Today, that first domino fell for Beeline, as they have announced plans to acquire fellow extended workforce solution provider, Utmost.

Utmost, founded in 2018, became a growing force in the VMS solutions market over the past couple of years due to its progressive and strategic approach towards extended workforce management and the convergence of HR- and procurement-led functionality, buoyed by its dynamic technology architecture. The Utmost platform boasts a wealth of innovative modules, including an omni-channel talent sourcing solution (“Front Door”), Global Workforce Intelligence (enabling true total talent intelligence), a reimagined services procurement tool, and a burgeoning talent technology ecosystem. For Beeline, this represents a robust opportunity to capture small- and mid-sized extended and contingent workforce programs by tapping into the unique nature of Utmost’s progressive functionality.

“The Future of Work is built on the technology that delivers on the evolution of talent engagement, talent acquisition, and talent management,” said Doug Leeby, CEO of Beeline. “Bringing Utmost’s innovative offerings into the Beeline umbrella of solutions will complement our extended workforce technology and provide our clients with even more value as they optimize they ways they get work done.”

Utmost’s hallmarks, including its ease-of-use automation, frictionless integrations, and quick implementations, will enable Beeline with the ability to tap into the small- and mid-sized markets by offering a nimble foundation of offerings that link directly with these organizations’ key pain points. “Companies in the mid-market require more agile solutions at a lower cost with enhanced access points,” said Leeby. “Beeline is a fantastic “work engine” with massive functionality; Utmost will help us meet the evolving needs of this specific market while keeping our main vision in scope with the ways talent and work are evolving.”

At the center of this major market acquisition are the core constituents of the new world of work: the HR, procurement, and talent acquisition executives that run extended and contingent workforce programs, the suppliers and partners that fulfill their needs for skillsets and expertise, and the talent that drives it all.

“Acquiring Utmost is a representation of the future of extended workforce management technology,” said Colleen Tiner, Beeline’s SVP Strategy. “The transformation of both platforms has been highly complementary from business and functionality perspectives. Combining our market experience with Utmost’s solutions will help Beeline to provide Future of Work-oriented and talent-centric technology to our clients and the market.”

Tiner added that one major result of the acquisition is harnessing the power of Utmost’s strong onboarding and provisioning workflows, as well as the solution’s unique services, and bringing those into Beeline’s extended workforce platform.

Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange analysis of the acquisition:

• While there are several redundancies in functionality, the Utmost acquisition represents a way for Beeline to continue doing what is best known for: innovating. There were many logical acquisition targets for Beeline in the wake of Stone Point Capital’s purchase of the company earlier this year, including direct sourcing platforms and specialist solutions (such as AI-fueled software), however, the company chose to go big with the Utmost move. The core of this acquisition is actually quite simple: it will allow Beeline to continue its long track record of being a pioneer and innovator while expanding its existing scope of Best-in-Class extended workforce management technology.
• “Total Talent Intelligence” becomes “Global Workforce Intelligence.” In the 2022 VMS Technology Advisor, we wrote: “Utmost offers the market’s deepest total talent intelligence through agile and dynamic dashboards that present users with the ability to pinpoint (with regional- and location-specific accuracy) the makeup of FTEs, contingent workers, professional services, independent contractors, etc. and make decisions and take action in real-time (i.e., anomalies regarding compliance, etc.).” Beeline will expand the realm of total talent intelligence through its powerful analytics, AI, and machine learning capabilities to bring its clients “Global Workforce Intelligence,” taking TTI a step or two further.
• Beeline will have a clear pathway into the HR and talent acquisition markets. Contingent workforce management has never been a pure procurement play, but there was a time when the function dominated how the extended workforce was ultimately managed. Today, as the world of work and talent becomes more candidate-centric, technology platforms must place workers at the center of their models. The Utmost acquisition enables Beeline with crucial HR intellectual property and functionality, not to mention Utmost’s expected influence on Beeline’s greater product roadmap. The infusion of HR-oriented functionality into Beeline’s array of offerings, combined with a global workforce intelligence play that will surely draw the attention of C-suite leaders, make this deal a groundbreaking one for the industry.

The post Beeline to Acquire Utmost: Extended Workforce Tech as a Future of Work Nexus appeared first on The Future of Work Exchange.

