Category, Vendor and Contract Management

Category expertise is always good, but without proper contract skills there is significant risks that executed contracts are under-utilised and rights and benefits waived. This is where Neil comes into play. With our wealth of experience you can rest assured that your rights and benefits are taken care of and your objectives are met.

For companies with geographically spread organsiations it is often tricky to get a harmonised and consolidated view on the vendors and their performance. Neil has years of expertise in building robust vendor management programs and can help you identify and implement the right building blocks. 

Contract Review

Contracts are ideally a result of a negotiation based on the buyer's agreement template. Our experience however tells that many companies don't negotiate terms and conditions to the extent required to reach optimal results.
Quite often negotiations are conducted in silos with the technical team looking at technical specifications and documents, the project team looking at time schedules, lead times and delivery structure, the finance team looking at payment terms, and the sourcing team looking at prices and commercials, leaving the finalisation to the legal team expecting them to cover all domains, not realising that most legal teams are not technically or commercially experienced to do so. Instead many legal teams focus their efforts on the boiler plates only and quite often start from the vendor's document.

This exposes the company to considerable imminent and potential risks as things tend to fall between chairs and negotiated items are not documented, leading to best effort deliveries with upfront payments and limited rights to drive and enforce vendor compliance.

Approach
Neil is specialised in turnkey agreements, master agreements, software licensing & integration agreements, services agreements and outsourcing agreements with additional domain expertise within IT & Telecom. Our view is that any contract has to be good enough to sufficiently protect the business interests, but not overly complex to reduce time and effort.

Let us review your draft or executed agreements to find out if: 

• you pay the right price for products, licences and services?
• your current agreements minimise risk exposure and tie your supplier to his commitments?
• your current support and maintenance programme gives you the support and response you deserve and have paid for?                 
• you are fully aware of the rights and obligations that your current agreement stipulates?
• you are utilising your rights and obligations to the extent you are entitled to?

RFx Management and Negotiations

​Neil’s expertise and extensive knowledge in strategic sourcing not only guarantee that the best prices are met through expensive market knowledge and excellent negotiation methods but also secure that deliverables, terms &conditions, quality and life cycle costs are established in accordance with best practice on the market.
 
Approach
Management of the entire sourcing process from identifying needs to finalising contracts, including: 

• Procurement and Sourcing Preparation
• Tender Evaluation and Shortlist Recommendation
• Negotiation and Vendor Recommendation
• Agreement Finalisation
• ​Project teams tailored to suit Client’s specific needs
• Use of well-proven evaluation methods and tools
• Integrated cooperation with Client personnel and partners

 
Objectives

• Minimised CAPEX
• Minimised OPEX
• Reduced Risk Exposure
• Decreased Time To Market

 
Deliverables

• Continuity throughout the entire procurement process
• Complete evaluation focused on identifying the most optimal solution for the client
• Faster and more efficient procurement process
• Integrated procurement project that facilitates implementation and transfer of knowledge to the Client organisation.

Outsourcing

There are many reasons companies decide to explore or undertake outsourcing projects, and there are many more pitfalls along the way to avoid. Neil has for years helped companies worldwide to outsource both key- and non-core processes and know how to identify and avoid the pitfalls and how to reach the objectives on time.
Depending on the complexity of the selected process an outsourcing can take several months to conclude. Companies therefore often engage us early in the planning stages to make sure that objectives are fully understood and aligned internally and by the vendor community. Neil makes sure that competition is maintained until the end to ensure optimal results.

Source to Settle Process and Technology

We have helped companies world-wide to implement and adopt spend management suites from Source to Settle, and anything in between, Our deep process and industry skills have forced solution providers to move the boundaries of technology to bring the solutions needed for our clients. And we continue to challenge the industry to deliver smarter solutions.

Procurement as a Service

Many companies irrespective of years in operation, industry or growth rate, face common challenges. These are often related to strategy, people, process and technology that hinders or prevents tangiable procurement improvements. The nature of the challenges may vary over time as people and with them their skills and experience come and go, certain investments or projects call for additional or different expertise, new products and new markets have their own requirements. And on top of that ; mergers, acquisitions where due dilligence is key.

Neil's Procurement as a Service brings solutions to these challenges by giving access to procurement expertise on demand, enabling you to deliver value to the business and realise bottom line improvement through technology deployment, interim resource augmentation and procurement transformation, knowing that agreed savings and improvements are delivered and skills and knowledge are transferred.

This is we say this is an insourcing of capabilities. Not an outsourcing of processes.