A total talent solution, with zero disruption, for a biopharmaceutical client. Products delivered:
Staff augmentation, freelancers, services procurement, payroll, direct sourcing
$885M spend under management.
18,500 workforce headcount.
$24M first-year savings.
First steps to success.
Bringing together all third-party workers under one program was no small task — our client engages thousands of third-party workers and they make up approximately a third of their total workforce. We addressed this by rolling out the program in stages, beginning with third-party temporary workers before moving on to professional services/SOW providers.
Navigating complexity.
It’s not always been easy, particularly as we move through the second phase of the program dealing with professional services/SOW. This is a group of suppliers and workers who have been managed in different ways across different functional areas of the business. Trying to create a single cohesive program means continually stripping away layers of complexity.
But before layers of complexity can be removed, we have to understand why they exist in the first place This has led to deep discovery work within the procurement organization that oversees professional services/SOW processes, enabling us to understand the practical and technological barriers that arise as we build a unique way of working. Buy-in from across the organization has been invaluable in overcoming these bumps in the road. This project is jointly owned by a team comprised of finance, talent, and procurement which gives us a broad and supportive base within the business. We have also partnered closely with the client’s internal change management team to effectively communicate new ways of working. A deeply collaborative working partnership has been vital to successfully building out this complex solution.
Visible benefits.
These changes have been challenging and, at times, even painful for our client to undergo – so, why do it at all? The answer is that the benefits are enormous. Perhaps the most sizable of these benefits is visibility – visibility of the work being done and of the workers performing vital tasks throughout the organization. Our client was spending more than a billion dollars a year on third-party talent with limited visibility of the effectiveness of this talent or the value received. The program we are helping to bring to life will allow them to see and leverage thirdparty workers around the globe to support their business. This is essential in a volatile life science market punctuated by M&A activity, regulatory changes, and rapidly advancing innovation in research and development. It also means they can be more effective in workforce planning, navigating the business cycles of key geographies while enjoying significant cost savings on key talent.
