Why Strong Vendor Management Is Essential To Managed Services Relationships

In a recent Forrester survey, senior IT professionals ranked "security concerns about giving work to a third party" as their greatest concern about moving into managed services relationships. Although conventional wisdom says that giving vendors end-to-end accountability for a portfolio of applications and services is the best way to reduce risks in managed services relationships, far too many sourcing professionals believe that this end-to-end accountability eliminates the need for due diligence and other governance activities. Sourcing and vendor management (SVM) professionals must engage senior leaders of internal departments to deepen vendor governance when vendors are given higher-risk projects, greater ownership of application portfolios, and access to greater levels of data. This document describes which stakeholder groups are important and how SVM professionals can work with them to decrease risks in managed services relationships.