Should Your Vendors Need So Much of Your Time?

Vendors can be impossible to deal with, and this problem escalates when you have quite a lot of them. Every service or product your business takes advantage of comes from a vendor, and if you have to work directly with them every time something goes awry, you’re looking at a lot of wasted time and effort. Thankfully, there’s an easier way to work with your vendors, and ironically, it involves not working with them at all--but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There’s a process you need to go through before you can most efficiently take advantage of vendor management services.

Inventorying Your Vendors
To better manage your vendors, you first need to take an inventory of every single company your business purchases services or goods from. This includes everything from your network infrastructure to your Internet service provider. If you have other vendors through which you receive network security or other business technology solutions, be sure to include those as well. In other words, list any organization that your business deals with for goods, services, or solutions. Chances are that it’s an impressive list.

Now ask yourself if you have time to deal with each and every one of them individually, for every single little thing you could possibly need from them.

It’s also critical that you don’t forget to include vendors that you use as an extension of your own business. If these vendors fail to meet the performance standards you have in place, it could negatively influence your operations and your ability to serve your own clients. Basically, you need to know what your vendors are promising, and make sure that they are able to follow through on this promise as per your service agreement.

Possible Issues with Your Vendors
Now, this seems like a lot to take in, and that’s because it is. If this wasn’t enough to worry about, there is also the issue of whether or not your vendors’ various services will conflict with one another. Then the quality of the services comes into question--are you in a better spot if everything conflicts with one another? Are your vendors reliably providing the services you expect them to? If not, they need to be held accountable. All of this continues to waste your time.

Imagine Someone Else Managing Your Vendors
If you have the right managed service provider, you can cut down on time wasted on vendors by having someone else deal with them for you. In this case, Horne & Benik would act as the single point of contact your business needs for any assistance with your technology solutions (relating to your vendors). This keeps you focused on what matters most--running your business and ensuring operations proceed according to plan.

Don’t let vendors get you down. To learn more about vendor management, reach out to us at (603) 499-4400.