Service(s) Provided:
Enterprise Application Advisory
Situation:
During his first sixty (60) days on the job, a new Chief Information Officer (CIO) heard multiple complaints about the company’s implementation of vendor portals but struggled to have fact-based problem definition. Decentralized front-line vendor support to divisional business personnel meant that the IT department lacked insight into the various vendor issues with the portals. Vector conducted an independent evaluation of a client’s vendor portal(s) and their implementations across the company’s various divisions.
Approach:
Vector utilized quantitative analytics to determine how actively each of the divisions and their vendors were utilizing the four separate portals. Vector interviewed key stakeholders including informational technology (IT), corporate procurement, divisional stakeholders, and with vendors themselves. With the primary application vendor, Vector reviewed the roadmap for software updates. Vector, along with selected client personnel, conducted a structured usability analysis of the main portals.
Results:
Vector documented that the definition of ‘vendor portal’ meant different things to different stakeholders. Within IT and corporate procurement, ‘vendor portal’ referred to a specific subset of functionality rather than the entirety of the solution exposed to vendors for usage. Interviews uncovered divisional differences in which resources are the first line of vendor support whether accounts payable or purchasing personnel. Vector provided a concise set of problem statements along with a roadmap to resolving the issues. The roadmap identified which items the client could take independent of software upgrades and which items required influencing the software vendor itself. The roadmap provided the CIO with a fact based plan of action which his team is executing.