The Business Case for SOW: Services Procurement in the new normal

There’s no doubt that the Covid-19 crisis very quickly highlighted what information enterprises did and didn’t know about their workforce, particularly when it came to the extended workforce. However, for the world’s largest direct selling company, Amway, preparations that began in 2018 effectively set the business up to adapt and handle the crisis once it hit in 2020.

In 2018 the firm went through a global review of the organization structure which included a cost saving assessment. It was during this review that the HR and Procurement teams identified that while mature management processes were in place for the temporary labor market and the firm’s Managed Service Providers (MSP), the Statement of Work (SoW) segment of the workforce was a relative unknown. As a result, Amway initiated a strategic process to identify the best partner to develop and run a SoW program that would drive process improvement, compliance, cost efficiency, streamline vendor management and provide greater transparency of the firm’s extended workforce.

 Amway had ambitious goals for the program in North America and elected to take a ‘Big Bang’ approach to program implementation and utilization. Through this process, the intent was to facilitate an efficient and effective solution that would provide value and benefit to all categories throughout its corporate entity. The organization also wanted to maximize supply base onboarding ahead of go-live, which required vetting and approval of 100+ vendors into the program, along with achieving the goal of ensuring that every program facilitated outside services engagement now had a legally approved statement of work for additional compliance. While this was certainly a big ask of a provider, the firm felt that Guidant Global had the experience, capability and appreciation for the nuances of Amway that would enable them to adapt their approach and be flexible in coming up with a solution that would foster positive program adoption across the organization and its vendors.