Supplier Managers need to manage service performance and risk aswell as cost on an ongoing basis. Using Spreadsheets to manage SLAs or Vendor Balanced Scorecards and Risks is time consuming. It also leads to inconsistent reporting and ultimately becomes very difficult to aggregate performance to get an accurate picture of supplier performance at an organisational level.
Use an online portal to drive effective performance and risk management across all suppliers
March 6, 2010 No comments »Get a Quick Win in Shared Services Governance.
February 18, 2010 No comments »Governance is a hot topic in shared services – three areas are a functional priority. These are Service Level Reporting, Risk Reporting and Issue Reporting. Ideally you want to get an executive online dashboard that gives you a picture on all three areas. Also you need to ensure that there is a robust process in place to gather the required information. There are two key implementation priorities – something that can be implemented quickly and at low cost. This criterion was outlined to me in detail at the recent SSON conference in London.
Who manages SLAs anyway?
February 4, 2010 No comments »This posting is inspired by a question on LinkedIn around whether anyone really cares about SLAs. Let’s be frank – some people don’t. Service Providers who don’t care about SLAs are typically of low capability and deliver a poor service. Clients who don’t care about SLAs typically are in a high revenue phase and aren’t really focussed on cost. As a person who has spent years working with clients who want to manage SLAs I have learnt that the problem is less about whether people ‘care about SLAs’ and more about whether they have ‘the capability to manage them’. I believe this capability needs to exist on both on the client and the service provider side. Firstly here are some good reasons why you should care about SLAs.
Getting alerted when contractual service penalties should kick in?
February 1, 2010 No comments »Many organisations still seem to struggle to enforce service penalties. The impact on organisations can be significant from a cost perspective. Equally importantly – vendors will quickly notice where clients have no effective process in place to track performance and impact on contracts and costs….How can you resolve this?
» Read more: Getting alerted when contractual service penalties should kick in?
MIFID FIRMS: Are you supervising your outsourcing contracts?
January 18, 2010 No comments »MiFID was the buzzword in European Financial Services Regulatory circles in 2007 and 2008. The implementation projects have gone away – but the rules haven’t. Outsourcing rules received little attention in 2008 but has now become the focus of regulatory inspections and audits in various European jurisdictions. Many financial services firms are now taking specific action to address the rules around outsourcing. So how do you ensure that you are compliant with the MiFID outsourcing rules? » Read more: MIFID FIRMS: Are you supervising your outsourcing contracts?
What do you mean by vendor performance management?
January 13, 2010 1 comment »Consistent and clear management of vendor performance is a key priority for organisations that are increasingly relying on external parties to provide key services like IT, Facilities Management, HR, Finance and Accounting, Legal Services etc. Traditional contract management and purchasing tools are often not sufficient to meet vendor management needs in this area. Organisations where vendor performance management is necessary tend to have some of the following characteristics; » Read more: What do you mean by vendor performance management?
Is your SLA and contract just window dressing?
January 7, 2010 No comments »Just a thought…do you actually use your SLA or is it just there because somebody at some point thought it was a good idea? Many organisations have traditionally drafted Service Level Agreements as a formality. If you have SLAs but do not actually measure or look at them then you run some serious risks. Have a look – if you dare….
Predictive SLA Reporting for Service Delivery Teams in Outsourcing and Shared Services
January 4, 2010 1 comment »Clearly identifying whether service levels will be met at the end of a reporting period is an ongoing activity for analysts and managers in many service delivery teams. ServiceFrame is a solution which helps organisations to report clearly and effectively on compliance to Service Level Agreements. Now it takes this one step further – by allowing service deliver teams to input information in between reporting periods (as often as you like!) ServiceFrame will show you your level of compliance to date and also how likely you are to be green by the time you are due to report – we call this Predictive or Real Time SLA reporting.
» Read more: Predictive SLA Reporting for Service Delivery Teams in Outsourcing and Shared Services
How do you capture vendor performance – a long wordy paragraph or one simple score against target?
December 23, 2009 No comments »Measuring vendor performance is essential to ensure effective and efficient delivery of services into your organisation by third parties. These services might be IT, HR, Facilities, Finance, Research, Legal, Manufacturing etc. Most organisations take internal quality of service very seriously – implementing rigorous balanced score cards and ABC models. Management of the performance of third parties can be less rigorous. To date effective performance management of third parties has been hampered by manual processes for collecting information on performance and risk and unclear models to determine overall performance scores etc. Our software uses workflow and reporting to drive an approach which will give you an actual score against expected score – at contract, vendor or divisional level.
