Revolutionizing Future Trends with AI in Contingent Workforce Management

The Human Touch in an AI-Driven Industry

Eric Osterhout brings almost two decades of experience to the contingent workforce management space, currently serving as a Program Leader and Buyer for Contingent Labour at Huntsman Corp. With 17 years on the buyer side and 10 years previously on the supplier side, Eric has developed a reputation for “taking the funk out of dysfunctional programs.” When he’s not transforming contingent labour programs, you might find him on his farm in rural Texas or writing indie songs available on Apple Music, a testament to his diverse talents beyond the procurement world. In this podcast, he has shared his views on AI in contingent workforce management, holistically.

As a returning advisory board member for ProcureCon 2025, Eric offers a unique perspective on how emerging technologies, particularly AI, are reshaping the contingent workforce landscape while emphasizing that human expertise remains irreplaceable.

AI as an Enablement Tool, Not a Replacement

The buzz around artificial intelligence dominated discussions at ProcureCon 2025, with many professionals expressing concerns about job displacement. However, Eric takes a pragmatic view of technological evolution.

“AI is just another enablement tool.”

Rather than viewing AI as a threat, Eric positions it as a powerful ally that will help contingent workforce professionals become more efficient. He emphasizes that AI isn’t all-knowing, it requires human direction to deliver valuable outcomes. This perspective shifts the conversation from fear to opportunity, suggesting that professionals who embrace AI will gain competitive advantages in program management.

Accelerating Program Efficiency Through Technology

For contingent workforce leaders, AI offers immediate practical applications that can transform daily operations. Eric highlights how these tools dramatically reduce time spent on routine tasks.

“What used to take me hours to develop, now I can do that within minutes.”

This efficiency extends to program evaluation and data analysis. AI can quickly parse through massive amounts of organizational data to identify the largest buckets of spend, pinpoint geographic distribution of talent, and highlight skill gaps, all essential insights for strategic decision-making in contingent workforce management.

Finding the Right AI Partners

Rather than attempting to become AI experts themselves, Eric suggests contingent workforce leaders should leverage partnerships with specialized providers.

“You have to have the right partners that engage with, and many of them have way more expertise about AI than you will.”

He specifically notes how MSPs (Managed Service Providers) can maintain relevance by incorporating AI solutions as value-added services. Despite industry talk about self-managed programs replacing MSPs, Eric sees opportunity for service providers who embrace technology partnerships to enhance their offerings while operating within traditionally slim margins.

Upskilling for the AI Era

For professionals concerned about staying relevant, Eric recommends a multi-faceted approach to developing AI-related skills:

“It’s a matter of being intellectually curious and getting out there and actually educating yourself.”

He emphasizes that intellectual curiosity drives professional growth, whether related to AI or any other aspect of the contingent workforce space. By actively seeking educational resources through platforms like LinkedIn courses and engaging with knowledgeable partners, professionals can stay ahead of technological shifts rather than being disrupted by them.

The Future of Contingent Labor Through 2030

Looking toward the future, Eric predicts significant industry consolidation, with larger VMS (Vendor Management System) providers acquiring specialized technology companies to create comprehensive platforms.

“I think 2030 will be the contingent labor program peak along with freelancers and everything else.”

His boldest prediction envisions “virtual staffing organizations” by 2030—operations that are primarily AI-driven with small human teams handling tasks that require personal interaction. While acknowledging this might make some nervous, Eric maintains an optimistic outlook, particularly as regulatory environments potentially become more business-friendly.

Balancing Technology and Human Connection

Despite his enthusiasm for technology, Eric consistently returns to the importance of human connection in contingent workforce management.

“At the end of the day, you’re still going to need that human touch in certain situations.”

This balance between technological efficiency and human judgment represents the sweet spot for contingent workforce professionals moving forward. The most successful leaders will be those who leverage AI to handle routine tasks while focusing their human capabilities on relationship building, strategic decision-making, and program innovation.

Moving Forward with Confidence

As contingent workforce programs evolve, the path forward requires embracing rather than fearing technological change. Eric’s perspective offers reassurance to professionals concerned about their future relevance.

“When you don’t understand something, it leads to fear. But if you learn about it and get comfortable, that will help overcome that fear.”

