Com­pared with oth­er SAP prod­ucts, SAP Field­glass is rel­a­tive­ly unknown with­in the ASUG com­mu­ni­ty. Accord­ing to our 2018 State of the Com­mu­ni­ty study and some addi­tion­al ASUG research, only about 10 per­cent of ASUG mem­bers have used SAP Field­glass in some capac­i­ty. Its near­est neigh­bors in SAP’s intel­li­gent suite, SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors and SAP Ari­ba, are used near­ly four times as much by the ASUG community.

Even those who are famil­iar with the prod­uct may sim­ply con­sid­er it a place to get con­tin­gent work­ers, with­out tru­ly under­stand­ing its capa­bil­i­ties. It’s clear that our com­mu­ni­ty could use some edu­ca­tion, so we reached out to SAP Fieldglass’s SVP of EMEA Mikael Lind­mark and Pres­i­dent Rob Brimm to dis­cov­er what SAP users should know about how SAP Field­glass could ben­e­fit them and fit with­in their suite of SAP products.

SAP Field­glass and the New Free­lance Workforce

The cross­roads of the U.S. work­force is upon us, as con­tin­gent or free­lance work is on its way to becom­ing the new nor­mal. The glob­al free­lanc­ing net­work Upwork projects that by 2027, the num­ber of con­tract employ­ees will over­take full-time, salaried staff posi­tions. Accord­ing to research com­plet­ed in ear­ly 2018 by SAP Field­glass in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Oxford Eco­nom­ics, which Brimm sup­plied us, near­ly half (46 per­cent) of com­pa­nies say that with­out an exter­nal work­force, they would not be able to con­duct busi­ness as usual.

And this exter­nal work­force may fea­ture some of the best tal­ent. Rough­ly two-thirds of par­tic­i­pants in the research from SAP Field­glass and Oxford Eco­nom­ics say the exter­nal work­force is essen­tial to increas­ing speed to mar­ket, orga­ni­za­tion­al agili­ty, and/​or over­all finan­cial per­for­mance. Clear­ly the con­tin­gent labor mar­ket is here to stay, and that is where SAP Field­glass steps in.

SAP Field­glass Ampli­fies Mas­ter Data

Giv­en SAP’s desire to offer end-to-end solu­tions, mas­ter data align­ment is pop­ping up every­where with­in its strat­e­gy. Along with SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors, SAP Field­glass stands to ben­e­fit from this ini­tia­tive. SAP is con­nect­ing these two prod­ucts based on an attract-to-pay mod­el that will draw from the same mas­ter data. As Brimm put it, ​“We’re at the fore­front of cre­at­ing intel­li­gent objects, and we’re going to be deliv­er­ing the employ­ee mas­ter data or peo­ple mas­ter data as a ser­vice via the SAP Cloud Plat­form. This way, both SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors and SAP Field­glass will be draw­ing on one object for an employ­ee mas­ter as opposed to hav­ing to repli­cate the data.”

SAP Field­glass and SAP Ari­ba Play Nice­ly Togeth­er, Too

SAP Field­glass can also con­nect to the back end of a busi­ness through SAP Ari­ba to help process the invoic­es gen­er­at­ed by exter­nal work­ers and ser­vice providers, pro­vid­ing a seam­less expe­ri­ence for those who are hir­ing help. ​“Going through the req­ui­si­tion­ing process for exter­nal labor or ser­vices in SAP Field­glass, we then are able to lever­age the approval engine with­in SAP Ari­ba,” said Brimm. ​“The user doesn’t even know this is tak­ing place. The request goes out, gets the pur­chase order approval, comes back, goes through the work­flow, and then we gen­er­ate invoic­es on behalf of the sup­pli­er. Then those invoic­es can be fed to the SAP Ari­ba sup­pli­er net­work for payment.”

Tak­ing the Pain out of Man­ag­ing Con­tract Work

If you’ve ever hired tem­po­rary work­ers or ser­vice providers for a project, you may have expe­ri­enced the frus­tra­tion of wait­ing for approvals and pass­ing invoic­es back and forth for pay­ment. Brimm explained, ​“At the end of the state­ment of work (SOW), that record then gets uploaded into con­tract man­age­ment, so that you have a full, closed loop from con­tract man­age­ment to state­ment of work and back into the his­to­ry of the rela­tion­ship with the sup­pli­er. That gives you an oppor­tu­ni­ty for spend man­age­ment based on the same mas­ter data, which is all part of the intel­li­gent enterprise.”

Lind­mark gave anoth­er exam­ple. ​“I’m in SAP Field­glass say­ing, ​‘Yes, I want to hire Barb.’ Boom. That req­ui­si­tion is made auto­mat­i­cal­ly in SAP Ari­ba, it’s approved in SAP Ari­ba, and then it comes back to me with­out requir­ing me to do any­thing else.” If SAP Field­glass can take some of the extra steps, approvals, and pain out of staffing up quick­ly, the val­ue is clear to help­ing work get done across the orga­ni­za­tion in a more-agile way.

A Grow­ing Hub for Employ­ment Apps

SAP Field­glass helps cus­tomers man­age their work­ers through a vari­ety of ser­vices such as a recent­ly released resume scor­ing and match­ing fea­ture. This allows cus­tomers to lever­age SAP Leonar­do tech­nolo­gies includ­ing machine learn­ing to match skill sets from resumes to the needs of open roles. Its dig­i­tal provider ecosys­tem pro­vides inte­gra­tions with oth­er employ­ment-relat­ed dig­i­tal plat­forms to help cus­tomers source and man­age free­lance tal­ent. And it also recent­ly released its Man­ag­er Hub, which Brimm described as ​“a mobile-based app for a man­ag­er to take care of a vari­ety of func­tions, includ­ing approv­ing work­ers or time sheets, with full vis­i­bil­i­ty of the items they have on their action list.”

SAP Field­glass has also cre­at­ed a mes­sag­ing appli­ca­tion called Can­di­date Con­nect. ​“It’s a social net­work com­pa­nies can use to com­mu­ni­cate with work­ers and check on their avail­abil­i­ty,” said Brimm. ​“I can send mes­sages out that I have a job avail­able and find out who’s inter­est­ed. Work­ers can use their mobile app to respond and get all of the asso­ci­at­ed details.”

No Com­pa­ny Left Behind

As the work­force increas­ing­ly prefers short-term roles, com­pa­nies that cling to the men­tal­i­ty that hir­ing full-time employ­ees is the only way to accom­plish their goals are in dan­ger of miss­ing out on great tal­ent. SAP Field­glass wants to sim­pli­fy the process for SAP users to find the best employ­ees for each project, help­ing them devel­op a more-flex­i­ble, project-ori­ent­ed work­force. From con­firm­ing inter­est, to job place­ment, to invoic­ing and pay­ment, SAP Field­glass helps you man­age your exter­nal work­force effec­tive­ly. That’s the role that SAP Field­glass can play in your aims for total work­force man­age­ment and in help­ing you build your own intel­li­gent enterprise.

SAP Field­glass helps man­age your SAP tal­ent, but how do you find these indi­vid­u­als? Check out ASUG Tal­ent Hub to source the best SAP con­tract tal­ent for your projects. Or read our research on the SAP gig econ­o­my.