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Have you ever wondered if and how you can automate changes to a worker’s pay rate or to a supplier’s bill rate over the course of an assignment?
Are there other better options than creating manual Work Order revisions?
There are lots of reasons why rate changes may be needed but some of the most typical use cases include:
- Tenure discounts where a supplier’s margin is reduced after 1 year, for example
- Pay parity regulations that dictate increases to a worker’s pay rate over time, e.g., collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) such as ‘Branchenzuschläge’ (can you say the word?) in Germany
Both of these examples require rate changes that follow defined logic and that also should be taken into account when calculating spend – especially when you are creating Purchase Requisitons and Purchase Orders on the back of your Fieldglass Work Orders.
Wouldn’t it be great if these rate changes, and the logic that defines them, could be built into your SAP Fieldglass solution so that they are applied automatically,
- at the right time
- at the correct rate
- defined for the entire duration of your Work Order and included into the Committed Spend calculation so that you can create one, and only one, correct Purchase Order in your ERP?
What if you could define these rate changes from the buyer side to enforce tenure discounts you otherwise may not get from your suppliers?
What if you could have peace of mind that collective bargaining agreements, and the worker pay rate increases they dictate, are applied correctly, automatically every time?
Well guess what, you can! SAP Fieldglass has a rate automation feature that can be used on your contingent Work Orders – well actually, it has two! Buyer-defined Rate Change Matrix and Supplier-defined Rate Change Matrix can be leveraged to do just that.
Both versions of Rate Change Matrix can be enabled on your Job Posting Templates under SAP Fieldglass’s traditional rate model – also referred to “Rates 1.0”.
Supplier-defined Rate Change Matrix is the simpler version of the two. Here the supplier needs to enter the rate change(s) when submitting a Job Seeker.
You, as the buyer, can determine on your Job Posting Template if the supplier can calculate the target (pay or bill) rate manually by entering a distinct value that the rate should change to, or by entering a percentage increase or decrease instead.
Same goes for the timing or frequency of the rate change – do you want your suppliers to manually enter a date for the change or do you want them to enter a “schedule” after which the change or changes occur?
Rate Change Type and Rate Change Frequency settings on your Job Posting Templates can be used for that.
Suppliers can also create Rate Change Matrix templates in their SAP Fieldglass supplier company admin menu to define these rate changes so that they don’t need to be manually entered every time they submit a Job Seeker.
What these supplier-defined options have in common is that they:
- Can be implemented with little configuration effort on the buyer side
- Do not define and enforce rate changes from the buyer side
In other words, the benefit of the Supplier-defined Rate Change Matrix from a buyer perspective is that it is fairly low-touch but you are still reliant on your suppliers doing the right thing by submitting correct information for your tenure discount or CBA dictated pay rate increases.
And then there is the “buyer-defined” option of your Rate Change Type. This one is the deluxe version of the available rate change automation options in SAP Fieldglass.
Buyer-defined Rate Change Matrix can be used to automate and enforce rate changes, making sure that tenure discounts are correctly applied, or worker’s pay rates comply with legal and CBA regulations at all times.
With a Buyer-defined Rate Change Matrix, rate change logic can leverage:
- Custom fields where you define, for example, an equal pay pay rate for your internal employees performing the same job as a temporary worker
- Custom lookups where you store publicly available pay rates per pay grade level from a CBA, together with their applicable validity dates or supplier markups you have individually agreed with your suppliers
- Custom business rules to calculate worker pay rates and/or supplier bill rates and how/when they change throughout the course of an assignment
The buyer-defined Rate Change Matrix is more complex to set up and it requires the involvement of SAP Fieldglass technical resources. However, it is more robust in the sense that rate change logic is defined and enforced from the buyer side, and you do not need to depend on your suppliers to submit correct rate change information.
For more information, check out the SAP Fieldglass Help Portal, contact your Customer Success Partner / Program Success Manager, or submit a case through SAP for Me or the SAP Fieldglass Help Center.
You can also download the Automating Rate Changes in SAP Fieldglass one-pager.
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