Five Trends That Will Shape Sourcing And Vendor Management In 2008

One year into our role-based transition, the Forrester Sourcing & Vendor Management (S&VM) team distilled all of the knowledge gained from our research and conversations with sourcing executives at large firms and the insights gained at our recent Services & Sourcing Forum into five key sourcing and vendor management trends for 2008. The major trends affecting how S&VM teams will do their jobs next year include: 1) managing vendors more effectively; 2) setting sourcing strategy that better aligns team metrics with business value as well as cost; 3) executing best practice RFPs by making them more interactive; 4) navigating the evolving ecosystem of players, particularly in global delivery; and 5) figuring out ways to deal with the higher services spend that will come from the increased demand for consulting services.