Vendor management is a core competence in successful business. In a competitive marketplace, businesses must look at creative ways to extract more value from providers, while reducing risk and upholding quality.

Simply beating suppliers down on price year after year is not a sustainable strategy!

Limitless Technology, LLC has been managing complex indirect spend and vendor documentation since 2006 for some of the largest companies in the USA saving them millions in costs.

Through our Billing Optimization and Vendor Management Solutions proprietary platforms, we utilize technology, processes, expertise, time, and resources to improve our client’s bottom line.

Limitless Technology manages your vendors, so you can manage and grow your business.

For Additional Information Contact us at 407.330.4466

“Through 2019, EVERY dollar invested in innovation across a business will require an additional $7 in IT execution, which SVM leaders will have to manage,” said Claudio Da Rold, research vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

Knowing the statistics on levels of investment, every business leader has a 7x greater reason to look more deeply into their IT operations and the vendors they choose! The question to ask is, “How do C-Level executives choose the right IT partners when knowing the cost to their organization is incredibly high?

How Do Executives Select the Right IT Vendors?

• When choosing the right vendors and suppliers, there are a few areas of focus:
  • Can the vendor handle the breadth and scope of infrastructure to handle the projects assigned?
    • Proper capabilities
    • Infrastructure in place
  • Does the vendor have a proven record of performance?
    • A History of achieving prior project deliverables
    • Recommendations of business leaders in similar industries

These points are a simple guide to assist leaders in determining the correct resources for their organization when a company directive is rolled out and a new IT resource needs to be chosen.

After Executives Select the right Vendors, Are Systems in Place to Manage Them?

A strong external IT resource will still need a focused system in place to manage their day-to-day impact on your business. However, one major problem in the IT industry is that company’s internal IT teams don’t have the time and, in most cases, the resources to manage their IT, Telecom, and VOIP systems at a micro-level. They are too busy managing the system-wide issues that arise daily and impact employees’ productivity on a ground level.

Often, IT teams leave secondary issues to handle a later time. The problem with these issues is that they often lead to costly expenditures for the organization. A short list of examples below:

• Products/services that are no longer needed by the organization due to a structural change in the business
• Billing discrepancies caused by disconnect from ground-level teams
• Small issues impacting individual locations as opposed to company-wide outages

C-Level executives need to understand the cost impact leaving these issues unresolved can cause their organization. A cost-effective strategy is to employ a third-party organization with the skills and ability to manage the above issues, so that internal resources can focus on “putting out the fires” that are an immediate need.

Find out more about our company and how we assist in managing both processes here.

Important Agreement signed last week. You ask yourself … “Where is that Contract – I know it’s in HERE somewhere I just saw it last week. I know it was filed … Account name or by service? I can’t find it!” Meanwhile, management is still in meeting waiting for the signed Agreement.

How REFERENCEABLE is your CURRENT VENDOR Database? How quickly could you retrieve files, agreements, contracts, vendor contact information or a particular invoice by date or total amount PAID? How can those documents be retrieved “from another location?”

LIMITLESS Vendor Management Solutions is THE Vendor Management Solution Software that brings Superior Spend Analytics and Visibility within a FULLY MANAGED software solution. Contact LIMITLESS for more information.

Your company starts to grow, and you need more technology to keep up with additional staff, customers and to help improve process. You are aware of the efficiencies and cost savings made possible by new technologies and are upgrading their infrastructures as a result.

But are you aware of How Purchasing more Technology can lead to Cost Creep?

Every CFO knows about “cost creep”; the slow build up over time in the cost/revenue ratio.   In today’s marketplace, there are an increasing number of service providers who can deliver more efficient solutions, giving end users more options than ever.

In the beginning new suppliers are on their very best behavior, cutting deals and slashing cost. The client will enjoy some pretty large cost savings during the first couple of years.

However, as the contract matures and becomes less visible to the client, costs begin to slowly creep up until, if unchecked, they can accelerate way beyond the initially agreed upon amount.

When you purchase more services, your plans may mutate, creating new contracts that incur additional charges. Over time, small ancillary charges can appear but are not questioned, increasing your bills slowly. This “creep” may leave you paying for services you do not need and may not even understand.