Heading into 2022, Ardent Partners and Future of Work Exchange identified, amongst other key pressures, two major issues for businesses across the globe: 1) the need to “reimagine” workforce management processes and strategies in the wake of worldwide disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic (as stated by 84% of enterprises), and, 2) a greater need to automate key elements of talent acquisition and workforce management with new and innovative technology (as indicated by over 70% o enterprises).

Today’s workforce management solutions cannot simply rely upon the automation required by organizations during pre-pandemic times, but must now offer a wide range of disruptive, intelligence-led functionality that can lead businesses into the Future of Work era.

Enter Utmost.

Why They Were Selected:

Utmost’s inception was positioned as an extended workforce platform that was buoyed by its seamless integration with Workday to provide users of that software with an agile means of managing both traditional and non-employee workers. Today, it is an end-to-end Vendor Management System (VMS) powerhouse that leads with innovation and talent-fueled functionality. In just four short years, the company blossomed into one of the market leaders in the extended workforce technology landscape, owed to its total talent intelligence capabilities, convergence of HR- and procurement-led functionality, and unique product vision that will enable its clients to traverse into a new era of total talent management and work optimization.

In Their Own Words:

Utmost transforms the VMS by managing the entire extended workforce lifecycle from sourcing to paying all workers in one global talent network for high-growth, dynamic companies. A network of enterprises, workers, and suppliers ensures speed of sourcing/deployment, and Utmost Front Door provides a single place for managers to request workers or work to be done across every channel of sourcing. Utmost supports all talent categories (staff augmentation, service providers, freelancers, SOW, consultants, etc.) in a single module with flexible workflows to cover complex and changing business needs. Utmost was founded in 2018 by industry leaders Annrai O’Toole, Dan Beck, and Paddy Benson, and is backed by Greylock Partners and Mosaic Ventures. Visit www.utmost.co for more information.

The Outlook:

Utmost offers a variety of robust functionality that bodes well for its future in the VMS technology market; its “Front Door” offering is an omni-channel portal (augmented by a seamless user interface) that serves as a dynamic module for finding, engaging, and sourcing Best-in-Class talent, while its native integration with major HRIS platforms is a boon for those business leaders seeking to harness the relative power of total talent intelligence.

Utmost represents the next evolutionary step in the journey of VMS software, as its integration-friendly platform and intuitive functionality position the solution as a powerful offering for organizations seeking a next-generation source of agile workforce management automation. By placing “work” and the overall “talent experience” as the nexus of the platform, Utmost remains a Future of Work-led VMS platform that will only continue to thrive in the months and years ahead.

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Of course, The Great Resignation is mostly driven by a key force: a “Talent Revolution” that has become a catalyst for quits. Workers crave purpose, flexibility, and agility, as well as control and empowerment, and these elements have driven millions of talented professionals into the realm of the extended workforce…a very strong reasoning behind the Exchange’s bullish prediction on this talent community’s expected rampant growth in 2022 and beyond.

“The size, variety, and complexity of this workforce is only increasing as workers ask for different work arrangements with organizations. For example, many IT workers want project-based gigs, digital nomads want flexible remote arrangements, and retirees want to come back to work in a limited capacity,” said Kevin McFarland, Head of Business Development and Alliances at Utmost. “Often, these workers are in critical roles whether in R&D, customer-facing roles, or revenue-generating roles.”

With these movements as a backdrop, business leaders must be more in tune with how they manage their extended and contingent workforce; a failure to appropriately harness the relative power of this type of labor, especially during what may become uncertain economic times, may make the difference between merely surviving the months or ahead, or truly thriving in the future.

Utmost, a prominent provider of extended workforce management and Vendor Management System (VMS) technology, recently unveiled its Utmost Connect platform, a low-code, integration-friendly hub that enables Utmost users to automate core workforce management tasks, tap into third-party applications for “peripheral” attributes of the extended workforce (skills verification, governance, compliance, risk management, etc.), and leverage pre-designed solutions to support flexibility and agility.

“With Utmost Connect, we are enabling our customers to build solutions to achieve their unique business outcomes. Organizations need more than mere integrations that pass data seamlessly between systems, that is a given- they need an ability to automate workflows that span multiple systems with a user experience that reflects how work gets done,” said McFarland. “For instance, many managers operate primarily in Slack to receive communications, like the status of a worker being onboarded, and to conduct tasks, like approve a laptop provisioning request during an onboarding flow. With Utmost Connect, this and many more similar experiences are possible.”

