When I first began my career in the talent technology industry, Vendor Management Systems (VMS) were considered “eProcurement for staffing” and not the true enterprise behemoths they are today. The truth is that this wasn’t a natural evolution for the world of VMS and extended workforce automation; these systems had to prove their worth through a mix of grit, innovation, and market-shifting functionality.
A little over a decade ago, when enterprise software giant SAP acquired Fieldglass (a VMS pioneer), I was quoted as saying, “By 2020, half of the global workforce will be considered “contingent” or “external.” At that point, upwards of a third (33%-to-34% and growing) of the workforce was considered external. From 2015 to the early weeks of 2020, we were getting closer and closer to that 50% threshold…and then something happened that sparked another spark in contingent workforce growth.
The COVID-19 pandemic was, of course, a watershed moment in both human and business history; it was a global health crisis that sparked an economic crisis that sparked Future of Work accelerants that we all leverage today five years later (like remote and hybrid work, for instance). During the hardest, earliest months of the pandemic, businesses needed to scale up or scale down their workforces based on fluctuating conditions; when cases were down and demand for products/services returned, hiring managers and talent leaders shored up the workforce with contingent labor. When demand waned (especially during the very difficult 2020-2021 winter), it was easier to scale down with a temporary workforce.
It was well before this, though, that the VMS platform more than proved its worth for a simple reason: the external workforce kept growing. No other solutions (technology, that is) were as well-fit and aligned with managing this growth like Vendor Management Systems.
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