For contingent workforce leaders, the message is clear: AI isn’t coming to replace you—it’s arriving to make you more effective, more strategic, and more valuable than ever before. The question isn’t whether to adapt, but how quickly you can harness these tools to transform your program and deliver enhanced value to your organization.

Interview Transcript

Joseph Cole (00:55.16)
Yes, well, Eric, why don’t you give a background about who you are, what you do, who you work for, maybe even something personal.

Eric Osterhout (01:02.423)
Alright, my name is Eric Osterhout. I work for a company called Huntsman Corp. I have about 17 years on this side of the industry as a Program Leader / program Buyer for Contingent Labor. My specialties are building contingent labor programs, deploying them, and the most important fact that I think in that role is fixing them. Taking the funk out of dysfunctional programs is something I’m extremely good at.

Alright, so some of you may noticed I do have a slight accent. I apologize for that, but I am from southeast Texas, outside of Houston. a fun personal fact, I also am an indie songwriter and guitar player. by the way, some of my stuff’s available on Apple Tunes, but also a lot of times I’ll share occasionally when I’m bored and I think I’m putting too many posts out on LinkedIn about contingent labor. I’ll post like a link to a song I just finished or something just to kind of get people interested and change the mood a little bit. But thanks for having me.

Joseph Cole (01:59.528)
That’s awesome. So we’re on iTunes, I guess, under Eric Astorhout. that how they find it?

Eric Osterhout (02:04.961)
That would be the way to find me. If you can spell it, you can find it. Some are better than others, but as a writer, you always want to have something published so that way when you register it with BMI, nobody can hijack what you’ve written as a songwriter. And so that’s kind of why I do that.

Joseph Cole (02:16.942)
Awesome. So Eric, also another fun thing, you have a ranch, right?

Eric Osterhout (02:32.995)
Well, yeah, I mean, it’s more of a farm. I live out in the country in an undisclosed location with a bunker. Like I said, I’m a Texan. Now, I’ve got horses and tractors and my neighbor’s cows. I don’t have any cows right now presently. But yeah, I live in a rural area. And I’m kind of like Batman. I like to work in the big city. And then I come back to the Batcave, so to speak. And I can kind of chill out and relax and breathe easy.

Joseph Cole (02:56.942)
Well that’s actually something we have in common, live in a ranch as well. So goats, pigs, ducks, geese, turkeys, dogs, cats, all of the above.

Eric Osterhout (03:03.813)
yeah, absolutely, I’m with you on that.

Joseph Cole (03:03.813)
But I feel like it’s a fun thing, right? Being able to go into the country but then go back to the city when needed, right? So I digress, we’re obviously here at ProcureCon 2025. You have been to previous ProcureCons but what’s unique or special or interesting about this one that you’re most…

Eric Osterhout (03:25.409)
Well for me, it’s the second year that I’ve been on the advisory board for the event with WBR and John Ward. They keep inviting me back, which I’m very proud of, to be able to help structure each year how we can tailor it to better serve not only the buyer practitioners, but also the supplier side of the equation. And to me that’s important. And so it kind of, one of the things that I like to do is walk around and meet a lot of the folks when I’m not on a panel. Being able to come and talk to some of the suppliers is really helpful to be able to see what’s new and trending in the industry. And a perfect example of that would be, and I believe Glider led off in one of the key sessions on the first day talking about the new AI components. And so AI has been a big topic around this entire event.

There is a lot of discussion around some of the concerns about AI from a legality and how you can stay righteous and on the path for that. But then there’s also the talk about you know, AI is going to replace all these jobs and it’s going to be bad, bad, bad. And I’m thinking to myself, look, I know I’m old. I didn’t quite live through the industrial revolution, but you know, I have seen technology, especially in our space evolve over the 17 years I’ve been on this side and then the 10 years on the supplier side before that. So to me, it’s just another enablement tool. And I think what people forget is, look, since the industrial revolution, we’ve had technical innovation and people have evolved. They’ve learned new skills. There’s always going to be that need. One of the things people forget about AI is AI is not intrinsically… all knowing, right? You still have to be able to position what you need out of AI to be able to get the outcomes that you want. So I think as people evolve around it and get to know it better, I think it will be one of those enablement tools that will actually help on the buyer side be able to really, really tweak their programs to be more efficient and be able to effectively serve their internal stakeholders.

