The short answer: Unless the agreement names someone else, your provider decides what the monthly fee doesn’t cover. Before you sign a managed-services contract, settle three things. Which work sits inside the fee? Who rules a request out? How do you challenge a ruling? Expect new requests: only 10 percent of staffing firms run agentic AI across their full workflow, per Bullhorn.
Written for staffing firm executives reading a managed-services agreement for their Bullhorn platform: this covers the scope clause, not how to choose the partner or judge the return, which are separate decisions.
World Commerce & Contracting, the global association for contracting professionals, reports in its procurement value research that procurement contracts lose 11 percent of their value after signature. The research does not break the figure out by industry. It places the risk after signature, between what was agreed and what gets delivered. In a managed-services agreement, our read is that one clause governs that gap, and it’s scope.
Newbury Partners publishes its own version of that line. Its Navigator page lists what the monthly engagement covers, including configuration improvements, data cleansing, workflow tuning and monthly training sessions. It also says larger initiatives, such as integrations, new module installs and wholesale process re-engineering, are layered in as additional work and scoped separately. A published line is easy to check, while an unwritten one can stay hidden until month four.
This guide covers what the fee should cover, how to draw the scope line, where scope quietly ends, what tests the line, and three numbers that show it’s holding. The worked example is Newbury Partners’ published Navigator scope, set beside 2026 research from Bullhorn, World Commerce & Contracting and the American Staffing Association.
What Does the Monthly Fee Actually Cover?
The monthly fee covers whatever the agreement names as included work, and nothing it leaves vague. World Commerce & Contracting found only 15 percent of organizations share contracting technology between legal and procurement. The people who sign a contract and the people who live with it often work apart. Write the included work where both can read it.
A managed-services agreement isn’t a project. A project has a finish line, so its scope is a list of deliverables. A managed service is continuous work against a business that keeps changing. Its scope has to be a set of categories plus a rule for the edges.
Most agreements describe the categories well, but fewer describe the edges. You sign expecting continuous improvement. In month four you ask for something that feels routine, a new billing workflow after an acquisition, and you learn it’s a separately scoped project. Nobody misled you; the line was never written plainly, and no clause named who could move it.
Support and optimization are different jobs: support resolves what someone reports, while optimization looks for what nobody has reported yet. An agreement that only defines response to tickets has defined support. If you’re buying improvement, the included work has to say so.
Adjacent research shows how easily spending and results drift apart. In WalkMe’s 2026 study of 3,750 executives and employees across 14 countries, digital investment rose 38 percent while 40 percent of that spend underperformed. It measured adoption, not contracts. A written scope at least shows what was bought.
How Do You Draw the Scope Line in a Managed-Services Contract?
Draw the scope line on three foundations. Name included work by category, not hours. Put one named person on each side to rule on edge cases. Write a path for challenging a ruling. Bullhorn’s 2026 research found 30 percent of firms have moved to some level of agentic AI tools, so new kinds of requests will keep arriving.
1. Name the work by category, not by hours
Many buyers ask how many hours the fee buys. Hours describe capacity, not coverage, and a month of hours can disappear into tickets without one improvement shipping. Ask instead which categories of change the fee covers: configuration changes, data cleansing, workflow tuning, user training and release-note review. Then ask for the examples that sit just outside each one. The edge examples tell you more than the list.
2. Put one name on each side of the edge
A scope ruling is a decision, and decisions need owners. Ask who on the provider’s side decides that a request falls outside the fee, and who on your side can contest that ruling. Newbury Partners’ Navigator page names two roles on its side: a Solutions Consultant as the day-to-day contact and an Engagement Executive as the strategic lead. Whatever the titles, the agreement should say which role makes the call, and your side needs one person too, not a committee that meets monthly.
3. Write the challenge path, then review the line on a schedule
A ruling you can’t challenge isn’t a scope clause; it’s a one-way door. Ask how a contested ruling gets escalated, how long a ruling should take, and when the scope itself gets reviewed. Navigator’s published rhythm pairs monthly work with a quarterly review, a natural point to re-read the line against the requests that came in. The monthly Navigator cycle shows how one cadence orders that work.
Three Places Scope Quietly Ends
Scope usually ends where a request stops improving how the current system runs and starts adding something new. Newbury Partners’ published Navigator scope makes the rule visible: configuration, data and workflow work stay inside the monthly cadence, while three categories are scoped separately. Expect most edge cases to sit right beside those three.
The table below shows how common requests tend to fall against that line and what the agreement should say about each; the rows are illustrative patterns drawn from the published scope, not client cases.
| Request | Where it usually falls | What the agreement should say |
| A new field, rule or workflow change | Inside the monthly fee | That configuration changes are included, with an example |
| Cleaning duplicate or stale records | Inside, when it’s routine | Whether a one-time bulk cleanup counts as routine |
| Connecting a new tool to Bullhorn | Outside, scoped separately | How an integration request is scoped and approved |
| Turning on a new AI capability | The edge: setup can read as either | Who decides whether setup is configuration or a project |
| Redesigning a process after an acquisition | Outside, scoped separately | What triggers a new scope and who signs it off |
The outside rows share one trait: each adds something the current configuration doesn’t yet hold, which is a reasonable place for a line. The trouble starts in the middle rows, where the same request can be routine one month and a project the next. A bulk cleanup after a merger looks like data cleansing. It behaves like a project.
