Managing Strategic Vendors versus Long Tail Vendors

Why it’s not an either/or proposition

Strategic Vendors

Long-Tail Vendors

While there are often significant savings to be made on strategic vendor contracts, the fact that these are more proactively managed means that while the numbers are high, the savings are low as a percentage of overall spend. Conversely, while it may seem that there is not much margin for improvement on individual low value contracts, the fact that they have been neglected means that there may be significant scope for improvement, and that the aggregate savings across the sheer number of vendors results in significant benefits.

This isn’t an either/or proposition; it’s more a matter of where to begin.

Given the size and scale of your mega vendor contracts, it’s a given that most attention be paid to them. But optimizing them properly requires complex licensing expertise and negotiating experience to ensure you’re looking at the most efficient licensing options, the right contractual terms and conditions and the best possible price.

Managing the long-tail is no less important, but unfortunately too often neglected because of the sheer volume of vendors involved. Much of the work needed to manage tail spend is tedious and often complex, requiring specialized knowledge of smaller vendors’ contracts.

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Countless studies report a financial savings of 10 to 20 percent for organizations who can get their tail spend under control.

(Source: procurementfoundry.com)

Getting started

Leave long-tail vendor management to the experts.

An experienced partner will have knowledge of the niche, industry-specific and alternative products critical to your business and the time and resources to dedicate to ensuring you get the right contract terms and conditions at the right price.

With customer relationships dating back 30 years, SHI’s licensing experts do this day in and day out.

Work with experts to optimize strategic contracts.

SHI provides strategic license advisory for more than 40 partners, giving you dedicated subject matter expertise for each respective partners’ programs, products, policies, and processes. Further drawing on years of experience supporting some of the most complex environments in the industry, SHI can help you identify and select the Volume Licensing Programs for over 150 additional partners and many smaller, niche vendors.