Category Archives: Talent

FieldGlass is Determined To Take Off In the Tens

FieldGlass, which provides a unified platform for contingent workforce management, service provider management, and direct hires, is determined to tear forward through the tens, which also happen to correspond to its second decade of corporate existence. Founded in Chicago in 1999, it celebrated its tenth birthday with a bang by adding 33 new customers in 2009 before tearing into 2010 and adding over 30 new customers year-to-date to double its customer base in less than two years.

With localized support for sixty-three (63) countries and counting, over one third (33%) of the new customers it has added in the past year were from outside the US — and they expect this number to rise over time as they add more satellite offices in various countries and continue to add localized support for more countries. And like Coupa, which happens to be one of the many enterprise platforms their solution can peacefully exist with, they plan to keep up the fervant pace of customer acquisition for some time to come.

So how are they pulling this off? It’s a combination of

  • persistence like the little engine that could, they just won’t quit,
  • technology they have a solid platform which gets better every year,
  • limited competition Google might return over 100K hits for contingent workforce management, but only a few players (like IQ Navigator and Taleo) have platforms in the same class,
  • a truly global focus their localized support (which includes local laws, regulation, and policy) for 63 countries and counting is a differentiator, and
  • the economy since no one wants to hire direct full time employees anymore.

So what have they done since our last update last April (which followed the incredibly deep coverage brought to us by the Sourcing Maniacs in their 2008 vendor tour)? Two things of note: they finished flushing out their core BI suite and started working on Active Guidance. And while the latter is still in its infancy, it will be very useful when taken to the next level.

Their BI offering consists of three core capabilities:

  • intelligent benchmarkingacross equivalent job categories in equivalent locations,
  • drill down reporting which lets the user drill through the various spend cubes maintained by the application, and
  • visualization which presents the user with innovative graphs, comparative dashboards, and informative trends.

Most of the work has went into improving the benchmarks, to make sure the industry averages presented are for equivalent jobs in equivalent locales, and extending the visualizer, to try and find the best ways to present a lot of information in an easy to understand, but yet impactive, manner. In a few cases, they’ve really hit the mark. The first case is the country-based graphs which allow a user to see relative spending by state on a geographically correct map. These graphs take the concept of Shneiderman diagrams (or visual crosstabs) to a whole new level. The second case is the integrated trend graphs that allow you to simultaneously see the trends across contingent worker, service worker, and direct hire for any job position or category. This is important because whenever spending drops sharply in one category, it tends to increase significantly in another. (Can’t hire any new workers? Service workers. Can’t sign another long term contract with a service provider? Contingent workers. Contingent workers been here too long? New hires.) The third case is the comparative rate-range graphs which simultaneously present the average rate, the range, and the market average for a set of related positions — it makes it really to easy to see where the company is likely spending too much for its contingent and service labor.

However, what is really interesting is their new focus on “active guidance”. Having deep insight from meaningful benchmarks and comprehensive spend reports is one thing, but knowing what to do — and when to do it — is another. For an organization with thousands of contingent and service workers, this can be a challenge. To this end FieldGlass has launched new capabilities that is has bundled under the heading of “active guidance” with more in development. The three capabilities it has launched to date are:

  • Rate Guidanceusing the benchmark data and spending history, the platform will advise the user on the recommended rate range to associate with a contingent or service position,
  • FieldGlass Advisorbuilt on top of their alert functionality, the advisor will let a user know when a certain action should be taken (such as initiating a request for additional funds or to extend a current position), and
  • The Project Management Office Dashboarda quick summary into the past due, current, and forthcoming tasks that require the users attention with respect to payment and procurement, the dashboard is built on top of dozens of user configurable thresholds relating to processes, documents, and spend tracked by the system.

As FieldGlass continues its quest to automatically identify trends and associate them with suggested behaviors,this role-based feature should get quite interesting. The holy grail of performance analysis lies in the ability to take tactical data and derive meaningful strategy.

