Future of Sourcing - Vendor Management Systems (VMS) https://www.futureofsourcing.com/tags/vendor-management-systems-vms en Women in Global Sourcing: Tracy Scheid https://www.futureofsourcing.com/women-in-global-sourcing-tracy-scheid <div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.futureofsourcing.com/sites/default/files/articles/WIGS_Tracy%20624x325.png"><a href="https://www.futureofsourcing.com/sites/default/files/articles/WIGS_Tracy%20624x325.png" title="Women in Global Sourcing: Tracy Scheid" class="colorbox" rel="gallery-node-1451-SdLi7bJwSdI"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.futureofsourcing.com/sites/default/files/styles/juicebox_medium/public/articles/WIGS_Tracy%20624x325.png?itok=-L1hUS5p" width="624" height="325" alt="" title="" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-intro field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <div>Future of Sourcing Digital continues to highlight leaders in the field with the series titled &ldquo;Women in Global in Sourcing.&rdquo; This series strives to highlight, celebrate and acknowledge women who are pioneers and leaders in the industry and who have been influential in moving the industry forward. Future of Sourcing is thrilled to welcome Tracy Scheid to the series.</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>Tracy is the Vice President of Operations at <a href="http://workspend.com" target="_blank">Workspend</a>. She is a strategic and results-oriented leader with over 30 years of experience aligning business goals with talent acquisition strategies.</div> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <div><strong>Tell us about your career path. How did you get into this field? Was it purposeful or by accident?</strong></div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>I started my career in the staffing industry and landed there purely by accident. I had contacted a placement firm to help me find a new job, and after interviewing with them, they hired me internally. Through the years I moved into branch and area management, and in 2006 I started in an MSP role, as a Program Manager for a very large contingent workforce program. This was in the early years of MSP/VMS, and I knew right away that this was where I wanted to be. I loved the complexity of the MSP business (and still do). Although the MSP and VMS businesses are closely tied to staffing and often bucketed in the staffing industry, contingent workforce management is really a combination of supplier management and business process management. I thrived in this environment and rose through various levels of management until I was a Vice President for a large MSP company, responsible for 52 contingent workforce programs and $2.4 billion of spend under management. I leveraged that experience to start a consulting firm with a well-respected colleague, which opened the door to my current role at Workspend, a leading organization that provides total talent solutions. It is extremely important to me to be a part of an organization with values and a focus that closely match my own. Workspend is innovative, and acutely focused on client satisfaction, with a consultative approach.&nbsp;</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div><strong>Would you follow that same path again if you had the choice?</strong></div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>Yes, I would choose the same path. It wasn&rsquo;t a perfect journey, but I learned so much in each of my roles along the way. I had the great privilege of working with so many wonderful, talented, intelligent people and I&rsquo;ve had the chance to learn from exceptional mentors. I&rsquo;m an accumulation of all of those experiences, all of those learning opportunities.&nbsp;</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div><strong>What has been the single most significant development to impact your profession or area of business during your career and why?</strong></div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>The most profound development in staffing, contingent workforce management and total talent management is technology. Technology innovation continues to impact talent management in ways that I could have never been imagined when I first started my career. Predictive analytics and Artificial Intelligence continue to drive changes to the technology used to source and manage all types of talent. &nbsp;</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>However, the evolution of the contingent workforce itself has also been significant. When I first started my career, temporary workers were a very small part of the overall workforce. During economic downturns in the early 2000s companies started to see contingent labor as a key element in managing resource costs as they addressed peaks and valleys in business, seasonal ramp ups, and niche skill sets. The use of the contingent workforce has grown drastically since then. Companies began to recognize the need for visibility into the use, quality and cost of such a large and vital part of their workforce, and that is when contingent labor started to be seen as a commodity, and generally shifted from being managed by HR to being managed by Sourcing and Procurement.&nbsp;</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>At the same time, these organizations saw the value in engaging third party MSPs, using VMS technology to manage staffing suppliers, compliance, cost and quality. The evolution continued with the identification and use of different categories of contingent labor, including independent contractors, freelancers, statements of work and outsourced services.&nbsp;</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>Companies are now starting to look holistically at all talent, both contingent and regular full-time, in a total talent approach. The management of total talent requires complex, innovative technology that can not only report on current state, but can also position stakeholders to proactively address future needs while continuing to drive value. &nbsp;</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div><strong>What&rsquo;s the biggest challenge facing your industry today - and how do you plan to solve it?</strong></div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>The biggest challenge facing the contingent workforce industry is how quickly the industry is changing. The contingent workforce landscape has already changed drastically in the last two decades. Most economists predict a 50/50 split between regular full-time and contingent workers within the next five years. Finding better ways to integrate all segments of the workforce and building comprehensive service and technology solutions to source and manage all types of labor will require innovation and technological advances specifically around predictive analytics and artificial intelligence (AI). Our goal is to create an integrated technology ecosystem to support total talent management, focusing on user experience, predictive analytics, data and AI.</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div><strong>What do you consider to be your greatest achievement career-wise?