The VMO plays a key part in increasing your return on investment (ROI) with vendor relationships. Properly utilizing a VMO will increase company efficiency, reduce vendor spend & risk exposure and allow the business units to focus on their core business functions.

While there are no magic formulas in this article to determine exact ROI, using a VMO throughout the vendor lifecycle will provide multiple advantages and ROI in four primary areas.

ROI #1 — Audits

Vendor Invoice Submission Controls

Auditors typically recommend that a review process is in place for submitted invoices. The best practice is to have the business owner ensure and approve that the vendor performed the work, then have the VMO team review the invoices to ensure costs match the contractual terms. Once approved by the VMO, then the check is cut for payment.

AP System Calibrated to the VMO Database

Most AP systems should have controls in place to put a cap on specific expenses, along with an approval process for any exceptions. It is imperative to engage the VMO with vendor invoice fees to ensure whenever prices change or whenever there are new service fees. If these functions are not utilized, you could be at risk of paying more for services than what was negotiated in the contract.

Invoice Audits

Even if your AP system does extract vendor pricing from active contracts within the VMO database, it is still a best practice to randomly audit vendor invoices to ensure they match the current contractual pricing. There are times when pricing may not be updated in the AP or the invoice is submitted under a different code/rate.

ROI #2 — On-Boarding a New Vendor

Adding a New Service

A new vendor should only be selected when the need for their service or product is deemed superior to the in-house alternative. Cost justification (ROI), vendor efficiency and risk also have to be identified prior to selecting a vendor.

The VMO should be engaged as soon as the vendor need is determined. The VMO should review the type of service requested to see if there is currently a vendor that performs the same service in a different department. Eliminating vendor duplication provides a lower total cost by increasing the preferred vendor's volume of services and thus better discount opportunities.

Furthermore, using the VMO as a non-biased party eliminates favoritism and subjectiveness when scoring the RFP, performing diligence, assessing risk and evaluating the business requirements. By selecting the best vendor in an objective fashion, your company should recognize long-term financial benefits.

Contract Negotiations

During contract negotiations, the VMO should have all the requirements, terms and SLA's from the business to negotiate the contract. This frees up the business owner's time during the negotiation process and limits their role to the final sign-off. The VMO should be the company's de facto expert in handling all aspects of negotiating contracts — resulting in the best cost, terms and SLA's possible.

ROI #3 — Managing the Vendor Relationship

The business unit should handle all day-to-day dealings with the vendor. The VMO should manage the relationship at a higher level to ensure compliance with terms and conditions and work with the vendor to resolve any issues.

Ways the VMO should manage the relationship:

Risk Reviews

The VMO should conduct vendor risk reviews to identify and manage threats the vendor may pose to the company. Risk reviews protect company assets, income, employees, customers, reputation and its investors.

Performance Reviews

It is a best practice to use a non-biased party to review vendor performance. The VMO can assess the performance of the vendor by objectively discussing it with all departments that interact with the vendor — or, at the very least, the key stakeholders. A performance scorecard quantifies the vendor's service, quality, efficiency, incidents and SLA's in a manner free of any biased opinions. The performance review should also be shared with the vendor to create a partnership that will deliver results.

Service Level Agreements

SLA's should be identified in the contract and contain material repercussions for the vendor if they don't perform. When negotiating SLA's with the vendor, identify the risks to your business and help set what the penalties should be.

SLA's are only as good as the monitoring of the data — the VMO should handle monitoring, especially if the contract contains monetary penalties. If you are not monitoring SLA's you could be throwing money out the window.

Action Plans/Incidents

There will likely be incidents where a vendor is not performing to the SLA's, has violated a term in the contract or is not compliant with the risk review. The VMO should work with the vendor to resolve any such incidents so that the business owners can focus on their key functions.

Tracking incidents and monitoring vendor action plans is a perfect way for the VMO to evaluate the vendor at a high level.

Vendor Utilization

A VMO can manage vendor utilization and reduce costs in several ways:

1. Evaluate all vendors across the company and look for duplication of services. Redundant vendors could potentially be eliminated after a champion challenge and the retained vendor's overall costs could be reduced.
2. Review vendor costs monthly or quarterly to show vendor spend and utilization. If you notice that a vendor's cost has decreased over time, you can evaluate the vendor's necessity and possibly eliminate them.
3. Review all new vendor requests and ensure the service or product cannot be performed internally at a lower cost or more efficiently.

Management of Contracts and Time Sensitive Data

Contract renewals are imperative to eliminating risk. If a contract is expired and the vendor has an incident, this could expose your company to monetary damages and a hit to your company's reputation.

Both company-led reviews (risk, performance, and audit) and vendor-led reviews (SSAE 16, ISO 27001, etc.) have to be managed and documented. Certificates of Insurance must always be current and provide suitable coverage. Failure to have up-to-date, commensurate documentation could also expose your company to unnecessary risk.

ROI #4 — Let the Business Owners Manage Their Business

The more a business owner can focus on their actual job, the more efficient they'll be and the better the company's performance will be. Properly utilizing vendor management to maximize company profits is an intense, detail-oriented process, and shouldn't be part of an employee's overall position.

The VMO should always

• Negotiate contracts
• Track vendor performance
• Perform vendor reviews
• Manage vendor incidents
• Perform vendor audits

The Business Owners should always

• Increase sales, customer service and revenue
• Increase department efficiency
• Focus of core department objectives
• Develop team
• Track department performance

Paul Boone is an experienced VMO manager. Connect with Paul on LinkedIn.