When you’re looking to transform your contingent workforce program and control your Statement of Work (SOW) costs, knowing who to involve needs to be part of your plan from the start.
With multiple areas of your business involved in talent sourcing, there are several reasons why it’s important to map out your stakeholders:
It can help:
- Ensure you have the full range of requirements
- Align individual department goals with a central strategy
- Get buy-in and understanding from the business
It can avoid:
- Expensive costs of missed requirements
- The team driving it to focus on their own goals
- Expensive mistakes with legal implications, such as mistaking temps for SOW workers
You might also like: ‘Controlling SOW Spend: How to Assess Your Active Projects’
Your Stakeholder Committee
Your stakeholder committee is tasked with educating the rest of the enterprise. It should have representation from as many areas as necessary to ensure buy-in across the board. Members are also meant to act as subject matter experts within their respective areas:
- Procurement → SOWs, competitive bidding
- Finance → Accruals, reconciliation, invoicing and payment process
- Legal → SOW standards mean fewer disputes
- HR → Tracking, compliance, and quality
- IT → Both client and service provider
- Business units → Power users
- Executive sponsorship
Read more: ‘How to Create Standards for Your SOW Program’
How Does a Stakeholder Committee Help Your Sow Program?
The stakeholder committee is vital to the success of implementing and gaining adoption for an SOW automated process. An accurate discovery phase is key to a smooth implementation, so it’s vital to make sure that all members of your committee are engaged during the process definition. This is not to say all business units and stakeholders need to be engaged during every step of the process, however they should be when defining key configurations, gathering all perspectives to ensure there are no surprises down the line.
While a Project Management Office (PMO) may not be essential to implement a SOW program, it can definitely be helpful in driving efficiency and ensuring a smoother implementation. Your PMO can either be your internal team or affiliated with your Managed Service Provider (if you’re using one).
Discover how to overhaul your SOW program with our ebook ‘9 Steps to SOW Success: How to Build a Best-Practice Services Procurement Program’
Meet the Expert
Taylor Ramchandani – VP of Strategy
Taylor Ramchandani is responsible for the management and strategic planning of the VectorVMS vendor management system. Taylor is committed to client satisfaction and to ensuring VectorVMS technology meets the current and future needs of clients and managed service providers (MSPs). She uses market research and in-depth industry experience to create products and services that make extended workforce management efficient and intuitive. Taylor oversees product development, marketing, and business partnerships for VectorVMS and is responsible for driving innovation for contingent workforce management. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
