Best Practices in Offshore Outsourcing Security
This whitepaper identifies key concerns and discusses best practices to address them to secure data and intellectual property in offshore outsourcing relationships
February 9, 2012
Chapter
Vendor Relationship Management
Vendor relationship management (VRM) refers to the process of building and maintaining productive relationships with external vendors that provide IT goods and services to an organization. Effective VRM can help organizations optimize IT spend, mitigate risk, and achieve desired business outcomes.
VRM may include:
- Establishing clear expectations: Organizations should establish clear expectations with vendors, including service level agreements, key performance indicators, and pricing structures.
- Monitoring vendor performance: Organizations should monitor vendor performance against established expectations, and provide feedback to vendors to address any areas of concern.
- Facilitating communication: Organizations should establish effective communication channels with vendors, including regular meetings and status reports.
- Managing risk: Organizations should identify and manage risks associated with vendor relationships, including cybersecurity risks, compliance risks, and reputational risks.
- Resolving disputes: Organizations should have a process in place to resolve disputes with vendors, such as through mediation or arbitration.
Effective VRM requires a deep understanding of the organization’s IT needs, as well as the vendor landscape and market trends. IT executives should ensure that their VRM strategy is aligned with their organization’s IT sourcing goals and is well-documented.
The Vendor Relationship Management category within the CIO Reference Library provides CIOs and other IT executives with a comprehensive set of resources that illustrate effective VRM practices. This category includes a range of resources, such as articles, whitepapers, and case studies, that offer insights into different aspects of VRM, such as establishing clear expectations, monitoring vendor performance, facilitating communication, managing risk, and resolving disputes. By leveraging these resources, CIOs and IT executives can gain a deeper understanding of effective VRM practices and build and maintain productive relationships with vendors to achieve desired business outcomes.
This guide is an invaluable resource for professionals aiming to refine their procurement strategies and enhance vendor relations. It covers the nuances of identifying and collaborating with suppliers, optimizing supply chain operations, and leveraging these relationships to achieve a competitive edge. The guide emphasizes the importance of strategic planning, effective communication, and ongoing management of vendor relationships as key components for business success. By applying the principles outlined in this guide, organizations can improve efficiency, reduce costs, and build stronger, more beneficial partnerships with their vendors.
Vendor Management Best Practices
This white paper discusses vendor management best practices for successful IT and business process outsourcing.
January 4, 2012
Managing Dispersed Expertise in Offshore Outsourcing
 This article uses the practices implemented by Indian outsourcing company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to discuss the issue of managing knowledge and expertise spread across organizational and geographic boundaries in an offshore outsourcing arrangement.
October 17, 2011
Drafting Outsourcing Contracts
This excellent presentation provides an in-depth discussion on contracts related to outsourcing – what are the key elements in an outsourcing contract? What are the essential components of contract management?
October 7, 2011
Best Practices in High-Performance Outsourcing
This paper discusses the key learning/best practices, that lead to high performance outsourcing, gleaned from the masters i.e. executives who have been there, done that and can claim success in the world of outsourcing services! 
October 7, 2011
Creating Better Service Level Metrics
This whitepaper examines the cause of service level metrics failure and recommends solutions to fix this problem.
September 19, 2011
Designing Metrics for Service Level Agreements
This presentation discusses "why service metrics fail" and provides guidance on "implementing better service level metrics"
September 19, 2011
Sample Service Level Agreement
This sample enterprise IT service level agreement (SLA) can be used to design your own.
June 24, 2011
SLA Template
This template can be used to create a Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between a service provider and the service recipient. The objective of the SLA is to present a clear, concise and measurable description of the services provided.
June 24, 2011
Which Buyers’ Skills Shape Supplier Performance?
This paper studies how buyers’ technical expertise and supplier governance skills shape their satisfaction with suppliers’ performance i.e. price, quality, and cooperativeness of products or services bought.
December 10, 2010