Because data is at the heart of every business and it plays a crucial role in businesses staying connected, technology bills are perceived as a necessary fixed expense and are often overlooked even when the initial cost has increased yet services have not changed.

Companies, Organizations and Businesses can easily incur monthly expenses ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars each month.  Managing the financial component of vendors can be a nightmare! Looking at just telecom you have: Multiple carriers, multiple contracts, introductory offers, equipment, and different locations. Just these factors can lead to poor financial management and procurement processes.

LEARN MORE ABOUT COST CREEP from Todd Larsen, CEO

Are you overlooking the financial costs of managing suppliers? What are the risks of doing that?

Here are findings from top research names in the industry. While cost creep can occur with any supplier these statistics share the findings in just telecom alone…

• – Telecom costs rank in the top 5 expenses for most companies (Gartner)
• – 80% of carrier bills contain errors (Gartner)
• – Telecom analysts spend on average 20% of their time identifying errors (Gartner)
• – Enterprises forfeit 12%-17% of telecom expenses without a proactive approach to telecom cost management (Aberdeen Group)

With a Vendor Management Solution contract experts can negotiate a fixed rate for a particular service. The contract terms must be met ensuring that both parties are aware of what is expected and any variances will be flagged and the vendor will be held accountable for any charges and changes outside of the agreed terms.

If you have questions about any of our VMS benefits contact us today at 866-504-4050 to learn more about our Vendor Management Solutions

Having vendors or third-party service providers is a necessary part of your business in order to operate and provide the services and/or products to your customers. How you manage those vendors is up to you and your leadership team, but these 4 Reasons are only a sampling of the many reasons your business should have a vendor management solution in place.

1. Increased Efficiency:

How many vendors do you manage? 10-20-50-70+? If you don’t have a process and program in place to manage a multitude of vendors, how can you possibly keep up with them? Here are some questions to think about related to efficiency in managing your vendors:

• When does their contract renew?
• When does their insurance certificate expire?
• When do you need to conduct an annual due diligence review to assess the risk they pose on your organization?
• Have their services changed that increases or decreases risk?
• Have your services or processes changed that increase or decrease risk?

2. Vendor Visibility

To effectively reduce supplier risks, whether in terms of operations, unforeseen cost implications, or regulatory compliance, you need increased visibility. Vendor management can track your suppliers and provide the data you need to identify supplier risks so you can take the necessary steps to mitigate them, or choose an alternative vendor. You can easily verify supplier information, such as qualifications and certifications, track performance, and even look into the supplier’s financials to get a broader picture of their risk level in order to protect your organization.

3. Reduce Costs

When you have increased visibility, you can see invisible costs that you can then better control in order to save on costs. Additionally, having strong relationships with your suppliers, due to effective procedures and processes with a vendor management solution. VMS can help you to negotiate better rates and have access to discounts and incentives that can increase your profit margin.

4. Risk Management

Vendors provide value in the expertise and experience they offer; however, organizations must still maintain active oversight. It is important to remember that when a vendor performs a service or function, the institution bears ultimate responsibility for compliance. Because varying levels of risk remain with the institution that offers the product or service, a strong vendor risk management program is key to maintaining compliance and avoiding claims of improper service levels to customers.

VMS Software – Vendor Management Solution is a discipline that enables businesses to not only cut costs but also: control expenses, drive service excellence and mitigate risks…while gaining increased visibility and value from their vendors. Through LIMITLESS’s on-line software overall vendor management, as well as – vendor expense management, is accomplished by giving you absolute visibility into your vendors and spend. No matter what the vendor or type of service they provide – companies can have a comprehensive view into their: services, contracts, rates, terms, conditions and spends through this sophisticated web-based solution.

If you have questions about any of our VMS benefits contact us today at 866-504-4050 to learn more about our Vendor Management Solutions.

Benchmarking is a common business practice and sensible exercise to establish baselines, define best practices, identify improvement opportunities (contract rates and terms) and create a competitive environment within the organization. Integrating benchmarking into your organization can result in valuable data that encourages discussion and creates new ideas to improve processes and practices as well as relationships with providers. In benchmarking the data is what is most important! Documenting rates and terms to further compare and improve is a benefit of benchmarking and a feature of a vendor management solution.

Simply put, benchmarking is a process to discover what is the best standard of performance seen in a specific company, by a particular competitor or by a completely different industry.

