The procurement of external services and Statement of Work (SOW) based engagements today represents a significant proportion of an organization’s spend on their external workforce.
SAP Fieldglass supports the entire services procurement lifecycle to source, engage, manage, and pay providers.
Note that the process represented here is one of many possible workflows for creating Statements of Work in SAP Fieldglass. The application is highly configurable and processes will look slightly different depending on a customer's needs.
Procure:
| Create SOW | The hiring manager initiates the creation of the statement of work. They input the details of the project, including the tasks (called Characteristics in SAP Fieldglass), timeline, number of workers needed, deliverables, and costs, among other details. It will then go to the PMO or anyone in the organization that must approve the project. |
| Review/Accept SOW | The supplier would acknowledge receipt of the SOW. Further negotiation of the SOW terms and rates could occur with the buyer until an agreement is reached. |
| Accept & Submit SOW | When an agreement is reached, the buyer accepts the SOW and submits it to the PMO for review and approval. |
| Approve SOW | The PMO or buyer evaluates the SOW prior to the SOW being sent to the supplier for their final acceptance. If further negotiation is required, the PMO/buyer would assist. |
| Add Workers | When the SOW is fully approved, the supplier adds workers to the defined SOW Worker Roles on the project and accepts the SOW. Any onboarding items associated with SOW workers could then be managed. For example, activity items such as the issuance of a security badge or the completion of certain reference checks. |
Engage:
| Approve Workers | The buyer approves the workers and, if necessary, any onboarding activity items associated with SOW workers are completed. |
| Register in SAP Fieldglass | When the SOW workers are approved and cleared to start, they are invited to register in SAP Fieldglass. |
Now work on the project can begin. And from this point forward, the Buyer and Supplier will use SAP Fieldglass to monitor and track progress and approve agreed upon milestones for payment once the work is completed.
Pay:
| Mark Characteristics as Complete | As the supplier completes the work for the various aspects of the project, they mark the line item characteristics as complete on the SOW. |
| Submit Time and Expenses | During this time the worker(s) would submit time and expenses for the work done to that point. There are a few options for SOW workers in terms of tracking; you can set the time to be tracked and invoiced, time to be tracked and not invoiced, or not tracked at all if this will not affect the overall SOW budget that was approved. |
| Approve Completed Characteristics | When the buyer receives the notice that a characteristic line item has been marked complete, they review the details to confirm the work has been done, and then they approve it. |
| Approve Time and Expenses | Time sheets and expense sheets (and other project/worker characteristics) are also evaluated and approved by the buyer as well. |
| Invoices Auto-generated | If the buyer has auto-invoicing enabled, SAP Fieldglass automatically generates and submits an invoice for each fully approved characteristic and/or time and expense sheet. If auto-invoicing was not enabled, the supplier would have to manually generate the invoices based on each approved line item. A best practice is to have auto-invoicing enabled, skipping that manual step of creating the invoice, and instead have the system automatically generate it upon approval by the buyer. Invoicing is ultimately derived from milestones, deliverables, or timesheets for any SOW workers that have been approved by the contract manager. The invoice is then exported from SAP Fieldglass and imported into the buyer’s accounts payable system so that the supplier can be paid. |