Manage Your Vendors Before They Manage You | Info-Tech Research Group

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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.

Manage Your Vendors Before They Manage You Research & Tools

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should standardize your vendor management practices, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

Manage Your Vendors Before They Manage You – Executive Brief

1. Prioritize vendors

Create a prioritized inventory of your vendors.

2. Classify vendors

Classify your vendors using Info-Tech’s best-practice C.O.S.T. quadrant.

3. Document vendors

Standardize your approach to vendor management: consolidate vendor information, build an escalation chain, create internal and external scorecards, and document the entire process.

Member Testimonials

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.

Client

Experience

Impact

$ Saved

Days Saved

Testimonial

Cross Country Mortgage, Inc.

Guided Implementation

9/10

$2,231

2

Miller Zell

Guided Implementation

10/10

$14,489

29

The best part, is I was given insight into how to organize and make sense of the risks our 3rd part vendors may present. How to include and engage ... Read More

ISG Central Services Ltd.

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

5

I was really impressed with the knowledge of the InfoTech analyst and would be very happy to engage for her support again. Thank you!

University of Johannesburg

Guided Implementation

9/10

$12,300

5

Surgical Care Affiliates

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

50

Not all of the artifacts are designed to work together. Some have overlaps.

Pima Community College

Guided Implementation

10/10

$29,944

6

Saskatchewan Blue Cross

Guided Implementation

10/10

$50,000

5

Vision into vendor management was enlightening. Easy to see the final vision. Overwhelming amount of information and not sure if it will all wo... Read More

Ontario Pension Board

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

N/A

First Hope Bank

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

N/A

Gordana presented several options for us to put a strategic plan in place to address the service level failures in our contract. It's going to tak... Read More

Advocate

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

N/A

Gordana did a great job explaining the workshop to me, as well as giving me some real world insights. I'm looking forward to our next conversation.

Westmoreland Mining LLC

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

N/A

Great resources to help us vet future VAR partners. The worst part is there's a lot of information to digest and it will take a concerted effort a... Read More

American Textile

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

20

Gordana is a job to work with. She knows I am new to this area, I feel that she will go above and beyond to help me understand Vendor Management.

Statistics New Zealand

Guided Implementation

8/10

N/A

N/A

National Restaurant Association

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

5

It was a very good discussion from start to finish. There was no worst part. We did run out of time, so another 15-30 minutes would have been helpf... Read More

Moog Inc

Workshop

8/10

N/A

N/A

Moog Inc

Workshop

8/10

N/A

N/A

Georgia Municipal Association

Guided Implementation

10/10

$10,000

10

I had the pleasure of speaking w/ Steven and Matthew during this call. Steven provided a lot of quality information regarding vendor management an... Read More

Curtins

Guided Implementation

10/10

$43,501

90

Westmoreland Mining LLC

Guided Implementation

8/10

$20,373

2

Clear communication and valuable tools.

Load More Testimonials

Workshop: Manage Your Vendors Before They Manage You

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 delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

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.

Vendor Inventory and Prioritization Tool

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.

Vendor Classification Tool

2.3

Complete the remaining fields of your inventory.

Vendor Inventory and Prioritization Tool

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.

Strategic Vendor Information Sheet

3.2

Create a vendor information sheet for a tactical or operational vendor.

Tactical/Operational Vendor Information Sheet

3.3

Create a vendor information sheet for a commodity vendor.

Commodity Vendor Information Sheet

3.4

Customize vendor scorecards.

Vendor Scorecard

3.5

Customize vendor feedback cards.

Vendor Feedback Cards

3.6

Customize meeting agendas.

Vendor Review Meeting Agenda Template
Vendor Management Team Meeting Agenda Template

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

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.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Table of Contents

Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst

Get the help you need in this 3-phase advisory process. You'll receive 7 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

Guided Implementation 1: Prioritize vendors

Call 1: Review inventory tool.
Call 2: Discuss what attributes make a vendor indispensable to your organization.

Guided Implementation 2: Classify vendors

Call 1: Review Info-Tech’s classification system.
Call 2: Validate your vendor classifications.

Guided Implementation 3: Document vendors

Call 1: Review the vendor information sheets and discuss any roadblocks.
Call 2: Review the vendor scorecards and feedback cards.
Call 3: Review meeting agendas and engagement plans.

Author

Steve Jeffery

Contributors

John Alexis, Director of IT Services, GTAA
Deepak Bansal, Enterprise Head of IT Vendor Management, Envision Healthcare
Ronald Flockhart, Group Sourcing Head, FirstRand Group
Carla Di Castro, Senior Global Sourcing Manager, Workday
Gerry Holmes, Director of IT, Canadian Cancer Society (ret.)
Rick Johnson, IT Manager, St. Lawrence County Information Technology Department
Sherif Sheta, CIO Advisor, CCRM
Stratton Penberthy
Three anonymous contributors

Search Code: 58882
Last Revised: June 28, 2019

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