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SAP Fieldglass

Technologies

External workforce and services procurement, managed with ERP-grade rigor

SAP Fieldglass is the cloud vendor management system (VMS) for external workforce management and services procurement — the platform organizations use to find, engage, and manage contingent workers, service providers, and statement-of-work (SOW) engagements. SAP reports it is used in more than 180 countries, operates in 22 languages, and supports invoicing in 118 countries.

Part of SAP since 2014, Fieldglass is an actively invested, strategic SAP product: SAP is executing an AI-first strategy for it, with Joule generative AI capabilities already live, Joule agents generally available since June 2026, and a published release roadmap through 2026. Ardent Partners’ 2025 VMS Technology Advisor named it a Market Leader and an Elite Performer in four categories, including AI Innovation and SOW & Services Procurement.

Altivate, an SAP Gold Partner, implements SAP Fieldglass and connects it to your SAP core — S/4HANA, SAP Ariba, and SAP SuccessFactors — so external labor is governed with the same rigor as your employees and your direct spend.

Why now

The external workforce is too big to manage in spreadsheets

42%of total workforce spend goes to external labor — contractors, freelancers, and service providers (SAP and Oxford Economics research published in 2018–2019)
$1.4Tin US contingent-workforce B2B spend in 2023 alone (Staffing Industry Analysts)
~40%of the workforce in asset-intensive industries — oil & gas, utilities, chemicals, mining — can be contractors (SAP)

Yet in most organizations this spend is the least governed: engagements scattered across emails and spreadsheets, no single record of who is on site, invoices that don’t reconcile to agreed rates, and compliance exposure nobody owns. SAP Fieldglass closes that gap — one system of record for every external worker and every SOW, from requisition through onboarding, time capture, invoicing, and offboarding.

Capabilities

What SAP Fieldglass covers

Contingent workforce management

Source, engage, and manage hourly and daily temporary workers and freelancers end to end — requisitions, rate compliance, onboarding and access control, time and expense, and consolidated invoicing across your entire contingent program.

Services procurement (SOW)

Bring statement-of-work engagements under control — competitive bidding, milestones and deliverables, service entry sheets, and invoices that reconcile against what was actually agreed and delivered, not what was billed.

Worker profile management

A single profile for every external worker — credentials, certifications, roles, assets, and performance history — so you always know who is working for you, what they can access, and whether they are compliant.

Assignment management

A distinct Fieldglass solution built for asset-intensive industries: shift- and assignment-based external labor, crew mobilization to payment, gate-pass time capture, and equipment tracking — where contractors are the plant’s daily reality.

For Altivate’s home markets — where oil & gas, utilities, chemicals, and large capital projects dominate — Assignment Management is often the differentiating module for asset-intensive organizations: it is where SAP concentrated its 2025–2026 investments in mobilization, time capture, and site access.

Integration

Built into the SAP suite, not bolted on

SAP describes Ariba and Fieldglass as the spend and external-workforce nerve endings of S/4HANA, with Joule as the shared intelligence layer. Integration is the point.

SAP S/4HANA

External-workforce procure-to-pay lands directly in your ERP — work orders, service entry, invoices, and cost objects — so contractor spend hits the right project, plant, and ledger without rekeying.

SAP Ariba

One view of total spend: services procurement and invoice flows run alongside your direct and indirect procurement, so external services stop being the category finance can’t see.

SAP SuccessFactors

Total workforce management: external workers planned and managed alongside employees — positions, postings, and worker data in one picture of the workforce you actually run on.

The edge

Joule and AI in SAP Fieldglass

Fieldglass is one of the front lines of SAP Business AI. Joule works conversationally inside the product today — creating job requisitions, designing and translating job descriptions, and accelerating approval workflows. Since Q1 2026, AI-assisted SOW deliverables creation is generally available, with SAP reporting a 70% reduction in manual creation time. And since June 2026, Joule agents are live across SAP Ariba and SAP Fieldglass — including a Fieldglass Services Procurement agent with gate-pass time capture built for asset-intensive workflows — with further Joule assistants planned for September 2026.

Two things to plan around: the Joule Agent Runtime is included at no extra cost only through December 31, 2026 — after that it is consumption-priced — and agentic AI is only as good as the workforce data underneath it. Altivate designs Fieldglass programs so the data foundation is clean first, and the AI earns its keep on top.

  • Joule conversational AI — live in Fieldglass
  • AI-assisted SOW creation — GA since Q1 2026
  • Joule agents across Ariba + Fieldglass — GA June 2026
Delivery

What Altivate delivers with SAP Fieldglass

A VMS only creates value when suppliers use it, managers trust it, and finance reconciles against it. Altivate delivers the program, not just the platform.

01

Program design

Map your external-workforce landscape — contingent, SOW, and site-based labor — define the operating model and compliance rules, and build the business case module by module.

02

Implementation

Configure Contingent, Services Procurement, Worker Profile, and Assignment Management to your processes, and integrate them with S/4HANA, SAP Ariba, and SAP SuccessFactors from day one.

03

Supplier enablement & adoption

Onboard staffing suppliers and service providers, train hiring managers, and wire the compliance workflows — the difference between a deployed VMS and a used one.

04

Run & optimize

Operate and evolve the program — rate benchmarking, spend analytics, new Joule capabilities as SAP releases them — under Altivate’s application management services alongside the rest of your SAP estate.

Proof

Why Altivate

SAP Gold Partner. SAP Fieldglass delivered by the same team that implements and integrates S/4HANA, SAP Ariba and SAP SuccessFactors — so the integrations that make a VMS valuable are built by the people who own both sides of them.

  • SAP Gold Partner
  • Ranked by SAP as an Expert in S/4HANA Cloud and SuccessFactors
  • ISO/IEC 27001 certified

External workforce programs live at the intersection of procurement, HR, and operations — exactly where a partner who covers the whole SAP suite matters. Delivery is governed under ISO/IEC 27001 for information security, which counts when the system in question holds the profiles, rates, and site access of every contractor you engage.

Keep reading

Read more

Whether you are standing up your first external-workforce program or bringing an existing Fieldglass deployment closer to your SAP core, Altivate helps you turn it into visibility, compliance, and cost control you can prove.

Talk to our SAP Fieldglass team →

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