Data: you either love it or hate it. Very rarely is someone somewhere in between. But when it comes to managing service providers, do you even need to deal with this polarizing topic? If we’re focusing on contracts and relationships, where (and why on earth) does data come in?
Good question!
Data gives you clarity on the relationship that your company has with your providers. Whether or not you’re meeting or communicating with vendors regularly, data will tell you a few big things: how much money you spend with them, and if they are meeting the performance metrics that have been agreed upon in the contract. If you do meet with vendors consistently, data is the foundation used to discuss performance and take steps to truly start to improve.
Some companies have this data available for you to peruse at your own time. There are other companies where this isn’t so obvious and you have to get more creative.
I’ve worked at both types of companies:
The first type had data provided for me on a silver platter. We had an internal system built in-house for all our ticket information, contract details, and reporting. All I had to do was click a few buttons on the screen, pull a report, do an analysis – and all performance metrics for our 200+ vendors were there without missing a beat. Reports were sent and scorecards were created. You can bet that I used all this information during my very thorough discussions that were held quarterly. In retrospect, I definitely took this process for granted. I mean, I still had to do the work (analyzing, organizing, putting everything together with a pretty bow during PowerPoint presentations), but I didn’t have to search for it. It was always there for me when I needed it.
But, then I encountered a second type of company.
“You need data? Why?”
“We don’t track this information. I can’t help you.”
“One of our co-workers may know, ask him.”
These were some of the very real responses I received when trying to figure out how vendor performance metrics were tracked, and if providers are meeting their Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
I quickly discovered that this wasn’t tracked anywhere. Not properly anyway. There were dozens of spreadsheets spread out amongst at least 5 different teams that had everything except what I really needed to track. Forget about an internal site that housed this for me. This made no sense, how was I supposed to know how vendors were performing? How was I to know, if they met their SLA requirements? How will performance conversations be held, if I didn’t have performance metrics???
I had no choice but to get data wherever I could find it, and start the process of convincing everyone around me that housing this data was paramount when it came to growing and improving as a company.
As we scale, we hire more vendors. But we have to know what our providers are doing, and if they’re doing it well – or else this will quickly affect the product we are releasing into the world.
A bit of a scary thought, isn’t it?
Even if you have a wonderful relationship with your vendor, you still need to own these metrics from your side. You can’t rely on guesses. You also can’t ask the vendor to send you their very own performance metrics (why am I adding this part? Because this was suggested at one point when I was searching for data!) If you ask the vendor to send you their performance data, it’s almost like having a student send their report card to the teacher. It just feels a little backward.
Through my persistence, more and more team leaders started realizing that we need to get more organized and own our data to understand what’s happening. Yes – it took a while, but over time a team was set up to build an internal system to house this information – the SLAs, the contracts, the day to day performance. The stuff you need so you can sit back in your chair, click a few buttons, pull a report, and analyze the results.
Musings of a Vendor Manager 