What business value does Statement of Work create? Statement of Work helps organizations gain better control over costs, compliance, vendors, and external services. By consolidating projects, deliveries, and vendor data in a common process, it becomes easier to track investments and make better business decisions.
Many companies today have good control over their consulting purchases. Far fewer have the same control over the services delivered by external vendors.
Once a project has been procured, the focus often shifts to delivery. But how do you ensure that costs are developing according to plan? How do you know which people are working in your facilities or have access to your IT environments? And how do you track vendor performance over time?
In the third episode of Implema Talks, Johan Söderström and SAP Fieldglass specialist Joacim Karlsson conclude the Statement of Work series by discussing perhaps the most important question of all: how Statement of Work can give companies better control over costs, compliance, and external services, while creating a stronger foundation for future investment decisions.
When many people hear the term Statement of Work, they think of projects, deliverables, and contracts.
But according to Joacim Karlsson, that’s really just the beginning. The real value emerges when the company uses Statement of Work as part of its governance model for external services.
“You want to track that what you’ve procured is developing according to plan and that costs are following what was agreed upon.”
It’s not just about knowing what was purchased.
It’s about being able to track how the delivery is progressing, how the vendor is performing, and whether the project is staying within both budget and quality standards.
Statement of Work is often used for large projects, but the model works equally well for smaller service deliveries.
Joacim describes several examples.
What all these assignments have in common is that the company is buying a result rather than individual people.
An important aspect that is often overlooked is that even service deliveries involve people working in the company’s environments. They may need:
By combining Statement of Work with external workforce management, the organization can ensure that both the project and the people behind the delivery are tracked in a structured way.
When delivery is tracked against agreed-upon milestones and deliverables, cost tracking becomes significantly clearer.
Instead of only seeing invoices after the fact, the business can track the project’s progress in real time. Johan Söderström also highlights an aspect that many organizations recognize: hidden costs. In larger service projects, margins and additional work can gradually impact the project’s finances without being detected in time. When deliveries are approved before payment occurs, much greater transparency is created.
“You only pay when the delivery is approved.”
This means better control over both costs and vendor performance.
When all Statements of Work are gathered in the same platform, the possibilities for analyzing the business are transformed.
This is where Statement of Work goes from being an administrative tool to becoming a decision support system.
In this Implema Talks series, we’ve followed Statement of Work from the fundamentals to business value.
When Statement of Work in SAP Fieldglass is used correctly, the organization doesn’t just gain better control over its service procurement. It also gains better cost control, stronger compliance, clearer vendor management, and a significantly better decision-making foundation. That’s where the real business value emerges.
Business Area Manager Business Transformation
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