The April 2016 Supplier Management Special Interest Group built on the themes from the previous session and further elaborated on the Supplier Management Framework, including a description and discussion on what “best in class” looks like as well as how to ensure effective benefits realisation from the supplier relationships that you have in place.

Peter presented the overall 10-point framework and explained that a ‘best in class’ strategic supplier management framework should:

With the constantly accelerating pace of change, IT organisations are having to stay abreast of innovation in order to support and enable increasingly agile business operations. However, delivering core services and supporting the needs of the shared service functions is more focused on reliability and optimisation. This has created a Bi-modal approach to providing IT services which is being increasingly adopted across market sectors.

But does this change in the delivery of IT services mean that a corresponding change in sourcing for these services is also required?

As the sourcing market matures, clients legitimately gain confidence in what they can do for themselves and yet, as sourcing advisors, we continue to encounter established contracts that are failing to deliver their full potential.

We can attribute this phenomenon to a number of factors, including:

Following the Group’s last meeting in 2015 which focused on successful multi-location working, the latest Agile Special Interest Group was held in London on 28^th January 2016.

The agenda covered:

• How to engage with the Business
• Building trust
• Role of the Business
• Governance
• Making it happen

• Contracting and supplier management

‘Measure, measure, measure….’

Metrics are the foundation of good governance for outsourced services. Much as the mantra ‘Location, location, location’ applies when looking for property, ‘Measure, measure, measure’ can be just as useful a phrase in helping to ensure a new outsourced service is implemented successfully.

Sometimes though, it can be hard to quantify the success of a particular part of a service, especially if it is a softer part of the service. However, the harder it is to find an objective measurement, the more important it often is to the success of the service.

The ‘softer’ parts of a service need objective data the most