</strong></div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>I think that my greatest achievement has been helping people advance in their career paths and achieve their career goals. As a leader, I feel that my greatest contribution is mentoring others to achieve their full potential.&nbsp;</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div><strong>What&rsquo;s your biggest (as yet) unfulfilled ambition - and what are you doing to achieve it?</strong></div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>I am so thankful to have had the opportunities that I have had throughout my career. I really just want to continue to be a part of an organization that offers me the chance to be an innovator and thought leader and to continue to make a difference as we rise to meet the challenges of such a dynamic and vital industry.&nbsp;</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div><strong>What three words do you think your colleagues and peers would use to describe you?</strong></div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>Honest, because I believe that being honest and having integrity is the only way to do business and be successful.</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>Dedicated, because I&rsquo;ve always led by example, and I work hard every day to meet deadlines and deliver to both our clients and internal team members.&nbsp;</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>Supportive, because providing support and service to our clients is my primary focus. I also believe that helping my team succeed, whether it is by taking on a task, providing guidance or encouragement, or simply listening, will always be among the most important things that I can do.&nbsp;</div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div><strong>Finally, what piece of advice would you give to young women starting their careers in the field of sourcing, outsourcing and procurement?</strong></div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div>Work hard. Trust and respect are something that you earn. People and relationships matter, so treat people with respect and kindness. Be self-aware. Never stop learning. Recognize that you can learn something valuable from almost everyone you meet. Smile&hellip;a lot. You only live once, and you spend almost every day at work, so have fun with it. Enjoy what you do, but know that you won&rsquo;t always like every part of your job. Your career, like any other part of your life, is unpredictable with ups and downs. You can influence it, but you can&rsquo;t always control the outcome. Do your best, be your best and enjoy the journey.&nbsp;</div> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/leadership" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Leadership</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/recruiting" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Recruiting</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/staffing" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Staffing</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/vendor-management-systems-vms" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vendor Management Systems (VMS)</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/managed-service-provider-msp" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Managed Service Provider (MSP)</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-addthis field-type-addthis field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style " addthis:title="Women in Global Sourcing: Tracy Scheid - Future of Sourcing" addthis:url="https://www.futureofsourcing.com/women-in-global-sourcing-tracy-scheid"><a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_linkedin"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_facebook"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_twitter"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_googleplus"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_pinterest_share"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_reddit"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_email"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_print"></a> </div> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-region field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Region:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/regions/global" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Global</a></div></div></div> Tue, 21 May 2019 17:29:51 +0000 Tracy Scheid 1451 at https://www.futureofsourcing.com https://www.futureofsourcing.com/women-in-global-sourcing-tracy-scheid#comments Q&A: Dave Putt, DCR Workforce https://www.futureofsourcing.com/node/926 <div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.futureofsourcing.com/sites/default/files/articles/Dave-Putt-slider-420x215.jpg"><a href="https://www.futureofsourcing.com/sites/default/files/articles/Dave-Putt-slider-420x215.jpg" title="Q&amp;A: Dave Putt, DCR Workforce" class="colorbox" rel="gallery-node-926-SdLi7bJwSdI"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.futureofsourcing.com/sites/default/files/styles/juicebox_medium/public/articles/Dave-Putt-slider-420x215.jpg?itok=0h_7MkgM" width="420" height="215" alt="" title="" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p><em>Dave Putt is Executive Vice President at cloud-based VMS provider DCR Workforce. We caught up with Dave at the SIG Summit in Orlando, Florida (get a taste of the action on Twitter via the hashtag #SIGspring16) to learn a bit more about his organisation &ndash; and to get his take on the fragmentation of work today&hellip;</em></p> <hr style="clear:both;" /> <p><em>Outsource: Dave, thanks for joining us today. Some of our readers may not be familiar with your organisation: can you give us a brief introduction to DCR Workforce?</em></p> <p>Dave Putt: DCR Workforce has actually been around for about 20 years, primarily providing services to large companies within the business process management and managed services provider space for total talent management. We didn&rsquo;t find any VMS tools that really suited our needs, so we developed our own&hellip; And the company&rsquo;s owners came to realise that they had something really commercially viable, so over the last three years we&rsquo;ve commercialised that VMS tool and moved into a true VMS-only provider space globally &ndash; which, incidentally, was born in the web: you hear a lot about legacy applications being converted to a SaaS model, but ours has always been &ldquo;True&rdquo; SaaS.</p> <p>Now we&rsquo;re in a place where we&rsquo;ve built out infrastructure, we&rsquo;ve hired SMEs (subject matter experts for various industry verticals): we&rsquo;ve a good competitive challenge ahead of us because it&rsquo;s a very robust space, with two major providers of VMS SaaS. Our belief is that our tool and disruptive innovation is a leapfrog-kind of capability with some really advanced features and functions: we&rsquo;ve built out some really complex statement-of-work capabilities, multi-lingual capabilities, multi-currency, multi-country capabilities on an application that that is device agnostic.