Objective
Because each individual company has its own unique labor needs, it also has its own unique set of processes that it uses to procure that labor. And those processes, along with the platform and the people who administer them, are often referred to as a Program.
Watch the video below to understand how a program adds value to an organization.
In order to manage a program, many companies will create what are called Program Management Offices, or PMOs.
A Program Management Office, as the name indicates, is a group or department within an organization that manages a program—in this case, an external workforce procurement program. A PMO helps improve an organization’s overall performance by maintaining the standards of the program and aligning its processes to the organization’s goals. So where the platform automates the processes, the people define and manage the processes.
But what if a company doesn’t necessarily want to handle the management of external workers with an in-house Program Management Office? Who, then, actually handles the management of the Program?
In such a case, the company can engage a third-party vendor that specializes in program management. That third-party vendor is what’s known as an MSP, or Managed Service Provider. The service that the MSP provides is, of course, managing the company’s external labor procurement Program, taking the place of an in-house PMO.
It’s also possible that the buyer could manage the Program with a combination of the two, whereby, for instance, the in-house PMO maintains the standards and manages the MSP, while the MSP actually performs the procurement functions and manages the VMS.
These distinctions are important, because how the SAP Fieldglass application is configured depends greatly on who is managing what aspects of the external labor procurement process. Regardless of whether the Program is managed by an internal PMO or an external MSP, or some combination thereof, SAP Fieldglass is flexible enough to work with all of the players—buyer, supplier, PMO, MSP, and even the worker.
A Program is a combination of processes, people, and platforms that manages the external workforce of an organization.