Vendor management

Why both sides of the contract matter

I have worked on both sides: as the client who runs the tender and manages the provider, and at the provider that prices the work and has to deliver it. So I know how a tender is read on the other side, and what assumptions sit behind a price.

Selection

What a proposal is really worth shows in how the provider has handled past ramp-ups, in staff turnover at the proposed site, in the strength of local management, and in which of the people named in the proposal will actually work on the account. I selected a provider for the Brazilian market without ever having been there, and ran tenders for Europe and North America.

Definitions before governance

Four providers had four definitions of resolved. Before any governance meeting makes sense, you need a shared glossary: what counts as a contact, when a case is closed, how availability is measured. It is unglamorous, but everything else builds on it.

Making them comparable

Anyone working with several providers usually gets several reporting formats and no way to compare them. So I introduced performance management in which every provider reported the same metrics under the same definitions, with business reviews on a fixed schedule and the same agenda for all. A benchmark put the providers side by side. After that, the discussion was about results rather than about how to read the figures.

Bonus and penalty

A penalty has to bite, and a bonus has to stay within reach, and both have to depend on performance the provider can actually influence. In one case, the provider did not qualify for the bonus for six months. Even so, the contract worked, because both sides saw the same figures and neither side controlled the measurement alone.

Planning belongs with the client

Leaving capacity planning entirely with the provider means pushing the risk to where the information about demand is missing: the client knows first about campaigns and product launches. I built an in-house team for workforce and real-time management, with its own forecast. After that it was possible to plan how many seats would be needed the following week.