With the extended workforce branching its many complexities across several key enterprise functions and their associated systems, particularly procurement, HR, human capital management, finance, IT, data security, and talent acquisition, it is critical that today’s workforce management platforms offer a robust series of “connectors” and integration-ready applications within a global ecosystem for augmenting key items (like governance and compliance, credential management, project management, etc.).

Utmost has become one of several market-leading VMS solutions due to its innovative nature and flexible software, two attributes that are critical in a world that is now, more than ever, focused on getting work done. As enterprise software traverses beyond mere “supplier management” and “workforce management” and continues to add in Future of Work-era functionality, it will become crucial for businesses to tap into extended workforce systems and a powerful talent technology ecosystem that has the ability to address all aspects of the total talent paradigm.

“At the highest level, companies are increasingly relying on more and more software to get work done. Gartner predicts that the spend on software will increase from $675B to $755B in the next year: 11.8% growth, more than twice the pace of growth of overall IT spend,” said McFarland. “Said another way, we are experiencing a Cambrian explosion of innovative software to support the workforce – everything from new tools to manage access to a growing number of systems to new productivity tools that agile teams use to collaborate across time zones. We are enabling customers to utilize this growing ecosystem of software to deliver the experience they desire across the entire worker lifecycle.”

Utmost Connect is launching with 35 named integrations and use cases, with a vigorous pipeline of additional integrations and automation that will be shared throughout the second half of 2022.

The post “The Ecosystem Effect” and the Future of Work appeared first on The Future of Work Exchange.

HR sits in a unique position within today’s transformative business arena: they have the ability to influence how works gets done through a mixture of extended workforce management, its expertise regarding human capital, and, most importantly, total talent intelligence. For the past decade, the very realm of “total talent management” has been mired in conversations around “myth vs. theory vs. reality,” with many organizations believing that there is no true secret formula to managing all workers through a single, centralized umbrella of strategies, solutions, and systems. However, the concept of total talent intelligence, in which businesses have broad-range, on-demand visibility into its total talent network, allows them to effectively understand which resources or skillsets are required for a new project, role, or initiatives.

In essence, total talent intelligence is the “gateway drug” to total talent management. Just a couple of weeks ago, I joined extended workforce management system provider Utmost for a webinar that also featured VP of Marketing (and longtime friend), Neha Goel, who succinctly stated that total talent intelligence served as an ideal gateway for businesses seeking to develop total talent management programs.

The webinar also highlighted the five strategies every HR executive needed to include in their 2022 planning, such as the recalibration of the Future of Work, building towards “talent sustainability,” and reimagining “HR psychology.” Another nugget from the webcast: the fact that 61% of HR executives are actively building towards “talent sustainability” translates into a greater desire to have the appropriate skills for when unknown future needs arise (and, of course, developing a self-sustaining flow of expertise when combined with direct hire and other recruitment strategies).

The event also highlighted the “talent revolution” muddying today’s evolving staffing landscape and how it translates into an escalated war for talent. A multifaceted talent engagement approach for HR moving forward, as Neha and I discussed, must include brand, culture, purpose, and flexibility. HR and hiring managers must blend human and digital elements in navigating this evolving talent landscape to truly encapsulate the notion of work optimization.

For the HR function, this is the true Future of Work. The revolution of talent occurring in the labor market today necessitates that HR leaders inject innovation, transformative thinking, and next-generation technology to spark a renewed emphasis on how work is addressed and done. [Click here to check out a recording of the Future of Work Exchange webinar with Utmost.]

The post For HR, The Path Forward is Clear: Optimize How Work Gets Done appeared first on The Future of Work Exchange.

Today, the game has changed. As the contingent workforce evolved and transformed into the extended workforce, HR’s role has become critical in how the average organization integrates agile talent into how work is done. In fact, HR now has the opportunity to recalibrate how it harnesses the power of the Future of Work movement to drive enhanced management of extended talent and contribute to overall enterprise success.

