The NET+ Business, Procurement and Legal Advisory Committee (BPLAC) sponsored a working group to focus on vendor management in higher education IT. In August of 2023, the working group submitted the framework they developed to share with the community and Internet2's NET+ program.
BPLAC identified the following areas where vendor management activities are performed as foci for the Working Group:
- Operational (technical) - performance related.
- Management of day-to-day or operational interactions with vendors. Maintaining good relationships with vendor technical staff for operational activities, security requirements, and monitoring SLAs.
- Procurement Management - internal process and price related.
- Selecting vendors (RFPs/contracting), maintenance of vendor information, legal risk mitigation, payment relations (Procure-to-pay), tax information and documentation
- Strategic Relationship - relationship and value related.
- Bigger picture relationship activities with vendors, shared vision of product(s) roadmap within the institution. Quarterly business reviews, partnering activities to gain value from the contract and overall vendor relationship (wide-scale adoption initiatives, donations/development, internships, etc), planning budgeting/finance
View the working group's Community Framework for IT Vendor Management.
If you have a passion for improving vendor management practices in research and higher ed, we invite you to reach out to us at netplus@internet.edu.