Technology investments often play a vital role in the success of a company. However, it is up to the vendor management team to support their CIO and help make sure the digital transformation vision is implemented. Gordon Wong and Nikhil Pujari have written on three strategies that can help CIOs improve vendor management. 

• Utilizing automation can free up vendor management bandwidth and capacity.

• Bots are designed to assist in data management by collecting vendor data from various legal and contractual forms then combining it into a central database. This database can then generate reports based on the data.

• It would be worthwhile for CIOs to consider enabling vendors to generate service reports for them. The vendor relationship manager will then be free to provide higher-level services.

• Encouraging vendors to suggest future technologies can unlock a massive opportunity for both parties. In addition, this gap may represent a considerable opportunity to actively engage with vendors on strategic projects which will drive future value.

• The vendor management team can focus on their product and build new capabilities which will help them succeed faster.

• Teams need to use the latest data and metrics to calculate vendor ROI 

• Building new capabilities in compliance and proactive risk management would be valuable. How can contractual obligations like cybersecurity requirements or innovation clauses be monitored better?

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