Features

• The six million dollar vendor

  By James Hutchinson | 14 July, 2011 07:00

  Between 2005 and 2010, Gartner estimated IT managers and executive decision makers have gone from dealing with an average of 3.7 vendors to 10. The onset of Cloud computing as well as the revival of service outsourcing in wake of the economic downturn have only exacerbated this as companies increasingly look to multi-source their services to obtain the functionality they need at a cost they can afford.

• Managing relationships with vendors - Part 3

  By David Binning | 06 May, 2011 15:09

  For some organisations the hassle and uncertainty that can arise from multiple vendor relationships is best addressed by putting all of their eggs into the one carefully chosen basket. South Australian transport and logistics company, Northline, recently entered into a five year, $5 million contract with integrator Brennan, which will handle more than 300 portable and desktop computers in addition to servers, enterprise software and LAN communications. Basically, everything except telecommunications, which is provided by Optus.

• Managing relationships with vendors - Part 2

  By David Binning | 05 May, 2011 13:07

  According to Dr Tim O’Neill, co-founder and director of business intelligence specialists Avolution, probably the biggest mistake an organisation can make when dealing with suppliers is to outsource the systems architecture. “This is why there’s so many untold billions of dollars-worth of failed IT projects out there,” he says. “Outsourcing the architecture function is fraught with danger.” In order for projects to be successful organisations need to maintain a healthy degree of cynicism and effectively force vendors to earn trust.

• Managing relationships with vendors

  By David Binning | 04 May, 2011 16:03

  The IT choices a company makes can mean the difference between business success and failure. Whether it’s access to information, communications between staff, partners and customers, HR, inventory management, operation and monitoring of equipment and other and assets as well as business security, IT has managed to make itself indispensible at virtually every organisational level. Yet it would seem that for many organisations, this awareness often fails to translate into properly thought out and well-executed strategies for managing the vendors that supply the technology.

• How to measure your IT vendor management office

  By Patrick Connaughton | 06 April, 2010 05:00

  Over the past few years, many companies have taken the first steps in setting up an IT Vendor Management Office (VMO), but many are still very much in the early stages of refining what exactly the role of the VMO is within the organization. And the definition of a VMO can vary widely across companies - ranging from a broad marketing term used to describe the process or a specific term used to refer to a dedicated group of staff who oversee and manage suppliers.

• Experience Base: Vendor Negotiation

  By Stephanie Overby | 01 February, 2010 07:54

  If there's one skill that usually gets short shrift in giving up-and-coming leaders valuable on-the job-experience, it's negotiating contracts with external partners. In some large corporations there are so many parties involved in forging vendor relationships--from internal purchasing organizations and general counsel to outside consultants and advisors--that it's difficult for budding IT leaders to get any experience in edgewise. In smaller organizations, top IT brass may cleave so closely to the contracting and management process for fear of losing money or putting the company at risk that they lock their next generation out of the process.

• Customers can gain from being a vendor reference

  By Chris Kanaracus | 10 November, 2009 08:20

  No IT vendor's news announcement is truly complete without a couple of glowing quotes from customers; nor is any vendor conference really a success unless the company has lined up a few satisfied CIOs to talk up their strategy and products.

• How to succeed with sourcing and vendor management

  By Sean Sweeney | 15 July, 2009 07:29

  For Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, and other IT vendors, the only thing worse than knowing there is a meeting of global IT sourcing and vendor management executives is being a fly on the wall at a meeting of IT sourcing and vendor management executives. At a recent meeting of Forrester's Sourcing and Vendor Management Leadership Board, the words "cost" and "cutting" were rarely separated during any discussion among the executives in the room - and their specific quotes regarding some vendors would make my father blush.

• 5 Can't-Miss Vendor Negotiation Tips

  By Martin Ewing | 20 February, 2009 10:50

  If you work with vendors and wonder how to get a better deal, these tips can help you learn more about the process, add value to your contract with any vendor and put you in the driver's seat.