Vendor Management

  • 7 min read

Top 8 Vendor Management Skills & How to Develop Them

Tathagata Chakrabarti

22nd December, 2022

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In today's global economy, businesses need to interact with a range of suppliers from all over the world, where physical and economic barriers are continually disappearing. Even if you engage with one vendor, efficient vendor management is critical since their success directly impacts your organization's operations. 

It would be beneficial if you first understand the skills required for vendor management before creating a successful plan for handling your supplier relationships. In this article, you'll learn about the various skills necessary for Vendor Management and how to develop them successfully. 

Your business runs on a tight schedule, and you need more time. As a result, you need your procurement process to be as efficient as possible for you and your employees. But how can you ensure the requests you get from suppliers are done correctly?

It would be best if you had software that automates several steps within the procurement process. For example, creating and storing purchase orders, keeping an accurate record of paid invoices, and establishing an internal requisition system can be largely hands-off tasks with the right procurement software.

However, when discussing vendor management, more than developing routines that can be set up and forgotten later is needed. The strength of a company's vendor relationships directly impacts its bottom line. The greater the relationship a business has with its suppliers, the better the deal parameters it can get and the more money it can save. Preferably, an experienced internal contact should oversee a vendor relationship. 

Vendor relationships subsequently develop into proactive actions that are favorable to both parties. Managing them can be a nuanced process. An efficient vendor manager ensures that solid and profitable vendor relationships are nurtured and sustained over the long term. Businesses can retain continuous ties with major vendors for required products or services by developing their vendor relationship skills. 

But what skills do a successful vendor manager need to possess? Let's find out. 

Top 8 Skills Required for Vendor Management

There is a list of skills a successful vendor manager ought to possess. Although some of these skills are crucial for other jobs, they are particularly critical for any position in the vendor management industry. 

Excellent communication skills

Vendor managers deal with many individuals, such as workers, suppliers, and customers. Therefore, effective communication requires several skills, like understanding when to listen before responding with a counterpoint, observing nonverbal body language in meetings, and even knowing how to use words that will inspire vendors to work with you. 

This involves maintaining track of your existing connections with other vendors so that you are always aware of what is attainable and developing a strategy for managing any future connections. The vendor manager must also be mindful of how their team intends to use the knowledge gained from those connections and ensure that it is well communicated to ensure that everyone involved can readily understand it.

Vendor management comes into play when a salesperson needs to know how many resources the company has for specific language combinations or when project managers cannot find a suitable supplier for their project.

Industry Awareness

The vendor manager manages all internal departments and the company's client relationships. This means that successful vendor managers should be highly adept at planning, organizing, and implementing business strategies.

Many people are involved in the process between the end customer and the translator working on the text as the translation industry functions as a supply chain. Regardless of the fact that the market is still in its inception, new translation agencies and independent translators continue to spring up every week all over the world. 

To successfully recruit, the Vendor Manager needs to understand how each region's sector operates. This could result in significant labor cost savings for the company. However, the Vendor Manager must also be knowledgeable about a range of industry responsibilities to be of the most help.

People Skills

'A little empathy goes a long way' 

Building relationships and understanding people comes down to more than being friendly and open. The ability to relate well is called "emotional intelligence," and it's essential to building strong, productive relationships.

Building a good relationship is an essential skill for any manager. It's important to understand the people and their needs and how to align goals, reward performance, and motivate your team. To create synergy within your organization, learning how to listen effectively and what makes managers influential leaders can also be helpful.

Being people-focused has several benefits for a vendor relationship manager. Others may need to spend time honing their relationship-building abilities like empathy and trust, but some people have a natural talent for connecting with others. But worry not. Fortunately, these abilities can be developed. 

Ability to adapt and be Resourceful

Do you have a different solution for a problem that doesn't have one? Can vendors rely on you to be adaptable and reach mutually beneficial agreements? 

Vendor management is a high-pressure, fast-paced job that may require constant communication with suppliers. This position may involve translating documents, communicating with customers in various languages, and problem-solving on any project that comes one's way. 

Also, being resourceful is a crucial ability for maintaining healthy relationships. Negotiations will go more smoothly, and open communication will emerge from resourcefulness. Higher success rates are guaranteed by bringing all required factors to the table, pivoting when necessary, and being adaptable while deciding on contracts.

Efficient Negotiation Skills

Despite having solid people skills, skilled negotiator always keeps sight of the ultimate objective. Effective bargains are reached through negotiation while optimizing long-term cost savings. In addition, if the objective is to build beneficial vendor relationships, the capacity to express the value of partnering with your organization is a need.

