Establish a Sustainable Vendor Management Office
Lay the foundation for a vendor management process that is built to last.
- A large percentage of organizations do not have a formalized vendor management process, leaving the entire organization vulnerable to poor business outcomes.
- Because it is so hard to quantify ROI for vendor management activities and resources, it often doesn’t get done effectively.
- Managing vendors is a cross-functional endeavor. Without a solid internal foundation, effective vendor management is likely to fall short of achieving value-added outcomes.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Define what vendor management means for your organization. The definition is dependent on your organization’s size and structure.
- Vendor management does not exist in a vacuum. It is integrated and dependent on other business and IT processes, such as project management, requirements gathering, procurement, and compliance.
- The internal relationships need to be strong before your vendor relationships can be strong. Make sure your organization can present a united front.
- Understand exactly where you are consuming resources in terms of people and time invested into these solutions. This is a holistic perspective on resource allocation that will drive visibility upwards to senior management and force a ROI or cost-benefit dialogue.
Impact and Result
- Taking a proactive approach to managing your vendors will help negotiate relationships where everyone’s best interests are accommodated.
- The approach begins by laying the foundation for a thorough vendor management function within your organization.
About Info-Tech
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We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
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Contributors
- Ronald Flockhart, Group Sourcing Head at FirstRand Group
- Carla Di Castro, Senior Global Sourcing Manager at Workday
- Gerry Pettit, Director IT Vendor Management at CB&I
- Evan Bortzfield, Sr. Sourcing Specialist at Riverbed Technology
- Phil Kaylor, Express Scripts
- One anonymous contributor
Looking at Risk in a New Light: The Six Pillars of Vendor Risk Management
Manage Exponential Value Relationships
Jump Start Your Vendor Management Initiative
Capture and Market the ROI of Your VMO
Cut Cost Through Effective IT Category Planning
Design and Build an Effective Contract Lifecycle Management Process
Maximize Value From Your Value-Added Reseller (VAR)
Drive Successful Sourcing Outcomes With a Robust RFP Process
Reduce Risk With Rock-Solid Service-Level Agreements
Slash Spending by Optimizing Your Software Maintenance and Support
Identify and Manage Financial Risk Impacts on Your Organization
Identify and Manage Strategic Risk Impacts on Your Organization
Identify and Manage Reputational Risk Impacts on Your Organization
Identify and Manage Security Risk Impacts on Your Organization
Evaluate Your Vendor Account Team to Optimize Vendor Relations
Elevate Your Vendor Management Initiative
Prepare for Negotiations More Effectively
Implement Your Negotiation Strategy More Effectively
Evaluate and Learn From Your Negotiation Sessions More Effectively
Proactively Identify and Mitigate Vendor Risk
Master the Public Cloud IaaS Acquisition Models
Essentials of Vendor Management for Small Business
Identify and Manage Regulatory and Compliance Risk Impacts on Your Organization
Identify and Manage Operational Risk Impacts on Your Organization
Don’t Allow Software Licensing to Derail Your M&A
Identify and Reduce Agile Contract Risk
Improve Your Statements of Work to Hold Your Vendors Accountable
Understand Common IT Contract Provisions to Negotiate More Effectively
Master Contract Review and Negotiation for Software Agreements
Master the MSA for Your Managed Services Providers
Negotiate SaaS Agreements That Are Built to Last
Establish a Vendor Management Roadmap to Succeed With Autonomous Technologies
Price Benchmarking & Negotiation
Stop Wasting Time Evaluating Commoditized Products and Services
Ensure Business Alignment in Managed Service Agreements
Comparing Software Practices in Maturing IT
Run IT By the Numbers
Transform IT, Transform Everything
The Race to Develop Talent
Building Info-Tech’s Chatbot
Assessing the AI Ecosystem
Sync or Sink: Aligning IT and HR for the Future of Work
Building the Road to Governing Digital Intelligence
Bring AI Out of the Shadows
The AI Vendor Landscape in IT
IT Spend and Staffing Benchmarking
An Operational Framework for Rolling Out AI