Manage Your Vendors Before They Manage You
Maximize the value of vendor relationships.
Book This Workshop
Today, many organizations continue to manage vendors in an informal, ad hoc fashion, relying on the vendor to manage the relationship, resulting in:
- Higher costs. Opportunities are missed to save money with service bundle discounts, economies of scale, and new and improved vendor offerings.
- Increased probability of underperformance. Without a system in place to actively monitor vendor performance and communicate concerns, vendor failures are more likely to occur and be compensated for.
- Difficulty resolving conflicts. It is difficult to overcome challenges without clear communication points and escalation pathways.
Creating an ongoing program for managing your vendor relationships allows you to:
- Maximize the value of your vendor relationships based on your specific goals, expectations, and constraints.
- Track vendors with meaningful and practical metrics that actually help improve vendor performance.
- Prioritize vendor relationships to optimize where you spend time and resources.
Book Your Workshop
Onsite Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn’t enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our Project Workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a road map in place to complete your project successfully.
Book NowCase Studies and Deliverables
Vendor Management Case Study of a Regional Grocery Chain
A lack of standardized vendor management process inhibited a grocery retailer from optimizing the value of its IT vendor portfolio and effectively managing risk in certain situations. To solve the problem, they targeted a moderate-to-high level of maturity to gain effectiveness while limiting unnecessary tasks that would slow efficiency.
Vendor Management Case Study of a Mid-Sized Electric Utility
A 13-person IT department in a small, regional, non-profit electric generation and transportation utility located in the eastern US managed over 50 vendors. While no major problems existed, the small team’s reliance on vendor support to deliver IT services demanded better vendor management process standardization in order to optimize the vendor portfolio and manage risk.
Module 1: Prioritize Vendors
The Purpose
Prioritize your vendors based on their importance to the organization.
Key Benefits Achieved
Prioritized list within the Vendor Inventory and Prioritization Tool.
| Activities: | Outputs: | |
|---|---|---|
| 1.1 | Decide what attributes make a vendor indispensable to your organization. |
|
| 1.2 | Prioritize list of IT vendors. |
|
Module 2: Classify Vendors
The Purpose
Classify your vendors to focus your vendor management efforts.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Classified vendors.
- A completed vendor inventory.
| Activities: | Outputs: | |
|---|---|---|
| 2.1 | Right-size vendor classifications for your organization. |
|
| 2.2 | Classify your vendors. |
|
| 2.3 | Complete the remaining fields of your inventory. |
|
Module 3: Document Vendors
The Purpose
Document key information for each vendor and make a plan to maximize the value.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Consolidated vendor information for each of your vendors.
- A standardized approach to vendor management, comprising customized:
- Vendor scorecards
- Vendor feedback cards
- Vendor review aeeting agendas
- Completed Vendor Management Program Plan and meeting agenda
| Activities: | Outputs: | |
|---|---|---|
| 3.1 | Create a vendor information sheet for a strategic vendor. |
|
| 3.2 | Create a vendor information sheet for a tactical or operational vendor. |
|
| 3.3 | Create a vendor information sheet for a commodity vendor. |
|
| 3.4 | Customize vendor scorecards. |
|
| 3.5 | Customize vendor feedback cards. |
|
| 3.6 | Customize meeting agendas. |
|