 01;10;24;19
Sam Smith
There's a mindset of like, why would I have an MSP do that work? For me, that's my job. That's the job of my teams. Why would I ask them to do it? It's it's not their job. That's not what they do because the MSPs are in this bucket of staffing provision, when actually most of what MSPs there's a couple of us, you know, managing more SOW spend than staff aug spend.
01;10;24;22 - 01;11;12;20
Sam Smith
And I think that's going to continue. So is it about, again, that kind of honest conversation and simplifying the conversation of roles and responsibilities and value for an organization? We're not trying to replace procurement. We're not trying to replace sourcing. What we're trying to do is be an extension in taking what could be classified as the lower value tail spend work, so that you can focus more on your strategic supply chain organizations that can bucket that strategic supply chain and put more focus there, and then outsource all of that long tail, high volume, repetitive work to the MSP.
01;11;12;27 - 01;11;40;11
Sam Smith
They see real value in that, because the work that can be done from a full end to end processing perspective can be done. Whereas in most client organizations it's not done to the full extent of the process. Therefore, cost security, onboarding of boarding, hardware management is not done at the level that they require in their organizations. And we see that.
01;11;40;11 - 01;11;43;24
Sam Smith
And that's not a criticism, by the way. It's just how it happens.
01;11;44;00 - 01;12;14;14
Jonny Dunning
There's no way they can handle the volume. It's you know, and you know, I think it depends where it sits within the organization. But the amount of conversations I and my colleagues have had with procurement professionals that just look at whether it's tail spend or a particular category and just say there's literally no way we can manage that because there's so many statements of work going through to manage that in a kind of manual process where it's a scan signed PDF in a, in a document repository somewhere, nothing's digitized within a system.
01;12;14;14 - 01;12;37;16
Jonny Dunning
We've got no visibility below a purchase order level. There's absolutely no way they can stay on top of that. And they're just reliant on the buying managers or engagement managers doing things the right way. But it doesn't do the buying managers any favors. And typically the process will slow them down. So they'll try and go around it. And it actually doesn't do the supply chain any favors really, either, because they might get blamed for overruns or extensions.
01;12;37;16 - 01;13;04;10
Jonny Dunning
We're actually if you audited that effectively digitally, you could look back on it or see it in real time, that that's because one of the business stakeholders was on holiday or it wasn't scoped correctly in the first place, or something's changed. So I think just transparency all the way through is critical to it. But it's an area where, as we were talking about with the complexity of hiring contingent workers, there's lots of moving parts and lots of things going on.
01;13;04;11 - 01;13;30;14
Jonny Dunning
Exactly the same with services procurement. It's a different problem, and it requires that different expertise level to to be able to communicate with the right people within the end organization and the supply chain and manage different problem set. But it's really complicated, again, where a technology enabled service can provide massive value to an organization if it's not something that they can genuinely do themselves.
01;13;30;16 - 01;14;04;00
Jonny Dunning
So I think it's it's interesting to see how these things can be simplified and how they can be addressed. But as you say, it's not necessarily been the traditional remit of the staffing industry or the MSP area. And I've constantly found it frustrating at as discussions in the industry just haven't seemed to move on. But they really are starting to move on now because you've got some really smart stakeholders within end client organizations that are starting to communicate with each other more.
01;14;04;02 - 01;14;26;25
Jonny Dunning
You've got MSPs that are really starting to lead the charge in this area. In some cases, people are bringing in expertise. And I know this is something you mentioned, David Orme. I've had some really interesting conversations with David about his time at Cox Communications. He's been there and done it. And so that is leveling up the value of the conversation that's going on here, where if you genuinely ask these organizations, have you got the capacity to manage it?
01;14;26;26 - 01;14;48;29
Jonny Dunning
If they haven't, great. There's a really interesting conversation to be had there. If they have got the capacity to the to manage it, are they sure? Because at the moment, does it look like they are or does it look like they are? But but it's all down to that discovery. And I think there's it's a really worthwhile conversation where it's where it's taken from this point of view of what does the problem look like in your particular organization?
01;14;48;29 - 01;15;04;19
Jonny Dunning
How are you trying to marshal all of your resources and what's going to help you compete effectively in the market? And I think the value that you can put on that at the very top level is, you know, it's incredible the amount of value that there is entailed. It's everything about what the business should be focusing on.
01;15;04;19 - 01;15;42;28
Sam Smith
It is and and also from my perspective, I'm never asking my business to go into this with a view of just adding, right. It's about solving for a problem. There's a value piece here, and it's integrity based of working with customers to solve problems, improve the buying experience within their ecosystem, make sure that they're not going to suffer a classification issue because of putting robustness into the process and giving them the right resources that work with the right teams.