As HR and talent acquisition executives begin planning for the year ahead, it is critical that they employ a series of Future of Work-led strategies and solutions for not only optimizing how work is done, but enhancing the way talent boosts revenue, productivity, and competitive advantages. I’m excited to join Utmost next week (Thursday, October 28, 11am ET) for an exclusive webcast that will:

• Unveil the five strategies that every HR executive should include in 2022 planning.
• Discuss why “HR psychology” must be reimagined in order for this function in the year ahead.
• Highlight how HR can leverage emerging technology to enhance extended workforce management, and;
• Detail HR’s ultimate role in how work is both addressed and optimized.

Utmost’s VP of Marketing, Neha Goel, will be co-presenting with me as we showcase some new Ardent Partners/Future of Work Exchange research on the evolving role of HR in not only extended workforce management, but within the Future of Work movement, as well. Click here or on the image below to register for next week’s event. Looking forward to seeing you there!

The post HR’s Impact on the Future of Work (Upcoming Webinar) appeared first on The Future of Work Exchange.

The contingent workforce has been growing in both size and impact over the last several years, now comprising 47% of the average company’s total talent and showing no signs of slowing down. The concepts of the “agile workforce” and the “extended workforce,” two terms used frequently in our industry, represent the relative evolution of the contingent workforce in regard to its ability to foster dynamic means of getting work done.

Now also referred to colloquially as the “extended workforce,” this wide-scoping range of on-demand talent is defined by the Future of Work Exchange as the natural evolution of the contingent workforce and reflects the agility driven by contractors, freelancers, gig workers, talent pool candidates, professional services, and other forms of non-employee talent. The extended workforce is enabled by advancements in talent acquisition, such as direct sourcing, talent pools, digital and on-demand staffing, and talent marketplaces.

With extended talent comprising nearly half of the global workforce, it is now critical for businesses to drive deep “total talent intelligence” into how these workers are situated in addition to pushing HR-led best practices into the world of contingent workforce management (CWM).

Enter Utmost.

Why They Were Selected:

Utmost was originally designed as a progressive workforce management platform for Workday users, however, in a short amount of time, the company has proven that it has the global expertise, innovative tools, and next-generation functionality to be a true catalyst for extended workforce management.

Utmost’s total talent intelligence offering is considered a market-leading attribute of the platform, with a global dashboard that enables real-time visibility into the many dynamics of the extended workforce, including the makeup of non-employee talent within any given region, project/work status, compliance and risk mitigation measures, and more. Utmost’s forward-thinking way of approaching the burgeoning agile workforce has allowed its users to effectively execute traditional contingent labor operations with a solid backbone of deep talent intelligence for superior decision-making.

In Their Own Words:

Utmost Extended Workforce System is a talent-focused, next-evolution of vendor management software. We are a single, global platform built to manage and engage all classifications of workers — that’s one system, one set of integrations, one single source of truth. Our worker-centric solution allows organizations to manage and engage external resources as they do their employee human capital — with full control and visibility of individuals, skills, and spend.

Built exclusively for Workday customers, Utmost allows enterprises to track, report, source, and manage spend for all categories of the extended workforce, regardless of worker classification (i.e., contractor, project-based worker, outsourced worker, freelancer, independent contractor, etc.), whether employee or non-employee. Our investment, road map, and product strategy were built with Workday customers in mind, and we extend that experience across everyone who works for or with an organization. This allows companies to manage all talent for optimal business outcomes in a scalable way.

The Outlook:

Utmost may be a relatively young organization (founded in 2018), however, their consistent valve of innovation has thrust them firmly into the discussion of today’s top workforce management platforms. It latest feature, Front Door, is a fully-agile and end-to-end solution that optimizes the talent engagement process while guiding hiring managers to best-aligned candidate fit for the project, task, or role at hand. For Workday customers, Front Door represents an opportunity to find, engage, and source total talent through an optimized channel that serves as a single point of entry for new requests.

Utmost has a bright future ahead as it continues to offer innovative tools and technology to the workforce management solutions market. As more and more businesses bring a human capital and HR focus to the world of extended workforce management, Utmost’s wide-scoping range of functionality will help it thrive in these evolving times.

[Editor’s Note: Join Chris and the Utmost team for an exclusive webcast next month, “Five Things Every HR Executive Should Include in 2022 Planning.”]

