More than any other time, our world is changing. As a result, organizations – and their vendors – need to be able to adapt their plans to accommodate risk on an unprecedented level.
A new threat will impact your organization's operations at some point. Make sure your plans are flexible enough to manage the inevitable consequences and that you understand where those threats may originate.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Identifying and managing a vendor’s potential operational impact on your organization requires multiple people in the organization across several functions. Those people all need coaching on the potential changes in the market and how these changes may affect operations.
- Organizational leadership is often taken unaware during crises, and their plans lack the flexibility to adjust to significant market upheavals.
Impact and Result
Vendor management practices educate organizations on the different potential risks from vendors in your market and suggest creative and alternative ways to avoid and help manage them.
- Prioritize and classify your vendors with quantifiable, standardized rankings.
- Prioritize focus on your high-risk vendors.
- Standardize your processes for identifying and monitoring vendor risks to manage potential impacts with our Operational Risk Impact Tool.
Identify and Manage Operational Risk Impacts on Your Organization
Understand internal and external vendor risks to avoid potential disaster.
Analyst perspective
Organizations need to be aware of the operational damage vendors may cause to plan around those impacts effectively.
Organizations must be mindful that operational risks come from internal and external vendor sources. Missing either component in the overall risk assessment can significantly impact day-to-day business processes that cost revenue, delay projects, and lead to customer dissatisfaction.
Frank Sewell,
Research Director, Vendor Management
Info-Tech Research Group
Executive Summary
Your ChallengeMore than any other time, our world is changing rapidly. As a result, organizations – and their vendors – need to be able to adapt their plans to accommodate risk on an unprecedented level. A new threat will impact your organization's operations at some point. Make sure your plans are flexible enough to manage the inevitable consequences and that you understand where those threats may originate. |
Common ObstaclesIdentifying and managing a vendor’s potential operational impact on your organization requires multiple people in the organization across several functions. Those people all need coaching on the potential changes in the market and how these changes may affect operations. Organizational leadership is often taken unaware during crises, and their plans lack the flexibility to adjust to significant market upheavals. |
Info-Tech's ApproachVendor management practices educate organizations on the different potential risks from vendors in your market and suggest creative and alternative ways to avoid and help manage them. Prioritize and classify your vendors with quantifiable, standardized rankings. Prioritize focus on your high-risk vendors. Standardize your processes for identifying and monitoring vendor risks to manage potential impacts with our Operational Risk Impact Tool. |
Info-Tech Insight
Organizations must evolve their risk assessments to be more adaptive to respond to threats in the market. Ongoing monitoring of the vendors tied to company operations, and understanding where those vendors impact your operations, is imperative to avoiding disasters.
Info-Tech’s multi-blueprint series on vendor risk assessment
There are many individual components of vendor risk beyond cybersecurity.
This series will focus on the individual components of vendor risk and how vendor management practices can facilitate organizations’ understanding of those risks.
Out of Scope:
This series will not tackle risk governance, determining overall risk tolerance and appetite, or quantifying inherent risk.
Operational risk impacts
Potential losses to the organization due to incidents that affect operations.
- In this blueprint we’ll explore operational risks, particularly from third-party vendors, and their impacts.
- Identify potentially disruptive events to assess the overall impact on organizations and implement adaptive measures to identify, manage, and monitor vendor performance.
Looking at Risk in a New Light: The Six Pillars of Vendor Risk Management
Manage Exponential Value Relationships
Jump Start Your Vendor Management Initiative
Capture and Market the ROI of Your VMO
Cut Cost Through Effective IT Category Planning
Design and Build an Effective Contract Lifecycle Management Process
Maximize Value From Your Value-Added Reseller (VAR)
Drive Successful Sourcing Outcomes With a Robust RFP Process
Reduce Risk With Rock-Solid Service-Level Agreements
Slash Spending by Optimizing Your Software Maintenance and Support
Identify and Manage Financial Risk Impacts on Your Organization
Identify and Manage Strategic Risk Impacts on Your Organization
Identify and Manage Reputational Risk Impacts on Your Organization
Identify and Manage Security Risk Impacts on Your Organization
Evaluate Your Vendor Account Team to Optimize Vendor Relations
Elevate Your Vendor Management Initiative
Prepare for Negotiations More Effectively
Implement Your Negotiation Strategy More Effectively
Evaluate and Learn From Your Negotiation Sessions More Effectively
Proactively Identify and Mitigate Vendor Risk
Master the Public Cloud IaaS Acquisition Models
Essentials of Vendor Management for Small Business
Identify and Manage Regulatory and Compliance Risk Impacts on Your Organization
Identify and Manage Operational Risk Impacts on Your Organization
Don’t Allow Software Licensing to Derail Your M&A
Identify and Reduce Agile Contract Risk
Improve Your Statements of Work to Hold Your Vendors Accountable
Understand Common IT Contract Provisions to Negotiate More Effectively
Master Contract Review and Negotiation for Software Agreements
Master the MSA for Your Managed Services Providers
Negotiate SaaS Agreements That Are Built to Last
Establish a Vendor Management Roadmap to Succeed With Autonomous Technologies
Price Benchmarking & Negotiation
Stop Wasting Time Evaluating Commoditized Products and Services
Ensure Business Alignment in Managed Service Agreements
Comparing Software Practices in Maturing IT
Run IT By the Numbers
Transform IT, Transform Everything
The Race to Develop Talent
Building Info-Tech’s Chatbot
Assessing the AI Ecosystem
Sync or Sink: Aligning IT and HR for the Future of Work
Building the Road to Governing Digital Intelligence
Bring AI Out of the Shadows
The AI Vendor Landscape in IT
IT Spend and Staffing Benchmarking
An Operational Framework for Rolling Out AI