Definition

Fieldglass

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SAP Fieldglass is a cloud-based software platform that allows companies to manage external workforces, including contractors, temporary workers, contingent labor, and statement of work (SOW) employees.

SAP Fieldglass was designed to meet the needs of a changing labor market that has seen organizations turn to an external workforce for limited duration or flexible projects. SAP Fieldglass functions allow companies to find and hire an external workforce, and then manage those workers while they are employed by the company. Some specific tasks in this process include comparing labor costs, onboarding new workers once they are hired and managing the employees while they work for the company.

One of the advantages of the SAP Fieldglass platform is that it can be integrated with other SAP cloud applications, including SAP Ariba for procurement and SAP SuccessFactors for HR management. For example, when a company uses SAP Fieldglass to identify external workers that it wants to hire, this can trigger a procurement process for suppliers in SAP Ariba.  

Parent company SAP has deployed SAP Fieldglass as a single point of access to manage its external workforce, whose members are employed by a variety of service providers and partners, according to the company.

Fieldglass was founded in 1999 by Jai Shekhawat, Anil Kumar and Udai Kumar under the original name B2B People. The company changed its name to Fieldglass, and was acquired by SAP in 2014 for a reported $1 billion.

SAP Fieldglass Flex

Although most of the SAP Fieldglass customer base is large enterprises, the company released SAP Fieldglass Flex, a version for SMBs, in 2016. SAP Fieldglass Flex is designed to be a less costly and complex way for these companies to implement a workforce management platform, according to the company.

SAP Fieldglass Flex achieves this approach for SMBs by offering basic functions out-of-the-box and doesn't offer the high levels of customizations that large enterprise customers require in the full platform version.

SAP Fieldglass Live Insights

In 2017, SAP introduced Fieldglass Live Insights, which debuted data-driven details into Fieldglass applications. SAP Fieldglass Live incorporates machine learning technology that enables companies to benchmark, plan, predict and analyze external workforce scenarios in near real-time.

SAP Fieldglass Live Insights uses the SAP Hana in-memory database to store and integrate data, then apply machine learning algorithms for analysis. The types of insights include real-time cost-benefit analysis to make external worker decisions based on location or other market metrics, or determining competitive pay rates for workers.

SAP Fieldglass competitors

SAP Fieldglass competes in a crowded market of cloud-based, vendor management system platforms. Major competitors include BambooHR, Beeline, DCR Workforce, Infor Workforce Management, Oracle PeopleSoft, PeopleFluent, PIXID and PRO Unlimited.

There are also several competing applications from smaller vendors that focus on specific industries (such as restaurants or retail) or workforce management issues.

This was last updated in September 2018

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