Why Vendor Management Teams Need Specialized Tools For Outsourcing Governance

Anyone — service provider or client — who has ever managed a complex outsourcing deal knows just how difficult it can be to maintain visibility into the environment and to make sure that contractual obligations are met. Governance team managers and executives have to keep track of service levels, in-scope projects, discrete contractual deliverables, finances, service credits, and penalties, in an environment where contract and business requirements change almost daily. There's a small subset of business service management (BSM) technologies that can — and should — be used to help manage outsourcing deals. Forrester reviewed several of these applications and assessed their ability to support the business management aspects of an outsourcing deal. Forrester collected survey data from each of the profiled firms on their application offering to help sourcing and vendor management executives make more informed sourcing decisions.