By: Ben Decker, Vice President, Enterprise Workforce Solutions, Kelly
What COO would turn down the chance to control costs, improve compliance, and gain visibility into their external workers and suppliers around the world? That’s the promise of a mature, global managed services provider (MSP) solution.
Or maybe you just want to start by knowing exactly how many people are working for you.
No two MSP clients are identical, and no two MSP solutions should be either. This is something to look out for when considering an MSP partner or a global MSP solution.
The pain that pushes a company to seek a global solution is simple: They don’t know who’s working for them, what work is being done, or the state of their talent supply and demand. This can be solved without requiring a full-service program in every country. You may need a sophisticated program to manage operations in the U.S., U.K., and India, but do you need a full-service MSP to manage eight workers in Madagascar? Probably not.
Consider the priorities that spur companies to seek a global solution: visibility, governance, and agility. Companies benefit from an approach that flexes to their needs across different locations and business areas. These priorities should shape how your solution works.
An effective global MSP begins by establishing baseline visibility into the organization’s external workforce and services activity — who’s engaged, where, through which suppliers, and under what engagement structures (e.g., staff augmentation vs. project-based services, etc.).
This visibility-first approach replaces assumptions with shared facts and provides clearer insight into worker classification patterns, engagement types, tenure exposure, and spend characteristics across regions. By making these dynamics visible, organizations are better positioned to identify compliance risks, inconsistent practices, or unmanaged activities that may require attention over time.
Worker tracking is the most basic of MSP services — delivering reporting, data and analytics, supplier usage data, program governance, and contractor on- and offboarding. In locations where contractor use is low and extremely stable, this may be all that is needed. This allows the organization to bring all areas of operation into the fold, while focusing on locations with more activity for robust MSP implementations.
Dashboard images are illustrative examples only, based on commonly delivered data across multiple clients.
Many buyers think that visibility across the entire global contingent workforce takes multiple quarters or even years to achieve. People are often surprised when I tell them that this visibility can be established in the first few months of partnership.
Governance is achieved by embedding standards directly into workflows rather than relying on policy documents or manual oversight. This includes consistent classification, approval, and oversight across contingent and services engagements — reducing misclassification and unmanaged services spend.
While the MSP framework provides a governance structure, its effectiveness is shaped by organizational sponsorship and consistent usage. Once again, the level of governance detail can vary across locations while preserving the global framework. Adoption is strongest when the MSP offers a clear, low-effort, default path that feels like the natural way to operate. Without it, workarounds tend to appear — regardless of scale.
Sound governance and visibility result in a program that can be implemented efficiently to grow and scale within the main framework.
But not every category, engagement type, or geography needs to be included at the same level. Scope and controls can be intentionally defined based on priorities — allowing flexibility through configuration, rather than workarounds. Programs of similar sizes can function very differently depending on clarity of purpose, ownership, sponsorship, and design.
We find that clients also lean on our breadth of capabilities to meet new workforce needs as their programs grow. Management of outsourced services (e.g., statement of work or services procurement solutions) can be included. Consulting, direct sourcing, and technology implementation are prime examples, as well as direct hiring and related permanent hiring solutions.
A global MSP is best understood as a single operating framework for external labor and services — configured locally but governed consistently. Its effectiveness depends less on geographic reach and more on intentional design that simplifies participation, establishes clear ownership and sponsorship, and supports consistent use. The scope of the MSP will expand over time to achieve greater impact, but only when visibility and governance are in place.
For enterprise organizations, the flexibility of MSP is a major advantage. When a provider has the technology to deliver real-time visibility and the service capability to expand as needed, a big-bang implementation is not necessary. Don’t bend your budget or timelines to satisfy an unwieldy launch that fits the provider’s definition of a global MSP. Make the provider do their work; it’s their job to meet you where you are.