Measuring performance of an IT vendor

If you’re looking to review your IT vendors to measure their performance and value for money, these are 10 areas you should look at first. It’s important to regularly evaluate the performance and reliability of your IT vendor. This ensures you receive value from the service you pay for, protecting your IT investments and reducing risk to your organisation.

Plus, it allows you to negotiate better terms, build stronger relationships with your vendors and evaluate the overall service you receive to make your business more competitive and ultimately save money.

But how do you do that? Here are 10 areas you should evaluate first:

(click image to enlarge)

 

1. Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

The SLAs you set will vary depending on the service your vendor provides. For example, if you work with an IT support provider, you should set targets based on response times, resolution times and system uptime.

Regularly monitor these SLAs to ensure your IT supplier continually meets your expectations and always delivers value for money.

2. KPIs

While SLAs are a legally binding part of the service, key performance indicators (KPIs) are agreed metrics that show how well a supplier has performed against agreed standards.

By monitoring your vendor's performance through KPIs, you can quantifiably evaluate what they deliver for your business and hold them accountable for meeting your business needs.

3. Quality of Service

Evaluate the quality of the service your vendor provides, taking into account reliability, security and scalability. Regular audits and assessments will tell you how effective your IT provider’s solutions are and highlight the areas where improvement is needed.

4. Satisfaction Surveys

A foolproof way to get an honest feel of the vendor is to ask the people who interact with them most often. 

Questionnaires are a quick, user-friendly way to gain insight into how end-users and stakeholders view your supplier and IT services.

You can go one step further and ask customers to provide feedback on their experiences.

Use this feedback to identify areas for improvement and address any issues promptly.

5. Pricing & Cost-Effectiveness

Assess the cost-effectiveness of the service or product with the value they provide. Consider factors such as total costs, return on investment (ROI) and overall cost savings to ensure you’re getting the right service at the right price. 

This is also a great opportunity to engage with other suppliers and compare their costs and offerings with your current supplier.

6. Vendor Responsiveness

Evaluate the vendor’s responsiveness to enquiries, requests and issues. Reliability and support are two vital factors for any service, so it’s crucial to assess how quickly and efficiently they resolve problems to minimise disruptions to the business.

7. Compliance & Security

Does your vendor comply with the relevant regulations and industry standards? How do you evaluate the effectiveness of their security in protecting data and systems?

8. Innovation and Adaptability

Consider how adaptable your vendor is to changes in technology or requirements. IT should be a long-term investment rather than a short-term one, so you must have confidence that your IT supplier will be able to deliver on your future business needs.

9. Vendor Relationships

A positive vendor relationship creates many advantages that benefit your business in the long run. As well as good communication and trust, a good supplier relationship allows you to negotiate better pricing and creates supplier transparency.

10. Continuous Improvement

If your vendor ticks all the boxes and you opt to stay with them, you should implement a process for continuous improvement where feedback and openness are used to improve your vendor relationship.

After all, while you pay for their services, you have the right to analyse what they deliver.

What Does a Vendor Audit Achieve?

The biggest challenge for businesses is not having enough time to perform a one-off vendor review, let alone do one regularly.

So, what’s the solution?

If you can’t find the time, want impartiality, or are missing the skill sets, hiring an external company like PSP to perform an IT vendor audit on your behalf is an effective solution.

We will embed ourselves into your business and ask the questions needed of your vendors/suppliers, our role as external is to actively probe your IT suppliers to ensure your IT is fully supported.

A recent review project we undertook for a large membership association saw their annual IT costs decrease by several hundred thousands of pounds per year.

Aside from lower costs, an IT vendor review also leads to:

• Better quality of service
• More reliable IT
• More satisfied customers
• Cost-effectiveness and improved ROI
• SLA compliance 

Book an IT Vendor Audit Today

To talk to our award-winning customer service team about an external audit of your IT supplier, fill in this short contact form or phone 01775 722377.