ENTERPRISE IT
“Automated processes and complete data
access and management make it much simpler
for your procurement team to establish and
enforce the standards vendors are required
to meet in order to gain, and keep, your
business,” he says. As well as collating swathes
of high-visibility data within the business, he
advocates for using AI to automate “low value
and repetitive tasks like data entry, template
population and customer service requests.”
“Your team can dedicate its time and talents
to high-value strategic work and still be able to
jump in when needed.”
OLD HABITS
Although the pendulum has swung towards
using SVM to manage increasingly complex
vendor rostas, the old justifications for using
vendor management systems remain. In fact,
as scrutiny on the tech sector has grown, so has
the importance of keeping an audit trail and
maintaining a high degree of accountability
over potential or actual security threats.
Governance, risk management and
competence firm Quantivate has compiled
a questionnaire for vendors who may be at
risk during the Covid-19 pandemic. It includes
questions on business continuity, service
interruption, impact over time, security risks
arising from a work-from-home policy and,
perhaps most pertinently, asks whether they
have asked their own vendors and suppliers
similar questions.
The company says, “Proactive action to
reassess the risk levels of your critical vendors
is a must in these uncertain times.”technologymagazine.com 89