Furthermore, understanding when and how to add value throughout the end-to-end negotiation process eventually equates to higher profit margins, which is what every business wants to maximize in contract negotiations.

Some of the essential negotiation techniques that prove helpful for managers are- The capacity to make quick, reasonable decisions while also maintaining the limits of the negotiation. Communicate the value you bring to the table, overcome fear to reach better agreements, and approach meetings and introductions with assurance. 

Ability to Network

As an agent of change, it's essential to have the ability to get in touch with vendors who have what you need. This can be a challenge when you're starting out. 

Confidently approaching vendors and initiating contact ensures you can keep your partnership options open and build relationships as your company changes direction or scales. Vendor networking is a way to approach risk management as you stay in touch with suppliers in your industry.

The key to effective networking is maintaining regular touch with essential stakeholders in fields that are relevant to the firm. In addition, many relational skills are also necessary for effective networking, that include social awareness, empathy and interpersonal skills, the ability to convey your business value, and more.

Project Management

It cannot get any simpler than this. Every vendor manager has to be an exemplary project manager. Vendor managers can keep track of several moving pieces owing to the fundamental competency of project management.

Vendor managers at expanding firms must maintain vendor relationships when working with procurement teams and external stakeholders like consumers. Therefore, keeping track of several needs is essential to create a contract that works for both parties.

To be the best at what they do, vendor managers should possess the capabilities like critical thinking, technical expertise, time management, and leadership traits like making resolute decisions and risk reduction.

Decision-making skills

Vendors play a crucial role in your business's success. This means that you must find, select and manage vendors that provide high-quality services for your business at fair prices. 

To do this effectively, you must be able to think logically about the various variables that may affect your purchasing process. In addition, you need to be able to evaluate multiple data points and make decisions under time pressure, all while juggling working with customers.

While some aspects of the vendor management approach can be automated using templates or outsourced procedures, software can only partially replace the human touch required for vendor management and decision-making for the company's betterment. 

How To Develop Vendor Management Skills?

Vendor management skills require practice, just like any other talent worth learning; it frequently takes years of experience to hone the soft skills necessary to succeed at work. Let's assume that you want to work as a vendor manager. Where do you even begin if you're going to acquire the required skills? We've also put together some of the best and basic ways to start with your learnings to become a successful vendor manager. Check them out. 

Gain work experience in similar fields

As you are likely well aware, entrepreneurs often have much to learn before effectively managing vendor relationships before you discover that knowledge, consider working in an environment that allows you to expand your skills while still retaining your current job. 

A solid grasp of what makes a good relationship with vendor partners is vital to ensure the business has the right tools and resources. In addition, working in the finance department, as a procurement officer, or in human resources will help you learn new skills on the job.

Build internal relationships

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. You need first to establish relationships at your own existing workspace. This may lead to opportunities outside the firm that you wouldn't have otherwise encountered. This also may lead to moving up to a vendor managerial role in your organization. Remember, you are also developing other essential vendor management skills like networking and industrial awareness, owing to you trying to develop internal relationships. 

Seek knowledge in relevant areas

Elevated vendor management courses are available on many different education platforms, such as supplier management courses, vendor relationship management courses, building communication skills courses, negotiation skill courses, and more as per your desires. 

An essential first step into the vendor management sector is to be resourceful and utilize as many information sources as possible. Then, as you combine your newly acquired knowledge with practical experience, you develop the skill set required to manage vendors successfully.

How Zluri Helps With Vendor Management?

Zluri is a SaaS management platform that enables you to manage your SaaS vendors and their contracts and licenses. In addition, it gives you easy access to metadata, reducing your software spending and increasing overall ROI.

Zluri helps you determine the payment terms and ensure all payments are made on time. This is very useful when you are dealing with multiple vendors. In addition, it automates the entire vendor management process.

Zluri has a strong automation engine that enables organizations to give or revoke access to vendors with a few clicks. It automatically builds the inventory of what access vendors have, and deprovisioning can be done with ease.

Additionally, it takes data backup or data transfer during vendor offboarding effortlessly. There is no chance of data loss in the organization. Further, it removes or deletes the vendor profile.

Implementing Zluri helps you streamline the vendor management process, including the onboarding and offboarding of vendors. It has an automated vendor management system with all the features required to smoothen the process and manage the complete vendor lifecycle.

So what are you waiting for? Request your demo with Zluri today!

About the author

Tathagata Chakrabarti

Tathagata is a Technical Content Writer with 4+ of experience in the SaaS industry. He has a keen eye for research and understanding macro trends in the SaaS & AI-based technology space. He has worked across several marketing & strategy roles in various domains like banking, e-commerce, and education sectors. In his leisure time, Tathagata is a full-time PC gamer.