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Tomorrow’s workforce is changing at a pace we have not experienced in past decades. The pandemic expedited what was already happening in the market: emerging technologies leading to automation and digital transformations; the desire for flexibility in how and where people work; a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I); and globalization. It’s become clear organizations require a shift in how they think about and manage their entire workforce.

The Future of Work, which Ardent Partners defines as work optimization via the transformation of business operations, talent usage, seamless and comprehensive workforce management solutions, and flexible enterprise thinking, requires a change in how companies are tracking, managing, accessing, engaging, and reporting (i.e., spend, worker type, performance) on talent at an enterprise level.

Disparate systems make it difficult for companies to have visibility into their entire workforce. Even if an organization has a vendor management system (VMS) to track their contingent labor, they support as little as 10% of the total external workforce, which is now made up of project-based workers, freelancers, independent contractors, gig workers, and outsourced resources not captured in a VMS.

The Time is Now

As the non-employee utilization rate nears half of the total workforce (nearly 47% of the total workforce, according to Ardent), and more than 80% of large corporations planning on substantially increasing their use of a flexible workforce in the coming years, the time to prepare is now. The fastest-growing part of the workforce is the one that is currently not being tracked, which poses huge challenges for organizations.

This impacts activities like on/offboarding, classification, tenure, performance, payment, and reporting if only a portion of your total workforce is captured in your current ERP, VMS, and project-management tools. More importantly, it becomes impossible to assess and engage your total workforce in a scalable way without a single system of truth.

The Workforce is Changing

By 2025, 75% of the workforce will be made up of millennials — the most diverse group in American history, with 44.2% identifying as “non-white.” This should be a wake-up call for organizations who are not putting their DE&I initiatives at the top of their priority list. Having a platform that allows organizations to easily access, attract, retain, and report on diversity measures to meet their goals is crucial.

Millennials are also the first “digitally-native generation,” according to Pew Research, which means they expect to interact with work in the same way they interact in other aspects of their lives like ordering meals, rides, movies, and other services. They are demanding flexibility, engagement, diversity, career advancement, and a cultural fit regardless of how they are employed — be it full-time or contingent.

Future-Proof Technology

Together, all of these factors require organizations implement a technology platform built for the extended workforce. This can mean anything from connecting to new sourcing channels in an agile way to configurable back-end processes to managing distributed teams in a worker-centric way.

Utmost helps organizations fully engage and optimize their entire extended workforce. Built as a native application on the Workday Cloud Platform, Utmost provides a seamless experience for Workday customers to gain full visibility into their changing workforce composition, quality, and spend in an agile and scalable manner.

We believe the Future of Work is getting “the most from your all,” meaning the enterprise is getting the most out of its workforce, and talent has all the tools in place from their employer to bring their best selves to work. We believe this combination will set organizations, and their most significant competitive advantage, their talent, up for success.

The post Preparing for Tomorrow’s Workforce appeared first on The Future of Work Exchange.

Just yesterday, Utmost announced that it secured $21 million in Series B funding. Since its inception in 2018, the Extended Workforce Management System (EWS) platform has not only been passionate about the way businesses harness the power of the agile workforce but has differentiated itself from the contingent workforce solutions market through its unique features, functionality, and forward-thinking innovation.

I had the opportunity to chat with Utmost CEO and co-founder, Annrai O’Toole, about the funding news and what it means for the company:

Christopher J. Dwyer: Congrats on the recent news about the Series B funding. Why did Utmost go the Series B route? And, what attracted the new investor to Utmost?

Annrai O’Toole: A Series B was always in the plan. As you know, enterprise software is complex, and to meet the requirements of Global 1000 companies using Workday, and we needed a top-notch team to build out the key features these customers need.

As for why Mosaic Ventures invested: they recognized the changing nature of work. The legacy systems focused on, as the name suggests, vendor management instead of the entire extended workforce. As your (Ardent Partners) research shows, the typical enterprise workforce is 43% non-employee and only growing (Editor’s note: this figure has grown to 46.5%, as found by upcoming Ardent research). Mosaic recognized this trend, and those enterprises needed a solution to manage this workforce. But not yet another siloed system. Workday customers need an extended workforce system that directly aligns with Workday instead of building and maintaining complex, costly integrations that fail to give total visibility.