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The Board Room CPO

In addition to offering insights into planning horizons, supply chain strategy drivers, and keys to supply chain success, the recent report on “Supply Chain Strategy in the Board Room” by the Cranfield School of Management and Solving Efeso also discussed what it all meant for supply chain leaders of tomorrow. It’s conclusion was that the CPO of tomorrow needs to fit the following profile:

  • Strong Communicator: gravitas within Leadership teamin many companies, the sourcing / procurement / supply chain leader still doesn’t have a seat at the table, and even when she does, she often reports to the COO, CFO, or another CXO that’s not the CEO
  • Multi-Disciplinary: able to understand corporate & customer service strategywithout this insight, the CPO will never develop a supply chain strategy that complements and enforces the corporate strategy
  • Collaborative: works as a team player, does “external sensing”in modern terms, the CPO must have a high EQ IQ
  • Vision-Led: but practical and pragmaticthe CPO must be able to think long term, but able to adapt to short-term circumstances and fluctuations
  • Fact-Based: but able to deal with “ambiguity and ambition”the CPO must have a solid grasp of true analysis, and apply those skills whenever data are available, but also be able to fill in the gaps with wisdom and experience when data is sparse
  • Culturally-Intelligent: able to deal with a mix of global, regional, and local culture/leadership stylesmodern supply chains are global and they are going to stay that way

In other words, nothing that Sourcing Innovation and other top blogs haven’t been telling you for years, but it’s nice to see more support for the profile.

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Want More Business?

Put Employees First!

I was absolutely thrilled to see this recent article over at Knowledge @ Wharton India that said that “Winning More Business in a Recession Means Putting Employees First”. In the interview with Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies — a company which grew 21% year over year in operating profit and revenues, he noted that their customer satisfaction rate rose 43% and that they were rated #1 in employee satisfaction. Simply put, a happy employee goes the extra mile to make customers happy. And a happy customer is much more likely to buy again than one that isn’t.

‘Nuff said. But if you want more, you can read the 5 page article.

Eight Things Good Bosses Do

A recent article over on the HBR blogs covered the “12 things that good bosses believe” which, while important, don’t necessarily help a new boss understand what she has to do to be a good boss. So, in this post, I’m going to tell you the eight things that good bosses do. In time, you’ll understand why and adopt the same beliefs, but when you’re new, sometimes actions have to come first. So, without further ado, here they are:

  • Human ShieldThey protect their people from intrusions, distractions, and idiocy of every stripe and shade.
  • EmpowerThey empower their people to make decisions and take charge, they don’t micro-manage every little detail.
  • Manage the MundaneThey do the distractive busy work and fire fighting that would keep their people from accomplishing their jobs.
  • Give Away the GloryNot only do they enable their people to win, but they credit their people with the win.
  • They ListenThey don’t assume they have all the answers. Moreover, they assume that the answers they do have come with an expiry date — an expiry date that activates as soon as a subordinate gives them a better answer.
  • They Accept MistakesThey know that sometimes their direct reports will make mistakes and use it as a learning opportunity to create a better employee.
  • They Take, and Encourage, Managed RisksThey know you can’t win big if you don’t take a risk once in a while.
  • They Make Decisions and Follow ThroughThey understand that their employees will come up with a number of approaches to solve a problem, some good, and some not so good, and that they will have to make the final decision. They do it with confidence, and, for better or worse, follow through and get it done. And if they make a mistake, they admit it, post-mortem it, and use it as a learning opportunity.

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Five Indications of Leadership Potential

A recent article in the Harvard Business Review on “the leaders we need now” noted that Generation X will produce executives who bring a distinctive sense of realism to the modern corporation as they possess skills and attitudes that are especially suited to today’s challenges which are both new and unpredictable. Traditional leadership skills — setting direction, having the answers, controlling performance, and running a tight ship — are less relevant in an environment of constant change. These days, leadership is about creating a context for innovation and inclusion in the face of ambiguity and the unexpected. And the leaders in Generation X can bring that to your company. But how do you identify them?

The article outlined five traits that tomorrow’s leaders will need to possess to succeed. Keep them in mind when scouting for your future talent:

  1. Desire to Increase Collaborative CapacityWhereas baby boomers were “organizational men”, generation X are “networked people” and want to build the strong, trusting, relationships that are essential for mobilizing intelligence.
  2. Insight to Ask Compelling QuestionsTomorrow’s leaders need to embrace participation in the search for answers.
  3. Embrace Complexity Oversimplifying challenges will no longer work — true leaders need to grapple openly with complex issues. Absolutes need to be rejected with the realization that there’s often no “right” answer.
  4. Focus on IdentityLeaders strive to create a corporate identify that ties everyone together.
  5. Appreciation of DiversityIn the global marketplace, a company will have to embrace diversity to succeed as each marketplace, and each consumer, is different. An organization will only be able to succeed if it is able to capture and integrate diverse perspectives from diverse individuals.

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