Vendor Lifecycle Management

Thourough

Complete Vendor Lifecycle Management

Complete Vendor Lifecycle Management

All industries depend on third parties to deliver the products, innovations and services that drive their business. Sourcing the right relationships that meet your business needs, contracting in a way that drives the greatest overall value for your organization and then managing those relationships to ensure the value is received and sustained is challenging.

Swingtide specializes in helping organizations realize value while mitigating the inherent risks that exist within these vendor relationships. Whether it’s entering new relationships, modifying existing or exiting them, we can help.

Complete Vendor Lifecycle Management

Strategic Sourcing

Swingtide’s strategic sourcing offering delivers a process that aligns your business needs and spend to the right solution and vendor. Our team, with its unique blend of sourcing, financial and technology experience, will work with your organization to define your business requirements for the lifecycle of the transaction, develop a go to market strategy to maximize leverage, build a fully loaded business case and end in a contract that meets the needs of your organization.

If you have an existing sourcing team in place, we can work in an advisory role providing guidance and support throughout the process. In this advisory capacity we will also provide training and knowledge transfer to your team resulting in sustainable improvement for your organization.

Best for Organizations
  • Seeking greater value through their vendor relationships
  • In need of assistance defining their business requirements
  • Needing to understand a specific market or gain knowledge of the vendors therein
  • Seeking to take a more strategic approach to source the right solution to meet a business need
Key Benefits
  • Greater alignment of spend with business requirements
  • Lowest cost, best solution
  • Structured process to engage and obtain buy-in from all stakeholders
  • Clear understanding total cost of ownership and map to track realized benefits
Complete Vendor Lifecycle Management

Contract Negotiations

Swingtide will act as the negotiating agent on your behalf. Through coordinated negotiations, that represent all stakeholder’s requirements, we will deliver a balanced agreement that generates value and mitigates risk for your organization. We coordinate the requirements of your business, technical, financial, legal, and risk management stakeholders to put a deal in place meeting all needs.

We can help with new agreements or just improve existing relationships (at renewal or at times when the original assumptions have changed). When the change requires ending the relationship either because you are replacing the solution with something new, are dissatisfied with the service, or just have different requirements that can’t be met by that vendor, we can handle those delicate negotiations too. In these cases, we leverage our broader relationships with the vendor community to ensure continuity of service, transition, and alignment with the dates important to you at the lowest cost.

Best for Organizations
  • Seeking expert support in contract negotiations
  • Needing additional resources to supplement current staff when volumes are inconsistent
  • Rolling out new solutions with many existing relationships that need to be terminated or changed
  • Acquiring or divesting when contract portfolios need to be consolidated, terminated, or right-sized
Key Benefits
  • The right terms and conditions for your organization that align with the market
  • Mitigated risks from third parties
  • Increased accountability through clarity of obligations and meaningful quality metrics and service levels
  • Flexible terms and pricing metrics to change with your business
  • Usable and practical governance to keep the relationship on track
Complete Vendor Lifecycle Management

Dispute Resolution

Swingtide offers consulting and expert witness services for organizations, or law firms representing clients, in contract disputes.

The complexity and size of many deals make it difficult for counsel to achieve a working knowledge of performance, metrics, governance history, consumption-based billing and other issues. Similarly, arbitrators and courts do not always have the background and knowledge necessary to decide these complex matters in an evolving industry.

As consulting experts in very large transactions, we have the resources, knowledge, and experience to provide counsel with the background information needed to provide informed representation. As testifying experts, we have the credentials to generate quality reports and experience to be credible witnesses.

Best for Organizations
  • In contract or third-party disputes
  • Lacking a way to connect legal options with industry norms
  • Needing help to understand the operation implication of legal positions
Key Benefits
  • Strengthens legal and business position
  • Levels the dispute playing field with providers who have the inherent advantage of having been involved in numerous disputes
  • Relieves the burden of relying solely on internal resources
Complete Vendor Lifecycle Management

Vendor Management

Swingtide can develop and manage on your behalf, or help you build and self-manage, a vendor management function that will enable your organization to maximize the value, benefits and relationships with your vendors.

Now, more than ever, organizations are relying on third parties to deliver the products and services that drive their business. Unmanaged, these relationships can add costs, introduce risk, add inefficiencies or otherwise negatively impact your company. Organizations taking a focused approach to monitor compliance, validate invoices, track performance, develop relationships and conduct contract training and administration are delivering value to their bottom line while mitigating risks inherent in third-party relationships.

Best for Organizations
  • Needing help to ensure compliance with contract obligations
  • Wanting to monitor the performance and delivery of their vendors
  • Seeking to ensure the value captured in a contract is received by the organization
  • Looking to improve vendor relationships and performance
Key Benefits
  • Elimination or minimization of compliance exposure through managed reconciliation of entitlements and deployments
  • Increased value recognition through actively, and continuously, managing contracts and supplier performance
  • Pay the right amount (Invoice validation will track current transaction against formal volume purchase commitments and consistent contract interpretation)
  • Better products, services, and supplier relationships through a leveraged and improved view and management of third parties
  • Minimized disputes (from improved issue management, consistent interpretation and solutions leveraged across all business units/affiliates)
Complete Vendor Lifecycle Management

Contract Portfolio Optimization

Swingtide can help optimize your contract portfolio by performing a review and analysis of third-party contracts, relationships, and spend. Optimization may include consolidating contracts with the same vendor, modifying contracts to align with current business requirements, or eliminating contracts for goods or services that are no longer needed.

This offering includes the development of a roadmap and action plan for quantified short-term and long-term savings with improved vendor relationships and greater contract flexibility. Administrative tools and processes are reviewed, or developed and provided, to ensure that benefits are sustained.

Best for Organizations
  • In need of reducing costs and mitigating risks inherent with third-party relationships
  • Lacking available resources for clean-up or optimization activities
  • Unable to leverage vendor relationships because of decentralized contracting practices or other process issues
  • Seeking to better align spend with business requirements
  • Facing M&A activities (divesting or spinning off businesses)
Key Benefits
  • Reduced costs through eliminating waste, maximizing leverage, aligning spend with current needs, and validating invoices
  • Improved contract compliance and risk mitigation
  • Knowledge of what you are buying and ability to better manage it going forward
  • Improved cost transparency and accountability
  • Elimination of redundant, or conflicting contracts, with the same vendor or with multiple vendors for like products or services
Complete Vendor Lifecycle Management

Complete Vendor Lifecycle Management

Swingtide provides a holistic approach to the full life cycle of your relationship with the external parties you rely upon. While traditional contract lifecycle management typically encompasses the contract and how it is filed, our approach includes providing the policies, processes, and tools that support sourcing, contracting, and vendor management.

Best for Organizations
  • In need of reducing costs and mitigating risks inherent with third-party relationships
  • Unable to leverage third-party relationships because of decentralized contracting practices
  • Lacking available resources to clean-up, optimize and manage contracting activities
  • Seeking to better align spend with business requirements
Key Benefits
  • Generate, absorb, and sustain the maximum value of third-party relationships
  • Increased readiness for strategic sourcing opportunities and controls to manage third-party contracts and spend
  • Reduced administrative costs of the contract management process
  • Increased readiness for strategic entity-level diligence activities (eg., acquisitions or spinoffs)