Joseph Cole (05:26.942)
It makes a lot of sense. think AI is obviously changing everything so fast and the use cases are evolving so quickly. Now, from a skill standpoint, obviously AI is pretty scary to some people, despite what you said. How do you recommend contingent workforce professionals like yourself, I guess, develop more skill related to AI to do a better job? Or what skills do you think within your role are going to become more important.

Eric Osterhout (05:59.191)
Well for me, I think it’s an enablement tool as I’ve said and it’ll help me do my job better. What used to take me hours to develop in the way of content for say organizational change management, now I can do that within minutes. I can have it in the format that I want and to assimilate the data that I give it. And to me that’s powerful because that allows me to actually look at it and tweak the message instead of being focused on, all right.
let me aggregate all this and let me make sure the formatting’s correct and all that kind of stuff, it really does help out. In getting to know it, this is where think partners come in. Just like Glider, I think you have to have the right partners that you engage with, and many of them have way more expertise about AI than you will, and they specialize in these things. And so I feel like that can help you with the enablement of being able to be a better program provider. I often see MSPs, there’s a lot of talk about, oh, everybody’s going self-managed, the MSPs are starting to lose their relevance. I can’t help but think how the MSPs can utilize these tools and particularly take Glider for example, being able to utilize what Glider brings to the table to help them become more attractive to programs and maintain their relevance. I think that’s going to be huge. Being able to offer add-on services that don’t really cost the MSP a lot of money. We all know MSPs operate on a very slim piece of the equation, right?

So I think these are the things that can help. And when it comes to up-skilling about AI, talking with your providers, they have many experts on many of their teams that can help you learn more about it. And then good Lord, go to YouTube University where I’ve learned how to do all kinds of things, including tractor maintenance and firearms cleaning and all that kind of stuff. yeah, you can learn all this stuff out there. LinkedIn also has courses and classes that are offered. It’s a matter of being intellectually curious and getting out there and actually educating yourself.

And anybody, whether it was AI, they should be doing that, craft they’re in, just to become better and better and better.

Joseph Cole (07:53.674)
Right, it’s not necessarily, it’s about embracing it and understanding obviously how to use it and it’s changing so quickly so keeping fresh is obviously important.

No, one thing I was curious is, maybe this is twofold. There’s a skill that you’re looking to hire for. AI is probably going to change a lot of what skills you’re looking to, that are becoming more important. Have you seen a change in the skills that you’re looking to hire for with your contingent programs?

Eric Osterhout (08:24.675)
Yeah, think yes and no. Let me answer it that way. I think traditionally we still have the same skill sets. Where I see AI really being helpful is being able to cut that time to fill, right? You can utilize AI and you can utilize it to do things like screening out resumes that are inappropriate. And I probably shouldn’t have said that because the people in compliance that are going to be listed in this are going, oh God, don’t do that. But you can at least identify candidates that may not be a good fit faster. So we’ll go with that. That’s probably a better way to put it. And then you can move that process forward faster by using that. And I think being able to blend AI with human beings, I think is probably an amazing enablement tool. I’ve used enablement like 100 times, but I keep coming back to that. I do think there’s going to be a time where you will interact fully with AI in the recruiting process, and I believe somebody has a demonstration of that here, maybe y’all, I don’t remember, yesterday, yeah. So I think that there is going to be a time for that, but.

At the end of the day, you’re still going to need that human touch in certain situations. mean, AI can’t deliver a laptop to a candidate that’s got a start. mean, things like that, I guess they could have it delivered by Amazon and all that kind of stuff. But there’s still, think we need that human touch. I think as long as we look at AI as an enablement tool and realize that, yes, we still need that warmth of human connection to go with it, we’re going to be fine. And I think a lot of people are very understandably nervous about how the future looks for them.

Eric Osterhout (09:51.895)
but I think being prepared for it and learning about it, when you don’t understand something, when you don’t know something, it leads to fear. But if you learn about something and get comfortable with it, that will help overcome that fear in the market, I think.

Joseph Cole (09:59.256)
Right, so what is the new value prop of contingent staffing professionals now given AI and you know like what is the strategic value that that you offer now?