01;15;43;01 - 01;16;14;29
Sam Smith
You know, when I was working with David, when he was a customer, you know, our team was an extension of his team and they were very much seen as an extension. You know, that's where the native piece comes in, right? Where people forget who they work for. You could see that as a great success when your outsourced third party MSP becomes seen as an integral part of your own branded sourcing function.
01;16;15;02 - 01;16;41;03
Sam Smith
This is about taking leverage, taking work away from people that could be doing higher value work in their own organizations. And I say that really carefully, because now I don't want to devalue the work that can be done in the long tail. I don't want to devalue the work that gets done. You know, in some of our offshore centers, you know, it's not devaluing the work.
01;16;41;03 - 01;17;20;13
Sam Smith
It's just saying we've opted to put work in different places or with a third party or with an MSP, so that we can focus on higher value, higher impact, more complex, more strategic work for our organization. And I think the more customers start working with us on the services procurement side, they start seeing that benefit like, oh yeah, I've got more time to focus on these areas now, which might be more interesting to them, might be more impactful, might have more strategy aligned to them, and also change the way in which they sit around a table with their own organization, which I think is great.
01;17;20;15 - 01;18;02;05
Jonny Dunning
The area that I see that being particularly exciting is in looking at supply performance, like basically there's a whole set of skills and possibilities to the way that organizations could be using data around their services supply chain, that they're just not because they don't capture that information effectively. They don't capture the full life cycle, all of the pre-contract, you know, upstream scope creation, sourcing events, going through to contracting, you know, managing the supply chain, looking at where the capabilities and competencies are, who were the best suppliers to do that piece of work, that all that information around recommendations, for example, as to where that work should be going or could be going, is only possible
01;18;02;05 - 01;18;24;21
Jonny Dunning
if you're capturing the downstream post contract stuff as effectively understanding, you know, what's the delivery level like at every single milestone, on every single project, for every single supplier, across all of your categories? If you capture that workflow for every project that you're running under services procurement, you have this enormous wealth of data. Now, that's not something in most organizations that is being worked on at the moment.
01;18;24;21 - 01;18;48;13
Jonny Dunning
And it's it's serious work and it requires, you know, it's it's really valuable work. It's not just transactional, trying to sign off statements of work or trying to manually process transactional information. It's really doing the kind of clever work. So if organizations can outsource part of the process, the scale operation, to give them that data, believe me, they're going to be busy.
01;18;48;13 - 01;19;12;06
Jonny Dunning
But what it's going to mean is they can start making predictions. They can start doing horizon planning when these new capabilities come in, in two years time or one year's time or six months time, we're going to need these skills. Who in our supply chain has got those? We've got organizations that are using a lot of expressions of interest, for example, which they tie into their horizon planning, where they pull their supply chain and they're saying, right, we've got this sort of stuff coming down the track.
01;19;12;07 - 01;19;28;19
Jonny Dunning
Who can do that? Who's skilling up to be able to do that? And it might be brand new skills that are coming out that's really beneficial for the supply chain as well. But that whole ability to manage the performance elements that allows them to predict in the future, with the workload that we've got coming up, here's how we could apportion it.
01;19;28;20 - 01;19;49;26
Jonny Dunning
Here's how we're going to be able to do it, rather than this kind of like last minute scramble. I used to work for Jobsite that got bought by, was acquired by DMGT, and then later by Stepstone, funnily enough. But within that publishing world, because we were owned by DMGT for part of it, I got an insight into the publishing world and it's all last minute deadlines.
01;19;49;26 - 01;20;05;10
Jonny Dunning
Absolute carnage. Yeah. You know, with with how organizations get work done, they need to move away as far away from that as possible. There's always going to be an element of that in any organization. But future planning that's effective competition in the market might be.
01;20;05;14 - 01;20;35;29
Sam Smith
I think that's a really good point. Workforce planning, future planning. We are actively we help our customers in their RFP cycle and then resource planning, you know, in some areas that can be quite challenging. In some areas that creates cancellation rates, which is difficult to manage. But when you're then part of understanding what their future roadmap of work looks like, you can plan better.
01;20;36;01 - 01;21;14;14
Sam Smith
I think some some businesses are brilliant. Strategic workforce planning and future state planning. You look at some of the perhaps more traditional consulting engineers, for example, really good planning from a skills perspective in other areas. I think it's depending on the skills framework, when there are no organizations on what they're hiring strategy is and and whether we're moving more towards digital workers, you know, are we going to be in a place where it's about creating a digital worker to do that work?
