Vendor Management System (VMS) Buyer’s Guide: Streamlining Stakeholder Evaluation

Once you’ve decided that your business needs a vendor management system (VMS), organizing your stakeholders across the business is an important first step in choosing the right one. Understanding the differences in roles and relationships to the VMS is imperative. 

Stakeholders fit into one of three categories: 

• Decision-makers: These stakeholders have the most vested interest in the VMS, and should have final say on which VMS to choose. 
• Decision-influencers: These stakeholders may not be daily users, but can still benefit from a VMS and should have some input on which VMS you adopt. 
• Consultants: These stakeholders are not daily users and may not directly benefit from a VMS, but their expertise is necessary for large business decisions.  

Sorting your stakeholders into these categories starts with understanding how they use the VMS. For example, if you manage your extended workers using an internal program management office (PMO), you want to include executives and members of the PMO team as decision-makers. 

However, some stakeholders aren’t as easy to categorize as others. Your CIO will likely have interest in the IT resources needed to deploy and maintain a new VMS, but will not need to use the software on a daily basis. As such, while IT won’t be a daily user, they play a critical role in any IT investment decisions and could fall into the decision maker or decision-influencer category. We suggest looking at each team member who might be involved and asking three questions to determine where they fit in the decision-making process.

Assessing Stakeholders for Your Vendor Management System Buying Team

Are any members of the team going to be daily/weekly/monthly users of the VMS? Prioritize daily users in the decision-making process, but make sure to meet the needs of those who may only use the program weekly and monthly. While those who use the software the most should have decision-making power, anyone who uses the software as regularly as monthly should be able to influence that decision as well. This will help with adoption once the VMS is deployed.

Where are your external workers currently managed? Depending on your business, the extended workforce can sit in several different teams, or even in partnership with a managed service provider (MSP) overseeing the lifecycle of these workers. It’s important to take into consideration whether or not you want to keep your contingent workforce where it currently is, or if you want to move it to a different team and consult the leaders from each team to understand their needs as your workforce program grows and changes. 

What are your goals for the VMS software, and what challenges will it help solve? Understanding your goals for your VMS software can also help to determine stakeholder involvement. Whether you need invoicing support or better visibility into where your workers are located, those needs may be spread across several teams. If your goals are aligning with a team, you should bring them into the decision-making process, rather than categorizing them as “decision-influencers” or “consultants.” Also, before you start your search, we advise a discussion with teams such as HR, procurement, IT, and your PMO—not only to define goals, but also to uncover any opportunities to improve other functions throughout your company with a new VMS. 

If these three questions don’t apply to a team at all, they may fit into the “consultant” category or they are not needed in the buying decision.

Aligning Your Stakeholders 

Using this framework can help your business understand who needs to be involved, and how much influence they need to have over the final decision, but it doesn’t cover everything you need before you start. During the VMS selection process, your team may shift and change as you start to assess and better understand your goals. The key to making the right decision for your business is collaboration, and that starts with bringing the teams together. While you may have done some preliminary assessments, it’s important to keep referring back to your goals and discussing whether or not they need to change based on the information you’re gathering. This will also make it easier to understand the current state of your contingent workforce program and help you define success for upcoming changes. 

Next Steps for Buying a VMS 

Once you’ve identified the teams that need to be involved and defined whether they are a decision-maker, decision-influencer, or consultant, it’s time to start looking for the right VMS for your business. However, gathering and organizing your stakeholders isn’t the only preliminary step. 

To learn more about assessing which teams you should consult when choosing a new VMS and their level of influence, and how to define the goals for your contingent workforce program, read on in our VMS Buyer’s Guide.