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

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

Miller Zell

Guided Implementation

10/10

$15,640

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

$13,600

5

SCA Health

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

50

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

Pima County Community College District

Guided Implementation

10/10

$31,960

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

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 Networks, LLC

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.

CURTINS GROUP LIMITED

Guided Implementation

10/10

$46,249

90

Westmoreland Mining LLC

Guided Implementation

8/10

$21,760

2

Clear communication and valuable tools.

Load More Testimonials

Visit our IT’s Moment: A Technology-First Solution for Uncertain Times Resource Center
Over 100 analysts waiting to take your call right now: +1 (703) 340 1171