01;21;14;16 - 01;21;51;16
Sam Smith
Does the digital worker, you know, get cloned, right? Is that a copy paste of that worker profile to go and do a piece of digital work? I think that's where we I mean, we're already there with lots of examples of that, but I think that's going to become more prevalent. I think workforce planning and skills and outcomes are all coming together to and you're right, the supply chain and supplier intelligence and supplier performance management around that can't just be about your incumbent suppliers.
01;21;51;19 - 01;22;22;04
Sam Smith
It's got to be much more about the possible ecosystem because new firms are coming up all the time. I was talking to a firm just a couple of weeks ago when I was in Chennai. Amazing guy, incredibly clever. And he's solving for a specific problem. It didn't exist six months ago. Wow. But does exist today. And you know, a client's going to be open to hearing about them.
01;22;22;06 - 01;22;40;22
Sam Smith
You know, a part of the age old issue for customers with a traditional MSP is, you know, this really analog process of supplier rationalization and supplier performance management supplier.
01;22;40;24 - 01;22;43;11
Sam Smith
The word has just gone out of my head because I'm a 52 year old.
01;22;43;17 - 01;22;48;16
Jonny Dunning
It's kind of it seems to be all about chopping down where it could be about building up.
01;22;48;17 - 01;23;11;23
Sam Smith
Yeah. I mean, look, there's a part of me that says, okay, we keep talking about supplier optimization and coming down to a small number of suppliers managing the largest portion of your spend. Why? Why? If you have an MSP in play, why not go to and I've talked about this for a lot of my career and actually one of my previous employers is doing something about it.
01;23;11;24 - 01;23;44;03
Sam Smith
Good on you. And why, why care, why care if you have 14 suppliers or 400? Because you could get to an open source scenario with a different commercial model of not having to onboard those suppliers into your ecosystem. Depending on what your surface layer is of your service provider, your MSP, you could you could benefit from an open source network of leveraging suppliers that didn't exist last week.
01;23;44;03 - 01;24;17;26
Sam Smith
But do. And they meet your security and compliance requirements and can deliver that outcome. But most organizations have a very protracted and particularly with AI and responsible AI usage in cybersecurity. Now, onboarding a new supplier is not a walk in the park, but that's part of the problem. So we talk about supplier performance, talk about traditional optimization. And I just think that is a redundant notion in its own right.
01;24;17;26 - 01;24;33;21
Sam Smith
I think the way in which we could leverage an ecosystem of suppliers across, particularly technology and outcomes and driving outcomes in a different way that has to be looked at.
01;24;33;24 - 01;24;54;04
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, I totally agree. I've seen some really cool stuff happening with this. And it's innovation essentially. How do you access innovation? And I've seen some really interesting stuff happening in like highly secure sectors where traditionally those stage gates to a supplier being on boarded are just basically mean. If you are a little supplier, it's just the juice isn't worth the squeeze.
01;24;54;09 - 01;25;28;12
Jonny Dunning
You can't afford to do it. You haven't got the time. There's no guarantee of any work. So to jump through all these hoops and climb over these mega hurdles, it's just not worthwhile. But you might have something really special that that big organization would want to access. It's like you're seeing a lot more government stuff where they're targeting working with SMEs, and that is something we've been seen being done really effectively, where organizations will use the way our platform operates, for example, to build these kind of supplier communities where they'll go through different gates of onboarding.
01;25;28;13 - 01;25;42;21
Jonny Dunning
So they might just do a level one onboarding, and then you've got visibility of their capabilities. You can do that horizon planning. You can do expressions of interest. But for that supplier they don't need to go through the big hurdles until there's a very high probability they're going to get contracted to do some work, then it makes sense for everybody.
01;25;42;21 - 01;26;03;18
Jonny Dunning
And also people can look at that experience of bringing the supplier on board and say, we need to make that experience better, because this is essential for us to be able to get the work done to deliver our product or service to the market, to be competitive. So I think there's just so many exciting kind of options here for organizations to compete more effectively and do things better.
01;26;03;18 - 01;26;09;25
Jonny Dunning
It's not just about cost cutting, it's about solving this problem of how do I get the work done.
01;26;09;27 - 01;26;37;21
Sam Smith
And contracting. Though you talk about the contracting process for organizations that want to do good work, you know, I'm still of the belief, naive as I could be, that people want to do good work. Very few people get out of bed in the morning thinking, I'm going to do a really rubbish job today. And they don't. They want solve problems, they want to deliver really good things, and they want to feel a sense of purpose, that they've done something great.
