A Seamless Workforce podcast on lowest cost to value

Posted by: Joel Capperella

After the opening session at last week’s CWS Summit, I ran into Gregg Maged of The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) who posed the interesting position that his organization was actually adding suppliers to the talent supply chain rather than eliminating them. The reason? To drive quality of very specific skill sets critical to his firm’s success.

To be fair, FINRA, according to Gregg, has already done its best to consolidate the supply chain, and now feels empowered to begin selectively adding suppliers that specialize in specific areas, or have shown a willingness to compete not on cost, but on the speed and quality of talent they provide.

It’s an extremely thoughtful position, and not one that everyone in the room agreed with. Gregg’s perspective is a fresh take on an increasingly complex business scenario.

The take-away from my conversation with Gregg was a metric that seems most applicable when evaluating the performance of the non-employee segment of the workforce–Lowest Cost to Value. That is, evaluate cost as a matter of what it takes to secure the quality thresholds necessary to drive strategic and tactical objectives.

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