Your Challenge

• As IT services and products continue to become outsourced, IT is increasingly dependent on external vendors, and a transaction-based approach becomes insufficient to guarantee continued value.
• When IT does not manage these vendors properly, performance levels can drop and fail to deliver essential services – and IT is left accountable.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

• All vendors are not equal. Invest your vendor management efforts where they can deliver the best return; focus on the vendors that are most important to your business. Classify and prioritize your vendors to separate the wheat from the chaff.
• Vendor management is an ongoing commitment. From contracting to renewal, a successful vendor management office (VMO) depends on your ability to create repeatable, iterative processes that can flourish over many years of diligent work.

Impact and Result

• Prioritize and classify your vendors with quantifiable, standardized rankings.
• Focus on your strategic vendors first, then, year over year, work through every classification of vendor.
• Standardize your processes for transitioning in new vendors, maintaining communications, and monitoring performance.
• Create clear escalation pathways and contingency plans for addressing vendor underperformance.
• Codify your tailored, best-practice methodology for managing vendor relationships.