For the last four years, Global Procurement Category Director Andreas Hettwer has worked to build a global contingent workforce program at Capgemini, including the deployment of an integrated contract talent supply chain covering sourcing and managing contractors end to end, which led to full visibility on all aspects of contract talent to enable strategic, forward-looking decisions. Hettwer has built a strong global service team spearheading holistic and cost-effective approaches to sourcing.

Hettwer in 2019 initiated Capgemini’s Freelancer Gateway program, its first global direct-hiring initiative under a fully integrated model. The program has boosted the attraction and engagement of freelancers by using artificial intelligence and automation to support the organization’s contingent workforce program. “There are more and more freelancers out in the market, and we wanted to use our powerful corporate brand to attract and keep engaged with them directly,” he says. “We were able to attract a high caliber of contracting talent that we weren’t able to reach through agencies.” The program now has more than 100,000 contractors in North America and India and has benefited Capgemini’s delivery “astronomically.”

Amid the challenges of the pandemic, Capgemini’s integrated contract talent supply chain ensured business continuity. “The beauty of our program is we were able to identify very quickly all of the contractors working in different countries and their client accounts centrally, which helped us to identify critical environments and the distribution of necessary and account specific guidelines and system access,” Hettwer says.

Looking to the future, Hettwer is working on connecting the freelancer market closer to the requester by deploying Freelancer Gateway in all major countries around the world, shortening the sourcing cycle further.