How do you ensure continuous improvement in your vendor management process?

Vendor management is a crucial aspect of event production, as it involves selecting, contracting, and overseeing the performance of various suppliers and service providers. However, vendor management is not a one-time activity, but an ongoing process that requires continuous improvement to ensure quality, efficiency, and satisfaction. In this article, you will learn how to ensure continuous improvement in your vendor management process by following these steps:

1 Define your goals and metrics

Before you start working with vendors, it is important to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how you will measure it. Doing so will help set realistic expectations, align objectives, and evaluate results. When it comes to event production, some common goals and metrics include budget, quality, timeliness, communication, and compliance. You need to consider how much you are willing to spend on each vendor and the overall event, what your standards and specifications are for each vendor’s deliverables, how you will ensure each vendor meets the deadlines and milestones for the event, how you will communicate with each vendor and monitor their progress and feedback, as well as how you will ensure each vendor follows the contractual terms, legal regulations, and ethical practices.

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2 Select and negotiate with vendors

Once you have defined your goals and metrics, you need to research the market and compare different options to find and choose the vendors that can best meet your needs and expectations. It is important to negotiate with the vendors on the price, scope, and terms of the contract, ensuring that you have a clear and detailed agreement that covers all aspects of the service or product. When selecting and negotiating with vendors, you should define your selection criteria and rank them accordingly. Additionally, make sure to request proposals, quotes, and references from the vendors as well as conduct interviews, site visits, and tests to verify their capabilities and quality. Furthermore, review the contract carefully and seek legal advice if needed. Lastly, establish a dispute resolution mechanism and a termination clause.

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Ahmed Al.Jabri

Procurement and Contract Manager at Nama Supply Company (NSC) | Supply Chain | Sourcing & Procurement| CIPS | Vendor Management | Contract Management | ICV | Lean Green Built
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To continuously improve negotiation with vendor, procurement professional need to conduct research on market rates to establish the negotiation cost based. However, its important to have a clear expectations in terms of cost and other terms & conditions. This will definitely help fostering a collaborative relationship to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes for both parties.

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3 Manage and monitor vendors

Once you have signed the contract with the vendors, it's important to manage and monitor their performance and relationship throughout the event production process. This includes communicating regularly, providing feedback, resolving issues, and ensuring compliance. Additionally, you should track and measure the vendors' performance against the goals and metrics that you have set, then report on the results and outcomes. To make this process easier, you can assign a dedicated vendor manager or team to oversee the vendor relationship, use a project management tool or dashboard to track progress and deliverables, hold regular meetings, calls, emails with the vendor for exchanging information and updates, provide constructive feedback, recognition, and incentives to the vendor, and address any problems or conflicts promptly and professionally.

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Ahmed Al.Jabri

Procurement and Contract Manager at Nama Supply Company (NSC) | Supply Chain | Sourcing & Procurement| CIPS | Vendor Management | Contract Management | ICV | Lean Green Built
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To manage the expectations, its healthy to implement regular performance reviews of your vendors in running your contract, during its terms, on specific key performance indicators. To ensure the most outcome of this exercise, its a must to maintain open communication channels to address any issues promptly.

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4 Evaluate and improve vendors

After the event is over, you need to evaluate and improve the vendor management process and the vendor relationship. To do this, you should collect feedback from the vendor, the event stakeholders, and the attendees, then analyze the data and insights. Reviewing the contract and the performance of the vendor is also essential to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Based on this evaluation, you can decide whether to continue, modify, or terminate the vendor relationship. Additionally, tips for evaluating and improving vendors include conducting a post-event survey or interview with relevant parties, calculating ROI and VFM of the vendor, conducting a SWOT analysis with the vendor and event team, providing feedback to the vendor and requesting feedback from them, and documenting best practices and areas for improvement.

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Ahmed Al.Jabri

Procurement and Contract Manager at Nama Supply Company (NSC) | Supply Chain | Sourcing & Procurement| CIPS | Vendor Management | Contract Management | ICV | Lean Green Built
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Part of vendors management is to ensure their development for future better performance. This can be accomplished by regularly evaluate vendor performance against benchmarks and KPIs, and support that with feedback from stakeholders. Finally, collaborate with vendors to implement continuous improvement initiatives.

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5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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Corinna Tannian (CIPS)

In Transition
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In my opinion there is exciting developments in the new Procurement Act 2024 around social value and sustainability, transition and transformation, early engagement with SME's before tenders are due and the scope for innovation as well as creative routes to market with flexible contract models. The public sector space is at the cusp of really positive change and the key is to engage your suppliers to work through the journey with you.

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How do you ensure continuous improvement in your vendor management process?

1

2

3

4

5

1 Define your goals and metrics

2 Select and negotiate with vendors

3 Manage and monitor vendors

4 Evaluate and improve vendors

5 Here’s what else to consider

Event Production

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How do you ensure continuous improvement in your vendor management process?

1

2

3

4

5

1 Define your goals and metrics

2 Select and negotiate with vendors

3 Manage and monitor vendors

4 Evaluate and improve vendors

5 Here’s what else to consider

Event Production

Rate this article

Thanks for your feedback

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