Anything and everything about vendor management, just ask.

Teresa Borges wrote:

I must say that I’ve been working with most of my long-standing customers with no NDAs, no contracts and no formal POs, and in case of a lawsuit I can confidently say that the emails exchanged are more than enough.

I would never work for anyone that is not able to offer me a contract and I would recommend to always sign a contract before working with a company.

The contract outlines the responsibilities for both parties, so you make sure you are going to get paid and they make sure you will deliver the job.

Each PO is a contract in itself, as it has all the details of the project you are about to work on, so it should always be sent before the files, if possible.

Tom in London wrote:

...what is vendor management?

RESOURCEFUL L10 wrote:



We are in charge of the company's database: making sure it is up-to-date and has all the information and vendors the company needs to perform successfully.
We take care of the vendors building long-term business relationships and engaging with them regularly.
We recruit vendors and support project managers on projects (quotes/live).
We monitor costs so the company is profitable by negotiating with vendors and reporting regularly to the upper manager of the company.

In some companies, we also monitor the vendors' performance making sure feedback is given and the desired results are achieved.

Teresa Borges wrote:

I’ve been translating for 35 years, first in Belgium and since 2016 in Portugal (my home country). Over the years I only had to take legal action against 2 clients for non-payment. In both cases, the problem was quickly solved after my lawyer's intervention on the basis of the emails exchanged. I have 12 very regular customers (direct clients and translation agencies), one of them is my longest-standing customer: 20 years. Only half of these customers send formal POs and I only have a signed contract with one of them. On the other hand, I have a large folder filled with signed NDAs and contracts sent by agencies with which work never materialized…

Sadek_A wrote:

How often do you apply your personal preference(s) and/or prejudice(s) in selection of vendors?

If any, kindly do list classifications of such biases, whether in descending or ascending order; how they operate; and, how you -and the company, assuming they're onto/filled into the situation- make peace with such choices?

Thanks

Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL wrote:



I'm just about to fire one of my "clients" who are literally now taking the proverbial... no respect for their valuable "resources", as you would say. I understand trying to reduce margins, but the relationship should be that of a fruitful collaboration in order to offer the best product at the correct price, for both. Unfortunately, this collaboration is heavily skewed towards the agency/client. Examples? Using CAT tools to impose discounts, migrating to PEMT to improve margins but reducing quality, using silly and highly complex platforms to make PMs' lives a lot easier but complicating and in some cases totally eliminating any interactions with the freelancers. Migrating from functionality-rich CAT tools to cloud ones with poor usability and minimal functions. Shall I continue? We feel like cows at the cattle market. It's really time you wake up and explain your clients what translation is really about. It's really depressing.

[Edited at 2021-06-22 13:21 GMT]

RESOURCEFUL L10 wrote:
Each company has a list of rules heir vendors need to fulfil and the VMs need to stick to those rules for example years of experience, education, native language, location, price, etc. The job should be objective and there shouldn't be room for any personal preferences when choosing a vendor over another.

The only time I can think of something like that happening, could be when referring/recommending a vendor, but still, I wouldn't trust an employee that uses their own judgement to make work decisions. We get paid by the company to follow their rules to success, not to apply our own.

Sadek_A wrote:



Thank you for answering.

Granted, I don't know who you are, nor whether you're female or male.

But, I'm guessing from your answer that it never happens to choose, say, a single-mother vendor with lesser quality and/or higher rate over a dependents-less single male with higher quality and/or lesser rate (assuming you were read into their status, of course)?

No considerations whatsoever of promoting company's image through employing ethnicities, minorities, religious-symbols wearers, etc., for the mere purpose of that promotion, regardless of those vendors' quality (assuming they charge low, of course)?

No political/international relations/global sanctions factoring into your choices?

I can go on and on with examples, but you get the gist.

Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL wrote:

work with a client who has a "pay your vendors as little as possible" policy? You were talking about efficiency and therefore cutting the rates offered to your vendors - this is part of your job. I'm sure you don't like it, but where would you draw the line? Personally, as an agency, I would be looking at increasing the rate I pay my best "vendors" in order to make sure they continue to offer their services to me. Not slashing them. Thoughts?

[Edited at 2021-06-24 11:33 GMT]

Susan van den Ende wrote:

I definitely have a more positive view of vendor managers than many others here it seems. Generally the VMs I work with are there for negotiations, feedback, holiday planning and all those things that come up around the daily stuff that the PMs handle. Works for me!

Carmen, what would you say is your general "timeline" and how many things are on your desk at the same time? For instance, mine is generally less than 2 weeks from "project comes in" to "project is ticked off the list", but I'll have several projects in my list at the same time, and of course to-dos like bookkeeping etc. are a regular recurrence.

I know from some vendor managers that their projects can look like "recruit a pool of trustworthy translators for combination X and specialty field Y" or "handle feedback for Z", "negotiate with A and B", "get holiday schedule for major account B".

I'd be curious how much juggling goes on and how often you can tick something off the list. Also, who you deal with most within the organisation: does VM get tot tell sales that "no, we don't actually have the people to deliver what you are selling" or is there not much contact?

Thanks for sharing a bit about your day-to-day!