</p> <p>That&rsquo;s the niche that we&rsquo;re in now, and we have an exhaustive client base to take us into the next-gen programs that are at play in this market.</p> <p><em>O: You&rsquo;re a relatively new proposition: how has your interaction with buyers evolved over the relatively short period you&rsquo;ve been in this space?</em></p> <p>DP: Well, it&rsquo;s embryonic at this point: to be frank our way into organisations is to catch them as early as possible when they&rsquo;re starting to roll out complex statement-of-work issues, or doing complex international roll-outs; that&rsquo;s where we can come in and really give them really good support in terms of best practice with the applications that are available. We have built SME teams which engage with buyers to provide best practice and a solution which is future proof and is built on the next generation of platforms. And SIG has been very helpful for that &ndash; this event here really has plugged us into some people who now can really compare and contrast, and not just think of three main companies.</p> <p>Part of what we&rsquo;re trying to do here is not just find customers, but partnerships that will work and we are a &ldquo;True Vendor Neutral&rdquo; solution. We think we can enable a lot of other supplier organisations to better serve their customer base. We&rsquo;re able to work with almost any type of provider in this space, as long as they share our future thinking&hellip;</p> <p><em>O: Where do your customers typically come from in terms of geographies and functions?</em></p> <p>DP: Most of our customers are working in multiple geographies and our program is rolled out globally. If you have a legacy VMS application which is ten years old and built on legacy software tools that&rsquo;s primarily servicing req to check temp-oriented environment you need to revisit your options. Plus the third generation programs which have extensive next level demands and strategic goals &ndash; one example being the nuclear power industry which is fairly complex from a regulatory standpoint and also in terms of the actual work done, so imagine a fairly large statement of work regarding shutting a power plant down and bringing it back up again. We&rsquo;ve configured our tool for that industry so all of the components around shutting down and ramping up a power plant are repeatable. So you can put a fairly complex statement of work together, roll it out to three or four vendors, get all the spend analytics baked into it, do the gig one time &ndash; and then the next plant, and the next plant and the next plant are already put into a repeatable catalogue.</p> <p>So we&rsquo;re into nuclear power, we&rsquo;re into financial services, government contracting, retail, technology, pharma, insurance &ndash; but it&rsquo;s really not specific to any one industry. The global component really attracts a lot of companies &ndash; especially if they&rsquo;re doing a lot of SOW projects, things like that.</p> <p><em>O: You asked a question at yesterday&rsquo;s&nbsp;keynote session about the impact of automation on employment; do you see that as being a challenge to your company, or conversely do you think that with the increased fragmentation of work nowadays there&rsquo;s more of a role for tools such as</em>&nbsp;yours?</p> <p>DP: So I have a huge passion for this topic. When I was in college I read&nbsp;<em>Player Piano</em>&nbsp;by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and it completely changed my views on this aspect of life. That book portrays a dystopia where automation has cut down so many jobs, and there is strife in society. And here we are&hellip; If we cut 100,000 taxi drivers what actually happens to them? But I do think that with work being fragmented &ndash; and whether you think it&rsquo;s a good thing or a bad thing, it&rsquo;s happening &ndash; if there&rsquo;s not an adequate tool that can actually manage all the complexities around how to engage talent, then we&rsquo;re going to be caught short. One example for us is a thing we call xCHANGE, which is essentially a talent cloud. What our goal is is to punch that out through APIs to any number of talent sources. And that&rsquo;s another avenue for companies to get talent, regardless of what modalities the future takes &ndash; because nobody knows what the future looks like&hellip;</p> <p><em>O: Where would you like your organisation to go over the next business cycle?</em></p> <p>DP: The seed of DCR is very collaborative, and while we believe that many of the things we have developed are meeting market needs right now we collaborate in exponential fashion with our customers to come up with next-generation programs that we want to do. My goal really from a sales perspective is of course market penetration; but more importantly if we have a tool that has all the capabilities that a customer wishes it had but can&rsquo;t deploy, then I don&rsquo;t think market penetration is going to be an issue. We&rsquo;ll be beating the demands of the future.</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/software-as-a-service-saas" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Software as a service (SaaS)</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/vendor-management-systems-vms" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vendor Management Systems (VMS)</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/cloud" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Cloud</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/software" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Software</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tags/cloud-technology" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Cloud Technology</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-addthis field-type-addthis field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style " addthis:title="Q&amp;amp;A: Dave Putt, DCR Workforce - Future of Sourcing" addthis:url="https://www.futureofsourcing.com/node/926"><a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_linkedin"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_facebook"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_twitter"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_googleplus"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_pinterest_share"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_reddit"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_email"></a> <a href="https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300" class="addthis_button_print"></a> </div> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-region field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Region:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/regions/global" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Global</a></div></div></div> Wed, 20 Apr 2016 20:47:38 +0000 Dave Putt 926 at https://www.futureofsourcing.com https://www.futureofsourcing.com/node/926#comments