01;26;37;26 - 01;27;08;27
Sam Smith
And most founders or business owners have that sense to, you know, they want to do good work. Yeah, people want to make money for sure. That's fine. But when it comes down to the contracting process of and particularly in our space, we often find ourselves looking at reading an MSA that is not built for our service. It's built for buying actuators, it's built for buying product.
01;27;08;27 - 01;27;59;05
Sam Smith
It's not built for buying a service. And it's certainly not evolved to be easy. The redlining process for a services provider is excruciating, and organizations expect and want businesses to accept uncapped, unlimited liabilities. And, you know, it's really, really difficult. And whilst you want to come across as easy to work with, you know, your fiscal and commercial responsibilities and managing risk for your own business have to take a really important part of, okay, is this business that we can service and deliver, because it's now starting to feel really punitive in the contracting process.
01;27;59;05 - 01;28;40;16
Sam Smith
So, you know, I, I talked to customers quite a lot about, you know, how they've structured their legal framework for onboarding us as a vendor. And does that look right? You know, are you trying to buy a service here with a document that's just not fit for purpose? And I think when we think about supplier performance and supplier engagement of the future, of how we need to be able to operate in today's business world, tomorrow's ecosystem and the future, I think all of that has to be completely reimagined because it's not fit for purpose today.
01;28;40;18 - 01;28;46;12
Sam Smith
It doesn't matter whether you're regulated, highly regulated or not. It's not fit for purpose.
01;28;46;18 - 01;29;03;11
Jonny Dunning
It's such a it's such an amazing period of change. It's exciting to be involved in the market, to see things moving the way they are and just sort of to to kind of wrap things up in terms of closing the loop on the whole kind of conversation, because I think you and I could probably talk about this literally all day.
01;29;03;11 - 01;29;31;05
Jonny Dunning
It's so interesting. You mentioned, you know, you talk to customers a lot in terms of those conversations, just looking at this broader kind of problem set that we're discussing, when you're having those maybe the quieter 1 to 1 conversations with, with customers, what are they worried about and what are they excited about? And if, from your vantage point, seeing the art of the possible, what would how would you encourage people to think about this whole problem set moving forward?
01;29;31;05 - 01;29;51;16
Sam Smith
I think the worry and the concern and excitement are all around the same thing right now. You know, it's AI, you know, I joked at an event we were at a few weeks ago, you know, the conversation for every talk track was the same AI how is artificial intelligence going to shape their business? Are they ready for it?
01;29;51;17 - 01;30;27;11
Sam Smith
Can they adopt it? Does their industry accommodate moving at speed? And the speed of AI is, you know, a blink of an eye. What you couldn't do yesterday, you can do tomorrow. And that's how quickly things are changing. The conversation around AI compliance and responsibility within the supply chain. I think that we have a responsibility as a generation of leaders, managers, business employees, you know, students of life.
01;30;27;11 - 01;31;02;29
Sam Smith
I think we've got to understand what we're doing now. China, just a week or two ago, brought in legislation that prevents people from losing their jobs as a result of AI. A few months ago, I talked about the fact that I think governments are going to have to put some stronger regulations in because the benefits systems of governments are not going to be able to afford the volumes of unemployment that are potentially being created by the introduction of AI.
01;31;03;05 - 01;31;31;27
Sam Smith
So I think there's this circular motion of excitement and concern on the same subject. And I think that's natural given where we are. And I think it's all about where do I sit in this? And if you think about the profile of an average member of the C-suite, it's a pretty fixed demographic in most cases. And are they equipped?
01;31;31;28 - 01;32;01;05
Sam Smith
You know, we've seen some CEOs step down and say, you know what? I am not the right person to take us into this next journey from a technology and AI perspective, all credit to them for recognizing that about themselves. And we are having to go through a huge learning experience ourselves to understand. I didn't grow up with AI, don't have any foundational knowledge of AI.
01;32;01;07 - 01;32;30;29
Sam Smith
My first phone was a flip phone, but we have generations of people now that don't know a world without the internet, without wireless, without a mobile telephone. This is the next industrial revolution, and we are right in the middle of it. And I think that excitement and fear is equal. And I think we should be both excited and worried about it at the same time, because that will make us more responsible.
01;32;31;02 - 01;32;42;14
Jonny Dunning
Yeah, that's a great way to wrap things up. I think it's it's super exciting. And the, the the potential and the excitement and the fear, they're all stimulus