Eric Osterhout (10:15.617)
Well for me, I think it hasn’t changed much, but it’s allowed me to be more effective and do things faster. Like I said, things like evaluating an existing program to determine present state, to aggregate all the data and find all the data out at a company that I need to be able to make the decisions to build the business cases, to move the agenda forward, to build, fix, deploy, whatever, a new program. And it can help me identify where the efficiencies are, where I need to focus. I mean, perfect example.

It can parse through massive amounts of data and it can tell me where my buckets of spend are largest, for example, in an organization. So I know where to triage that list and then focus. It can also tell me what skill sets I’m having, where are they located at, what geographies. I can start building that into my data modeling when I’m with an organization to be able to say, hey, this is where we need to focus and these are the tools we need to complement that. So from my perspective.

That makes me more efficient and more attractive in my niche of procurement. The other thing too is from the MSP side again, being able to automate tasks and use less people to do more work to be more efficient, handle repeatable duties like scheduling interviews for example, things like that. I just think that it’s definitely one more tool in the evolution of the contingent workforce management space or human capital space.

Joseph Cole (11:36.174)
Yeah, awesome. thanks for that. I guess last question for you. 2030 seems like so far away, it’s only five years away. All right, isn’t it? Yeah. What big trends, predictions, whatever, like what do you foresee in the future? The industry.

Eric Osterhout (11:54.797)
All right, one of the things I foresee in the industry, and I’ve seen some of the larger VMS players do this, I think that there’s been a focused effort by some of the larger VMS vendor management system providers to be able to build into their platforms a framework to deploy things as it makes sense for a contingent labor program. So to me, I think you’re gonna see some consolidation in companies bought up by the large vendor management system providers.

so they can build it into their platform. We’ve seen that with the direct sourcing space, for example. I think we’ve seen some VMS providers purchase platforms that we know they’re gonna build it into their future releases because the answer is if you can get a vendor management system in place but have all of the necessary add-on features modularly so you can turn them on when you need them, especially after you’ve built all the integrations for just a basic contingent labor program.

You can leverage those integrations for things like statement org, direct sourcing, the quest for the elusive total talent management, that’s happening. But all these things, in 2030 I think we’re going to see, and this is kind of a bold prediction, but I believe that, and this may be something that makes people nervous, but I think it’s going to happen, I think AI, you could almost see virtual staffing organizations, right?

Joseph Cole (12:56.738)
Yeah.

Eric Osterhout (13:14.435)
Where it’s all AI driven except for a very small core team to do certain things that do require humans Will we become slaves to AI Lord? I hope not. We need to keep John Connor alive, you know But we just don’t want him to become self-aware for sure But I do think the future is bright with AI and I think it’s gonna help shape and transform the evolution plus as Regulations like right now regardless of what political side of the spectrum you sit on when you have a pro-business

administration in a country, it helps things. And I’m already seeing there’s a lot of discussion here this week about how the administration that’s in power right now is starting to reduce regulation. And some of it’s concerning to people, and some of it is also liberating. If you’re in the energy world or the chemical industry world where it’s highly regulated and there’s a lot of EPA entanglements and things you hooped you have to jump through, easing up those regulations slightly to where they’re more sensible allows for more creativity, allows us to faster deployment of new products that are beneficial. So I think all of these things are going to come together to help make 2030 is going to be, I think it will be the contingent labor program peak along with freelancers and everything else.

Joseph Cole (14:26.156)
Awesome, well thanks so much Eric. I think we’re really good. But if there’s anything else that you want to say?

Eric Osterhout (14:31.819)
No, I think I’m good. I just want to thank all of our sponsors, like Glider AI, and also, I don’t know if you can see behind me in the room here, but there are just a ton of people. And one of the nice things about ProcureCon this year that I was really excited about being on the board is how many people are first timers here. I’m hoping they get what they need out of that, out of this event, and they can take back some things to their own organization to help improve their programs. So thanks for having me.

Joseph Cole (14:54.274)
Yeah, of course we should try to get a shot of all these guys behind you. Does that, does it show them with you? You’re like, hey, sorry, there you go. Yeah. Also thanks so much, Eric.

Eric Osterhout (15:01.036)
Yeah, you might want to go a little bit further. Anyway, exactly. But yeah, thank you so much for having me. This has been great.