IT Vendor Management Office

It is extremely difficult for the businesses to hire and retain all the skills, especially when you have some projects which require specific skills for a short duration timeframe. Companies are choosing to hire contract staff from selected vendor companies, who in turn provide them with skills that the company requires in order to get the project developed.

Further, the increasing use of outsourcing, out-tasking and cloud computing means that vendors are now playing a fundamental role in IT’s delivery of services to the end-user.

This is a fast growing trend now in India as well, where more and more companies are trying to balance the employee and vendor staff ratios as well. Efficient vendor management is a very important and essential part for the success of the “staff and vendor model”. This is as important as any internal technology, service management or program management capability.

Few challenges that companies often face while doing business with vendors fall under following categories:

·         Demand Management

·         Contract Management

·         Performance Management

·         Relationship Management

·         Risk Management

To manage these challenges or issues, an increasing number of companies are deploying a dedicated IT Vendor Management Office (the IT VMO) that is responsible for overseeing the entire vendor lifecycle and for “bridging the gap” between IT vendor and the corporate procurement organizations to better enable vendor relationships that drive strategic benefits. The goals of the IT VMO include:

·         Evaluating Vendors and selecting the right fit.

·         Establishing and Managing Contracts and defining SLA’s

·         Maintaining a balanced of company staff and vendor staff ratio

·         Retaining commercial focus during operational interactions

·         Fully leveraging the capabilities of each vendor partner

·         Automating the repeatable tasks

Following are the responsibilities of the IT VMO (typically in a captive unit which hires contract staff from vendor companies):

·         Collating the vendor hire requirement

·         Negotiating timeframe to close the requirement (position)

·         Communicating the requirement to shortlisted vendor companies

·         Review profiles

·         Setting up Interviews  with shortlisted candidates

·         Finalize billing rates for selected candidate

·         Seal the Agreement with the vendor company.

·         Hiring

·         Providing access to office, software and hardware resources to the vendor staff, as required.

·         Ensuring that the vendor provided staff understands the company’s policies and procedures, and adheres to them.

·         Managing time entry

·         Tracking deliverables (if needed)

·         Providing administrative support to the vendor staff

·         Ensuring key domain knowledge is retained within the organization (as a best practice)

·         Review and settle vendor invoices

·         Renewing or Terminating contracts