Good Vendor Managers: A Scarce Commodity
Earlier this week we posted an article describing vendor management job descriptions. Yesterday day, Tim Minaham’s article on the Supply Management Talent Crunch led us to reflect on the “talent crunch” also facing vendor management. Let’s face it – good vendor managers are hard to find. Why?
- The positions require deep operations experience.
- The positions require great relationship-building and alignment-building skills.
- Most vendor manager positions are individual contributor roles, even though they manage operations of hundreds or thousands of FTEs.
- Vendor management positions are typically paid less than their peers managing similar internal operations.
- Vendor management positions require great focus on details: metrics, processes, and contracts.
- Vendor managers must be big picture thinkers with moderate strategic thinking skills.
- Vendor managers rarely have clear career paths.
Sounds like a tough job, right? It is.
That’s why most vendor managers lack all the skills necessary to perform their jobs exceptionally well. More importantly, there are few training courses available to them. Organizations like IAOP sometimes appear to be more focused on developing vendor and advisor sales channels than developing the skills of vendor managers. The COPC offers good courses, but they aren’t hands-on. Companies like ICN offer negotiation, selection, and contract courses, but they are tuned for IT procurement/vendor management teams. All these organizations lack training in the operations or technology that vendors managers typically manage.
Simply put, vendor managers must be developed by building performance management processes that guide activities and gradually increasing the responsibility of vendor managers. Standardized vendor management processes result in regular, predictable performance. Increasing responsibilities of vendor managers allows vendor managers to build experience with more complex issues – experience that vendor managers can leverage with delving into root cause analyses, relationship development, and negotiations.
If you lack an experienced vendor manager to develop our processes and resources, it is usually better to hire an external resource or hire an advisory firm tasked with developing vendor management processes, templates, and stakeholders. Forward thinking executives hire these resources before or during vendor selection, which gives them a leader for transition management and the time to develop the necessary processes in advance of implementation.
Do you have a methodology for hiring or developing vendor managers? Share our thoughts!
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I am in the process of writing my own job description for the vendor manager role. I am responsible for call center operations in two countries. I relate to this article, especially the “being paid less than peers” part…I actually took a job grade cut to move into this position. I am hopeful that I can clearly define my roles and responsibilities to influence a change in the grading of my position. I have 10 years of operational experience and am a naturally effective communicator which has proved extremely beneficial in this position. Do you have any additional resources that document core competencies, job requirements, expectations, etc…that would help me in the creation of the job description?
Many thanks!
I too have the same challenge. I have been on this path for almost two years. I have rewritten my job description numerous times and my HR team is reluctant to reclassify. I too have 10 years operational experience anad took a job cut grade. It is very frustrating that we are paid less than our peers who have less experience and knowledge. I too am looking for additional resources that document core copetencies, job requeirements, expectations, salary range etc.