CJD: It must have been an exciting experience to fundraise in an entirely virtual environment. What was it like?

AOT: I’m not sure I would depict it as exciting! It was certainly different. It’s a tradeoff of efficiency vs personal connection. No need to fly around to meet people in person so it’s certainly more efficient in that regard. However, you don’t sense people’s body language so it’s harder to gauge how it’s going. Of course, we had none of that this past year, and I know most of your readers went through the same things in their own business. The industry adapted, and VC investment has continued at a strong pace!

CJD: How does Utmost plan to harness the Series B funding?

AOT: We will be primarily accelerating product innovation and expanding sales/marketing presence in North America and Europe. We have lots of great product ideas we want to see come to life: decision-based hiring support, a whole new take on invoice processing and of course our unique “global work graph.”  We also want to get that product to as many customers as possible. What that means is we will be hiring – lots: software engineers, excellent product folks, sales, and marketers who can help us deliver value to our customers.

CJD: What can customers expect to see in the future, especially regarding Utmost’s product roadmap and upcoming features and tools?

AOT: First and foremost, our roadmap will adapt to customer needs. Many of the traditional VMS platforms on the market have slow feature release cycles and are essentially still mired in an “on-premise” technology stack. “The difference between a walrus and a gymnast” is how one of our customers referred to a legacy provider and Utmost when it comes to deployment and product innovation.

With that said, there are a few areas that we plan to focus on:

• Richer and more context aware sourcing workflows across both role-based and outcome-based engagements with the extended workers.
• A “Front Door” to simplify centralize all hiring manager requests for work or workers.
• First-rate Supplier and Worker Apps.
• Best-in-Class, semantically rich, automation and integration with your key HR system: Workday.

CJD: The VMS and Extended Workforce technology market have grown increasingly competitive over the past 18 or so months. What makes Utmost so different?

AOT: Workday customers choose Utmost because of how closely aligned the software is with Workday. Rather than manage a whole separate data model for your extended workforce, Utmost aligns with Workday so you can achieve total talent management. You need to be able to view and manage your extended workforce in the context of your permanent employees.  It is either/or — Total Workforce means seeing both sets of Workers in a semantically consistent environment.

Other VMS platforms can build integrations with Workday, but only Utmost provides these rich behavioral semantics and matches the user interface of Workday to seamlessly synchronize all the relevant data from both systems. It’s that connection that makes the lives of HRIS teams and hiring managers much easier. And from a workforce planning perspective, you can’t do that unless you have a holistic view of the workforce.

Beyond the connection with Workday, Utmost acts as a “Front Door” to all types of work or worker requests. A typical VMS can handle SOW or staff augmentation work requests but cannot oversee contractors very well, and of course, an employee request is siloed from the VMS. Utmost guides hiring managers to the correct type of resource and reduces worker misclassification and simplifies the hiring manager experience. A manager shouldn’t need to know the difference between SOW or staff aug or contractor. She just wants the right resource at the right time to get work done; Utmost enables that.

Lastly, it’s the talent lens. Workers are more than their rate card. They have skills, previous engagements, nd performance scores. That history should travel with the worker. Utmost worker profiles are designed not only for the enterprise but for the worker herself. A robust contingent workforce program simultaneously promotes the worker, the supplier, and the enterprise. Most VMS are built from the enterprise perspective first. Suppliers and workers have to create logins for every new client and no real-time visibility into their engagements.

CJD: Where do you see Utmost in a few years? What does the market look like?

AOT: Fundamentally we believe that the future of work is all about the extended workforce. Over the last 20 years the employee experience has been transformed by enterprise applications. However, the extended workforce has been left behind — it’s in a shadow. Worse than that, we’ve had 20 years of treating the worker as a mere rate card. Utmost wants to shake this all up and bring innovation, visibility, clarity and cohesiveness to the whole extended workforce.

We know that enterprises are really asking for something new in the whole area of the extended workforce.  We believe that the market is ready for change too and we’re going to give it our utmost to make things better!

For additional insights from Christopher and Annrai, check out their discussion on the Contingent Workforce Weekly podcast.

The post On Extended Workforce Growth and the Future of Work: A Discussion with Utmost CEO and Co-Founder Annrai O’Toole appeared first on The Future of Work Exchange.