Outsourcing and Vendor Management
Establishing and effectively managing third party relationships is a key element in extending the reach and capabilities of a publishing enterprise and managing an uneven flow of work over the course of time. It allows use of specialized expertise as needed and reduces the effective cost of operations. At the same time there are legal risks associated with excessive or improper use of freelancers, and commonly accepted practices may not yield the innovative results necessary for success today.
At Treadwell Media Group we take a category approach to vendor management, looking at each type of good or service in terms of its importance to the business and the difficulty of the particular market. We extract and consolidate the expectations of the management team in each category in terms of time, quality and cost performance, and consolidate them with our experience and best practice. These expectations then lead to the optimal vendor strategy by category:
- Strategic partnerships
- Blanket contracts
- Scales-based purchasing
- Spot purchasing
We have found that for many critical categories in product development and supply chain operations, developing strategic partnerships and consolidating volume into these partnerships can result in significant cost reduction and decreased time to market. Other possibilities include:
- Outsourcing / nearshoring / offshoring
- Vendor consolidation
- Independent contractor / freelancer program consolidation
- Consolidation of services across multiple related categories into full service suppliers
- Directed buy programs
Once a vendor management strategy has been identified we then can assist in executing Request for Information (RFI), Request for Proposal (RFP) processes and negotiating Master Service Agreement (MSA) or Statement of Work (SOW) contracts. This will often lead to supply chain integration activities such as sharing forecasts of upcoming work and using EDI / XBITS to facilitate transactions.
Invite TMG in for a discussion and we'll determine which approaches sound right for you!