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With AI becoming more mature, we could think that monitoring our IT Vendors it’s becoming easier than never, but are we there yet? How can we use AI to help us and how can we ensure a successful IT Governance with our Top IT Vendors and Partners?; What is IT Vendor Governance? ; What does it mean exactly?; What are the best practices to implement it for any IT organization; And, how can we best use AI to help us? Let’s talk business!

What is IT Vendor Management Governance?

When spending millions with our Top IT Vendors, we want to have a mechanism in place to monitor performance, financials, continuous improvements, ability to track business increase, contract changes and monitor on a regular basis all the metrics and the deliverables that could help us take smart decisions and build a strong partnership.

By having a Governance structure in place with our important IT Vendors and Partners, is helping both parties immensely (client and vendor), as it is fostering continuous communication, transparency, monitoring, which is based on facts and metrics and it creates an excellent forum for new ideas and collaboration. AI is starting to play a huge role in making this job easier.

Here is a good example of an IT Vendor Governance set up, of course it can be adjusted based on each organization needs and complexity.

Where to start? What is the secret in implementing a successful IT Vendor Management Practice?

The old triangle of people, processes and systems is critical for success.

The most important is having a good set of roles and responsibilities, as the foundation for any IT Vendor Governance practice, a good process, and the right tools at hand. Ideally, any Governance set up, being meetings cadence or deliverables such as reports, performance metrics, financials, any other items delivered by the vendors, and through which systems they are generated, should be agreed and documented as part of the contract.

Who receives the data on the client side, is always preferable to be documented in an internal RACI matrix, having a transparent process for all stakeholders, so the data finds the right home within a complex organization and various departments that require the visibility.

Here is where the role of a Global IT Vendor Manager makes a huge difference, acting as the glue between different functions within the organization, creating the right ecosystems, of course, together with various key stakeholders and based on the organization strategy. But as we all know it, knowledge is power, and especially today, this statement seems more valid than ever. And this is exactly where AI is becoming a game changer.

How is AI playing a role in all this? And what are the benefits that AI brings?

IT Vendors Governance is the perfect stream where AI can play a huge role for any organization. And there are so may scenarios where AI can be used:

• Creating content or templates using Chat GPT,
• Generating meeting summaries and actions with Microsoft Copilot,
• Acting as internal data base search engine and generating content from existing contract documents,
• Generating presentations with apps such as Gamma or others,
• Summaries from various metrics and reports, enhancing business intelligence to the next level.
• Generating content for strategies or even for contract renewals or RFP templates,
• Even creating content for job descriptions for new hires.

And this are just some examples, and I guess that we are still at the beginning of the AI journey. All IT companies out there seem to be in a fast race for developing the best AI functionalities and ideas, so I am sure that we will see more. And of course, the benefit for organizations is huge, especially in the Healthcare industry. Time is critical for any of us and the speed in getting things done, and having the data that we need quicker, will be allowing us to take decisions faster, and move more agile than never.

And as an IT Vendor Management geek, I am so curious about what the future will bring in artificial intelligence. Are you already using AI and what is your view on it’s potential? As usual, thank you for reading my blog post and I hope that it helped you. Let me know your thoughts.