Your Vendor’s Pain Doesn’t Need to Be Yours

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a lot of businesses to rethink their spending strategies, and one side-effect from making cuts to your operational budget is having to deal with your vendor representatives more frequently. Today, we’ll talk about how a vendor management service can not only help you manage your supply chain, but also mitigate the headaches caused by aggressive vendor reps.  

For many of us this is an unprecedented period. With social distancing and stay-at-work orders causing financial strain, some businesses are going to have to make some tough decisions. Moreover, with many analysts expecting recession, it may be inevitable that even if you have been able to ward off making reactive budget cuts, making proactive cuts may be prudent. 

Your vendors are an important part of your supply chain and as a result, they will be the first people that will be contacting you to make certain you are doing okay. This sentiment is procedure and with recession on the horizon, the pandemic decisions aren’t the only tough ones you are going to have to make. 

Most businesses use their information technology to see better productivity and efficiency. When cuts have to be made, however, it may surprise you that IT is often the first thing to see a reduction. When this happens, there are very uncomfortable phone calls that need to be made. Whether you have to completely eliminate, indefinitely pause, or just alter your vendor agreements, telling your reps may not feel like a business decision. Our vendor management service can help separate your personal feelings with your business decisions. 

About Vendor Management

As important as they are, your vendors take up a lot of your time. Outside of the time you spend talking to them in the normal course of business, you also have multiple sales calls, status calls, email and mailers they send you with promotions and other information, and correspondence designed to aid their own marketing efforts. All-in-all it adds up to a significant amount of time per vendor.

Our vendor management service is designed to get you the technology and services that you need, and do it without interrupting your focus on your own business. Many times our consultants have relationships in place with these vendors and can help you see a cost reduction and allow you to avoid the distraction that takes away your focus from your business operations.

On top of that, we can help you look into your existing technology solutions to cut costs or move to more modern solutions that may save you money in the long run.

COVID-19 and Cost Reduction

With the COVID-19 global pandemic altering the way businesses have to function, you may find yourself having to pause or eliminate non-essential expenses while you can navigate the reduction in revenue. If your business is at a point where it needs to pick-and-choose which services to retain (and which to eliminate) our vendor management service becomes extremely valuable. Our consultants will see all the difficult decisions you’ve had to make through. Our courteous consultants will get between you and your vendors to ensure that you are insulated from making tough, cost-cutting phone calls. 

Additionally, when the COVID-19 outbreak gets back under control, our consultants will not only make the calls, but we will handle all the set up, delivery, and installation of hardware and software; while also being the sole point of contact for the services your business uses. 

Horne & Benik is proud to work for our clients’ best interests. Call us today at (603) 499-4400 to see how we can help you get through this difficult time.