Vendor Management – Making a List

All of us come in contact with Vendors or Resellers of software and hardware. Many of us don’t give much thought to managing our vendors. I think that is a mistake.

Vendor management is something that you should add to your list as a Tech Leader. Here are some ideas about VM.

Identify which vendors to manage… Where should you focus be? Do you just start calling every vendor and checking in on them?  Are some more important than others?

You need to focus your efforts on the ones that will provide the most impact, be it productivity increases, cost savings, technology refreshes or whatever.  By narrowing your goals of interacting with specific vendors, you can and will increase your impact.

Let’s start by defining who to manage.

First make a list of all the vendors you are using at this time. Write down everyone, big and small. Then go through the list and sort it by purchasing dollar volume.  Those that get most of your dollars are important.

• Take the top 5 and add them to your list of vendors to manage.  Make a note of why they were added.

Now go through the same list and sort them by software seat count.  Who provides the most licences to your school?

• Take the top 5 and add them to your list. Remove duplicates.  Some of these may have been the same as from step one. Make a note of why they were added.  If they are duplicates, add to the list of why they were added, keeping the prior reason also.

Now sort the same overall list by productivity impact. It may be a small tool that does one thing that save tons of time.  It may be a large software footprint that everyone is using to get things done. Finding more productivity in existing tools is very important.

• Take the top 5 and add them to your list. Remove duplicates. Make a note of why they were added.

Now sort the list with the troublemakers, non performers, price gougers, con artists and “used car” salesman at the top.

• Take the top 5 and add them to your list. Remove duplicates. Make a note of why they were added.

This is a good starting point for which vendors you need to manage.  You now have a list of up to 20.  Some duplicates may have happened so your list may have been less than 20.

Next Post will be on what to do with the list.