This blog is about "SoW" as a limiter, and how we can grow MSP sales and the scope of CWP programmes into services procurement.
Deployed has always been an advocate of Managed Service Providers and Contingent Worker Programmes (and all the professionals in the industry) taking a larger role in services procurement. For years, we have worked with the market and promoted the idea that the CWP buyers of external talent, and the selling MSPs should be given a larger role in services. Here's why:
- Procurement budgets are under pressure, and they cannot afford automation and staff whilst are under pressure on big deals
- Procurement teams are allowing more 'self service' at higher thresholds, which means more body-shopping through higher-cost channels
- CWP and MSPs have the 'problem' of misclassification of requests that get routed to service providers, instead of MSPs
- The acquisition of services, despite the contract structure, are still about people - and CWP/MSPs are specialists in people above all else
- The teams and the companies that spend every day hiring, managing, and quality assuring the work that humans do are best placed to manage some services
This blog is about sharing what we learned from our Go-To-Market Strategy, and how we would all be best served using the same language in the industry.
Saying "SoW"" drives MSPs and CWS into further stagnation
The market is actually shrinking as a share of total services and talent procurement. Despite what MSPs call the rise of "SoW", this is only a tiny subset of the overall services procurement market, and only refers to tail spend.
Here is an interesting history lesson: the MSP and CWP market is actually quite old:
- >25 years ago, MSPs started perfecting the art of managing requests, vendors, fulfilment, contracts, and the nuances of human behaviour and expectations.
- About 20 years ago, with the assistance of technology, these programmes saved corporates millions by consolidating supply channels into performance-based frameworks.
- In the last 15 years, those same MSPs and platforms have moved into 'management features' to support the digital management of services via 'Statements of Work'. But this has largely been tail and repeatable spend (1% of total market).
- In the last 10 years, the market has stagnated (see any MSP/RPO share price for clues), as CWP teams want more innovation (but don't know how to ask for it) and MSPs fight over the same RFIs and RFPs from those same teams.
This last point is an open secret in the industry. The market has not moved and is not moving - unless we try to make it so. What has moved is the market for services acquisition, services procurement, and services management.
Pivoting MSP and CWP away from "SoW" and into Services Procurement
There are three significant areas of MSP and CWP growth - none of which reference SoW or SoW management.
1. Procurement Orchestration
At Deployed, we believe that there is a very strong case study for talent and services intake, triage, orchestration (I am trying to call this services choreography) to be run from HR/CWP and MSPs. If these are phrases you've not encountered yet, I encourage you to review this literature:
2. Autonomous Sourcing and Marketplaces
We also know you've heard of Globality, Fairmarkit, Keelvar, Tonkean, and also marketplaces like UPWORK and CATALANT. In validation of our thesis, autonomous sourcing is only gaining traction via MSPs because programmes want to make sourcing services as easy as sourcing a candidate.
3. Intake and Triage
Deployed dominates the talent and services procurement intake and triage market. We might just agree and you want to learn more. Check out this framework.
SoW is jargon. Let's adopt language that drives more business
Why do I keep saying "don't say 'SoW'"? What's important is for us to all match what the market is talking about, not how we talk about it in a jargon way. To this end, Peter Reagan from SIA is the closest to trying to rename SoW (just so you know that this isnt just me shaking my fist at a cloud), which I 80% agree with.
"The market for SoW in MSPs, CWP and HR is ONE THOUSAND times smaller than the entire services procurement market."
You want the science, you can't handle the science
In 2019, we started working with our friend (and now advisor and investor), Professor Liz Stokoe, and shifted our thinking from being a Statement of Work platform, to a project success platform. And in this process, we learned early on that SoW is just jargon, and not understood by anyone outside our circles. And here's what she has to say:
1. How a single word can change the conversation
"We do SoW management" only appeals to other people who talk about SoW. When 95% of the market doesn't talk that way, why do we carry on?
People spend a good deal of time talking to one another, and in general we do it pretty well. We might feel excited, angry, embarrassed, or — if we’re lucky — loved, in the course of our daily conversations. So is there any benefit to thinking about a science of talk? Can we really gain anything from scientific analysis of something we “just do”? I believe we can, and I’ve spent the last 20 years studying real talk from real people talking to each other, in real time. And while the linguist Noam Chomsky once described conversation as a “disorderly phenomenon,” I can tell you that it’s no such thing. Conversation is highly systematic and organised … and it tells us an incredible amount about the power of language to shape our daily lives.
Liz Stokoe - link
2. Talking with the Recipient in Mind
We all want the widest possible group to understand what we talk about when we say that CWP/MSP can "do" SoW. What I think is currently a proxy meaning services, just confuses who we talk to:
‘Recipient design’ is the conversation analytic term for the communicative practices people use to tailor the design of their talk for — and show their ‘orientation and sensitivity’ to — the person they are talking to. Given the infinitely extendible ways in which people can put together every conversational turn — from how they say ‘hello’ to how they make a request — every turn reveals something about recipient design. People select words and discuss topics all “with an eye to who the recipient is and what the recipient knows about the reference”.
Liz Stokoe - link
Deployed's Journey from SoW to project success
Please learn from us! Why am I passionate about this? Trying to sell "SoW" was a three year journey of lost opportunities. And to give that context, our economic buyers and revenue changed radically when we stopped saying SoW and instead talked about the outcomes of better services. This is how business operates.
Sell more by dropping the "SoW" jargon
SoW is just a contract. And it's only CWP and MSPs who use it. Start using talent and services.
To reiterate - I believe services procurement best sits with those who know how to acquire people - either via services or via external talent. It just so happens that the contract to buy services is called a Statement of Work.
I think there are many reasons that Contingent Worker Programmes andMSPs are being held back (moving from talent-led to outcome-led being one of them), but that is not for this blog. What I can support you with is a lesson we learned early - the importance of recipient design, and talking in the way that economic buyers speak - anything less than that is jargon and a limiting factor.
Rant over.
