Vendor Management Lead

Description

The Role

The role has four parts: governing a small set of strategic suppliers, owning the data-led analysis of the technology portfolio, turning that insight into commercial strategy, and automating processes wherever possible.

Govern: run the supplier governance rhythm

• Run the governance cadence for a small portfolio of strategic technology suppliers — two to five at the outset. You own the calendar, chair the meetings, set the agenda and hold the action log.

• Establish Quarterly Business Reviews where they do not yet exist, and raise the standard where they do: the right agenda, the right people in the room, a pack worth reading, and actions that actually close.

• Partner with vendors to produce the packs behind those meetings — KPI and SLA performance, spend and commitment position, open risks and issues, and progress against prior actions.

• Support the named Business Supplier Owners in meeting their obligations under our Supplier Risk Management framework: service review documentation, action and issue tracking, and evidence that stands up to audit.

Analyze: turn technology data into commercial insight

• Partner with Software Asset Management to analyze technology tooling, licensing and consumption data to show what is being used, what it costs, and where value is being lost through duplication, low adoption, over provisioning or idle capacity.
• Build forward-looking analysis for renewals and commercial events, combining usage, demand, contract and pricing data to test requirements, expose options and improve the negotiating position.
• Identify rightsizing, consolidation, and consumption-optimization opportunities across cloud, software and other technology services, and quantify the financial and operational impact of acting on them.
• Maintain trusted analytical models and reference data, document assumptions and caveats, and investigate the drivers behind movements rather than simply reporting that they occurred.

Advise: turn insights into strategy

• Surface consolidation opportunities, duplication and concentration risk, and turn them into recommendations leadership can act on.

• Support balance-of-trade analysis and the technology procurement deals calendar, so that renewals are anticipated rather than reacted to.

• Provide the analysis behind negotiations, benchmarking and business cases, working alongside Procurement, Supplier Risk Management and Finance.

Automate: make it repeatable

• Apply AI to the Vendor Performance Management practice to automate data processing, dashboards, and collecting context.

• Extend and maintain data pipelines for smooth reliable, and consistent monthly reporting.

• Build reporting that allows stakeholders to answer their own questions instead of requesting extracts, and automate the repeated manual work in supplier reporting and governance.

Core business hours for this role are centered around Eastern time.

The Requirements

Essential

• Typically [5]+ years in vendor or supplier management, third party/contractor governance, or a commercial and analytical role within a technology function.

• Strong understanding of technology, terminology, and concepts.

• Experience chairing supplier governance meetings including service reviews, QBRs or equivalent. History of producing the materials, and driving actions to closure with people more senior than you.

• Strong analytical ability with large and imperfect commercial datasets: advanced Excel, and the patience to reconcile data that does not tie.

• Commercial judgment. Much of the analysis turns on decisions where there is no single right answer. You will need to make those calls and defend them.

• Working understanding of supplier risk and governance frameworks, contract lifecycle, and the practical mechanics of renewals and business reviews.

• Genuine breadth. This role moves between chairing a review, building a data model and drafting a leadership paper, often in the same week.

• Clear written and verbal communication, including presenting performance and risk to senior stakeholders.

• Organised and self-directed — able to hold a governance calendar and a reporting cycle to date without being chased.

Desirable

• Claude Cowork, M365 Cowork or similar for data analysis, scripting.

• Comfortable leveraging Python for data processing and automation.

• Power BI or similar — data modelling and report building, not just consuming dashboards.

• Experience with cloud or major software suppliers, and familiarity with cloud commercial constructs such as enterprise agreements, consumption…