LoadSpring Answers: What is Strategic Vendor Management?

What is Strategic Vendor Management?

Strategic Vendor Management is an ongoing process that provides centralized visibility into procurement spending, which allows for better-informed business decisions.¹ It is a systematic approach that helps IT leaders get the most value from their strategic vendors.²

What Are the Benefits of Strategic Vendor Management?

Vendor partnerships need consistent management to help create a robust dynamic partnership. Establishing a strategic vendor management plan can help you:

1. Lower costs: good relationships and shared insight lead to better pricing and collaborative strategies. A great relationship can also lead to better rates and prices if you and your vendors agree on a long-term contract.³ 
2. Innovation: proactively engaging with strategic vendors ensures maximum efficiency and increases focus on core business functions. Collaboration and communication is a critical component of strategic vendor management. 
3. IT governance: vendor management can better support IT governance, helping organizations keep a close eye on compliance and risk management.
4. Proactivity: strategic vendor management allows your organization to remain proactive instead of reactive by staying on top of vendor performance and efficiency.⁴

How to Improve Strategic Vendor Management

You can improve vendor management by creating an action plan to assess your current vendor relationships, following the steps below:

1. Gather information around vendors’ profiles, performance, benefits, and risks.
2. Review of the vendors’ profiles with all company stakeholders.
3. Document the process so you can apply it to all vendors and identify under-performing vendors.

To make the strategic vendor management process even easier, consider consolidating to one vendor that fulfills all of your ordering needs will almost certainly be worth it. LoadSpring is a cloud solutions provider that can host everything in one place and guarantees:

• LoadSpring performance reviews: get the most out of your cloud experience – automatically.
• Zero trust security: no one gets in that doesn’t belong. 
• Global secure access with by-user usage reporting: users can log in wherever and whenever they need, quickly and securely.
• Centralized 24/7 global support: minimize downtime and maximize efficiencies.
• Rapid deployment to meet your business needs: we’ll get you up and running in record time.
• Automated license reporting: ensure the people who need software get it, and those who don’t need it don’t get it.

 Ready to get started? We are ready to assist you in streamlining the procurement and hosting of your all-important project software. Wherever you are in the process, we’ve rolled up our sleeves, and we are ready to get you to the next level. Contact us today or request a cloud assessment above.

Footnotes:

1. https://www.loadspring.com/post/taking-command-of-strategic-vendor-management/
2. https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/3-steps-to-improve-strategic-vendor-management/
3. https://www.cio.com/article/3398985/what-is-vendor-management-the-key-to-productive-vendor-partnerships.html