The AI row is where the edge moves fastest. Bullhorn’s GRID 2026 research, drawn from nearly 2,300 recruitment professionals, found only 10 percent of firms have agentic AI across their full workflow. Among firms that grew revenue more than 25 percent, 78 percent use AI embedded in their applicant tracking system. Most firms will switch on more during a multi-year agreement. Decide where that setup falls now.
One move worth making early: ask for the out-of-scope list first. The included list describes what you’re buying. The excluded list, with an example for each line, shows where month four’s surprise would come from.
Pull your draft agreement and find the included-work clause. It should name categories, an example of each, and who rules on the edges. If it names hours instead, every improvement you assumed is an unbudgeted project. Not sure where yours sits? Ask what Navigator covers.
Three Moments That Test the Scope Line
Three predictable moments test the scope line. The business changes shape, the platform gains a capability, or the people who know the configuration change. Recruiters used 1.36 AI tools on average in early 2026, up from one in 2024, per the American Staffing Association and Prodoscore. Settle the answers before requests multiply.
- A structural change in the business. An acquisition, a new division or a new billing model changes what the configuration has to carry. Ask: does adapting to that count as included work, and if not, what triggers a new scope?
- A new capability on the platform. Bullhorn’s 2026 applicant tracking system report found 29 percent of firms still in early generative AI experimentation, down from 56 percent the year before. Ask: who decides whether a new capability’s setup is configuration or a project? Setup often starts with data cleanup, itself an edge case: data and analytics leaders estimate 26 percent of their organization’s data is untrustworthy, per Salesforce research.
- A change in who knows the configuration. An administrator leaves, or the provider’s point of contact changes. Ask: where are configuration decisions written down, and who can read them? That gap between setup and current practice is ordinary post-implementation drift, and written decisions let either side pick up the thread.
One principle holds across all three: automate the timing, never the human moment. Automate the reminders, the request log and the quarterly scope review. Keep the ruling itself with named people on both sides. The cautionary evidence comes from outside staffing: WalkMe found 54 percent of workers across industries bypassed AI tools and did a task by hand at least once in 30 days. People settle disagreements.
The Scope Line Shows Up in Three Numbers
Track three numbers from the first request: the share of requests ruled outside the fee, the days from request to ruling, and the share of separately scoped work the quarterly roadmap saw coming. With 43 percent of firms expecting only modest economic improvement in 2026, per Bullhorn, surprise projects are hard to absorb.
Start the request log on day one, before the first ruling, so all three numbers have a baseline.
Share of requests ruled outside the fee. Log every request and mark which were ruled out of scope. A rising share means the line sits closer to your day-to-day needs than the agreement assumed.
Days from request to ruling. Count from the day a request is logged to the day someone says in or out. A long gap means nobody owns the ruling, whatever the agreement says.
Share of separately scoped work that was planned. For every separately scoped project, ask whether the quarterly roadmap named it first. Planned projects are the system working, and surprises are the line failing.
Read the three numbers together, because each one alone can mislead. If the out-of-scope share is high but most of that work was planned, the line is honest and your roadmap is ambitious. If the share is low but rulings take weeks, requests are stalling instead of being decided. If both are high and little was planned, the clause doesn’t match how your firm runs, so re-scope rather than absorb surprises. A quarterly business review puts all three on one page. Return is a separate question, with its own finance-side evaluation.
Can you name who would rule on your first out-of-scope request, and how you’d contest it? Each answer should point to a named person and a clause in the draft. If either points nowhere, month four decides. Curious how Navigator handles it? Talk scope with us.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Scope Clause Is a Decision You Make Once
Procurement contracts lose 11 percent of their value after signature, per World Commerce & Contracting. Only 10 percent of staffing firms run agentic AI across their full workflow, per Bullhorn, so most will ask for new work mid-agreement. A good agreement names the included work, who rules on the edges, and the path to challenge. Scope stops being the argument.
Apply the same test to the split of work. Your team owns the operating decisions, the priorities and the call on what changes first. Reading the configuration, running the monthly improvement cycle and keeping the scope line visible is what Navigator managed services does, backed by Newbury Partners’ wider staffing technology services. If you want to see where Navigator draws its own line before you sign, let’s walk through it.
References
- “Closing the procurement value gap: how to recover lost value in contracts.” World Commerce & Contracting. Published January 13, 2026. Verified live October 13, 2026.
- “Contracting: the overlooked source of procurement value.” World Commerce & Contracting. Published January 23, 2026. Verified live October 13, 2026.
- “Enterprises lose 51 workdays per employee to technology friction annually despite record AI investment.” WalkMe (global survey of 3,750 executives and employees). Published April 9, 2026. Verified live October 13, 2026.
- “Bullhorn GRID report: Staffing firms using AI see stronger growth, faster placements.” Bullhorn (GRID 2026 Industry Trends Report, survey of nearly 2,300 recruitment professionals). Published February 25, 2026. Verified live October 13, 2026.
- “2026 Applicant Tracking System Usage Report.” Bullhorn. Published June 5, 2026. Verified live October 13, 2026.
- “Staffing productivity report: recruiter interactions with candidates and clients jump 60% YoY; number of AI tools used grows.” American Staffing Association, with Prodoscore. Published June 4, 2026. Verified live October 13, 2026.
- “Data and analytics trends for 2026.” Salesforce. Published November 4, 2025. Verified live October 13, 2026.
- “Navigator.” Newbury Partners. Published undated. Verified live October 13, 2026.
