For organisations to utilise them effectively though, there needs to be a great deal of review and scrutiny that goes into their decision-making process.

Accessing specialist skills

Where a Statement of Work solution works well is when elements of a project require specialist skills – often not found in the local temporary workforce community. Organisations first need to review which project delivery components could potentially be delivered by a service provider as opposed to contingent workers, and scope out the requirements for the package of work.

Statement of Works should run independently from how directly employed and contingent workers are engaged, because your organisation will be entering into a contract with another company to deliver services for you, not a person. It’s therefore crucial that the requirements covered in the SoW can be delivered with no direct control from you, with the service provider left with the responsibility of managing the day-to-day operations in line with pre-agreed milestone and project deliverables.

Where organisations are looking for greater control over how the work is completed, a SoW solution may not be as well suited as an employment approach.

Navigating the tender process

Appointing service providers to complete your Statement of Works is approached in a very different way to engaging permanent or non-permanent workers. A full Request For Proposal (RFP) tender process is needed to invite service providers to bid for the package of work, review their capability and experience, then select the right provider to complete the project requirements.

It’s a comprehensive process, that needs to be built with transparency and integrity – including developing a ranking matrix to review and analyse each service provider, benchmarking them against key indicators such as past experience and project delivery capability. Which our clients often feel an external consultancy approach working with our dedicated team provides the 360 degree overview required to get the process right.

“Organisations will often require a mix of Statement of Works alongside traditional recruitment engagement models such as contingent workers to effectively deliver their projects. The key is to accurately assess which key elements of the projects can effectively and genuinely be delivered through an experienced service provider autonomously following a SoW.”

– Andy Iddon, Linx Project Delivery Manager

Managing the risk

With the service provider being engaged to complete the work, the SoW contractual agreement can be developed to clearly set out who maintains responsibility for project delivery and, crucially, any incurred costs where project delays impact other suppliers or delivery timescales. It’s therefore important that Statement of Work contracts are extensively critiqued to ensure organisations can effectively manage the risk to their own business.

Ensuring project governance

Once the service provider is engaged onto the project, ongoing governance will be required to ensure they are performing against the pre-agreed milestones and project deliverables. With payments released in line with the contractual terms, and where all key performance indicators and service level requirements have been met.

At Linx we work with our clients to devise effective review measures to managed service providers and report back on performance. Leaving our clients to focus on the overall project delivery, secure in the knowledge that all packages of work are being progressed effectively.

We help organisations look at how alternative engagement models such as Statement of Works can be developed to complement their wider contingent workforce recruitment processes to gain access to the right specialist skills for optimum project delivery.

The post Is a Statement of Work right for your project? appeared first on Linx.

For clients looking to secure specialist skills, not readily available within the contingent workforce marketplace, a Statement of Work (SoW) can be a great way to move away from traditional recruitment models towards service provider delivery.

We take a look at Statement of Works in more detail.

Defining a Statement of Work

SoW solutions are completely different to traditional options such as contingent and permanent employment. It is very much about engaging a service provider to deliver an outcome-based solution and not an individual person.

Taking a performance based approach

SoW agreements are outcome-based projects, and therefore all milestone payments are to an agreed milestone delivery payment structure. These performance based measures allow the client to engage a single or multiple service providers under a defined package of work.

Whatever the package may be, the work that is required from the service provider is broken down into clearly defined task deliverables and pre-agreed milestones. Service providers are then reimbursed based upon successful completion of these delivery outputs, in line with the payment terms. With the client having minimal involvement in any level of detail other than scoping out, service provider selection, and agreeing the requirements and acceptance criteria for the package of work.

A Statement of Work in practice

Statement of Work solutions work particularly well where specialist skills are required, or where an element of a project can be delivered as a package of work. As it will be a B2B relationship, there will not be any daily direction or control over the individual requirements for the tasks, so clients will need to be comfortable to leave the service provider to deliver their work autonomously – engaging whatever team they feel is required, whist ensuring that all the client’s compliance processes are followed.

Appointing a service provider

Clients will need to scope out each potential Statement of Work, defining what the milestones and project deliverables will be to complete the work. Including any timescales and quality expectations.  Linx takes a collaborative approach, working with clients to fully understand and scope the project requirements. Creating defined tasks with clear acceptance criteria, which the service provider will need to meet in order to receive the related milestone payment.

Organisations will then need to undertake a tender request process, inviting qualified service providers to bid for the work and submit their proposals. Following an internal review of the tender submissions, a service provider can be appointed to commence the work.

The challenge for organisations is to ensure the package of work is fully scoped and the right service provider is appointed at the tender stage – something which HR and Talent Acquisition teams are often not familiar with.

Developing compliant Statement of Works

By working with a Workforce Solutions Provider, such as Linx, an organisation can ensure the right checks and processes are in place to effectively manage Statement of Work solutions. Our team will work with stakeholders throughout the SoW development process, taking the time to check that all project requirements have been documented in the Statement of Work with no ambiguity or misconceptions. Before supporting our clients to devise a thorough and transparent tender process that allows them to independently review potential service providers and verify their credentials and experience. Once the project commence, we’ll then work with the project delivery team to effectively monitor and review the performance of service providers against the pre-agreed milestones, project deliverables, service levels and  quality expectations.

Linx support global organisations to deliver projects by devising Statement of Work solutions that allow them to access specialist service providers whilst maintaining complete transparency and effective performance management. At times of high demand for resources, a Linx Statement of Work solution provides access to specialist service providers to undertake short to medium term work packages to responsively deliver project objectives.

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