Jump Start Your Vendor Management Initiative

Your Challenge

• IT leaders are challenged in starting a centralized vendor management office or initiative by lack of funding for FTEs, failed or false starts, and the absence of proven ROI.
• IT leaders lack the knowledge or don’t have the time available to identify short-term gains that provide the foundation for long-term strategy and sustainable success of a vendor management initiative (VMI).

Our Advice

Critical Insight

• Obtain quick wins and visible results. Invest your vendor management efforts where they can deliver the best return; focus on the vendors most important to your business. Classify and prioritize your vendors to separate the wheat from the chaff.
• Vendor management must be an IT strategy. Solid vendor management is an imperative – IT organizations must develop capabilities to ensure that services are delivered by vendors according to service level objectives and that risks are mitigated according to the organization's risk tolerance.
• Visibility into your IT vendor community. Understand how much you spend with each vendor and rank their criticality and risk to focus on the vendors you should be concentrating on for innovative solutions.
• Effectively manage cost and increase net profits. Maximize the return on investment of your vendors by tracking, capturing, and reporting value created. Capture and report business value created from your vendor management initiative by reporting improvements or savings in money, performance, time, and reducing risk.

• Choosing the right vendors isn’t enough. Procuring valuable products and services can yield immediate visible benefits. But it’s the relationship with the vendor that ensures that benefits are sustained over the long run.

Impact and Result

• Identify quick VMI wins with an executable “first 100 days” project plan.
• Take a proactive approach to managing your vendors to help negotiate collaborative relationships where everyone’s best interests are accommodated.
• Standardize your processes for transitioning in new vendors, maintaining communications, and monitoring vendor’s performance.
• Identify your actual strategic vendors to concentrate your initial vendor management activities.
• Clarify what is in scope and out of scope of your VMI.
• Identify areas of improvement for assessing vendor risk.