Vendor management

Why both sides of the contract matter

Most people know one side. I have worked on both: as the client who runs the tender and steers the work, and as the provider who prices it and has to deliver. That changes how you write a tender, because you know how it will be read and where the provider is doing their sums.

Selection

What a proposal is really worth shows in the evidence of past ramp-ups, attrition at the site in question, the depth of local management, and the question of who 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, and it is the single most effective step.

Making them comparable

Anyone with several providers usually has several reporting formats and no comparison. I set up performance management in which everyone delivers the same metrics under the same definitions, and put business reviews on top of it: same cadence, same agenda, same figures. Plus a benchmark that puts the providers side by side. That changes the conversation, because nobody is arguing about interpretation any more.

Bonus and penalty

A penalty has to hurt, a bonus has to stay reachable. In one case the provider did not earn the bonus once in six months, and the contract still worked, because both sides saw the same figures and neither side controlled the measurement alone.

Planning belongs with the client

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