Benchmarking is one of a manager’s best tools for determining whether the company is performing particular functions and activities efficiently, whether its costs and rates are in line with those of competitors, and whether its internal activities and business processes need improvement. Benchmarking helps organizations to stay in sync with the market and customer needs. Thus, benchmarking and then taking corrective actions is not simply emulating competitors. Rather it is the process of understanding what top standard is, and making changes within the organization in order to meet & transcend that standard.

A benchmarking strategy can:

• Clearly identify specific areas of opportunity
• Validate assumptions
• Prioritize improvement opportunities
• Set performance expectations
• Monitor company performance
• Manage change using vendor management tools and analytics
• Improve understanding of the real opportunities and their priority
• Minimizes resistance to change and support for action
• Fosters a spirit of enthusiasm to do better than the external benchmark
• Promotes discussion based on data rather than assumptions or emotion

How benchmarketing Increases Sales and Profits

Benchmarking enables managers to determine what the best practice is, to prioritize opportunities for improvement and to enhance performance relative to customer expectations. It also helps managers to understand the most accurate and efficient means of performing an activity, to learn how lower costs are actually achieved, and to take action to improve a company’s cost competitiveness. As a result, benchmarking has been used in many companies as a tool for obtaining a competitive advantage. A company that uses benchmarking to improve its functions, operations, products and services may enjoy increases in sales and profits. These efforts are likely to increase sales due to improved processes, efficiency among departments and improved product quality. Companies that operate more efficiently can drastically lower their expenses.

Benchmarking has several other benefits as well:

Improved Quality: Benchmarking helps organizations to continuously improve the quality of their products & services. Organizations observe the current standard, and then try to surpass that.

Better performance: Benchmarking helps organizations overcome complacency. They continuously strive to improve their performance standards in order to stay relevant in the market.

Cost efficiency: Benchmarking provides organization with valuable data on the last technology, and processes followed in the business environment. These are aimed at increasing productivity while reducing cost. For example, a manufacturing company might learn about a certain machine used by its competitor, which can do the work for five workers. This company might also adopt similar technology to lower its labor cost.

Prioritizing areas of improvement: While organizations understand the importance to develop continuously, they might be unsure at times about where to start the improvement from. Benchmarking helps organizations to identify the areas where the gap between their standard and that of the industry is the largest. This helps organizations to prioritize the areas that they need to work on.

Leveraging strength areas: Benchmarking can also throw light on the areas where the organization is doing much better than what is observed in the market.

If you have questions regarding benchmarking strategies or about any of the other benefits of our Vendor Management Solution  contact LIMITLESS.

Not only are most service agreements written where they can be changed and modified at any time, but notification of the changes is your responsibility to keep track of.

Who is responsible in your organization for keeping track of changes in provider contracts and agreements? The company posts the changes on the web site and include them in your statements.

 “The Revisions are effective upon posting to the Website. Customer will receive notice of the Revisions in the next applicable monthly invoice. Customer shall have thirty (30) calendar days from the invoice notice of such Revisions to provide [provider] with written notice that the Revisions adversely affect Customer’s use of the Service(s).”

Term modifications are very common. How are they affecting you is something that needs to be determined by your vendor and service provider manager? In some cases this could include an increase in fees, taxes, insurance or 3^rd party fees. How are these fees applied and can they be negotiated on your behalf?

Why were the terms changed? What does the increase cover? Are you getting more quality or less and paying additional fees? How does this change specifically affect your businesses bottom line? Is anyone asking these questions on your behalf?

We all know how busy every department in an organization is and in most cases usually spread thin. The resources available to efficiently and consistently review those areas that could be costing you are at times or most often overlooked. As experts in cost reduction we see these situations too often and in most cases Agreement terms will only go back and recover overcharges or disputes for charges covering a 90 day period – not the date from which the error or dispute occurred.

A vendor management solution is the only way to ensure all aspects of your vendors from contracts, to fees, taxes, insurance, rates documents are being managed individually to ensure maximum optimization and ROI.

When you have multiple companies, communities or organizations with a multitude of vendors and suppliers with contacts, compliance terms, agreements, renewals, discounts, government related cost and fees, 3^rd party fees, surcharges, related costs and policies you need an expert in these terms to be analyzing, financially reporting and negotiating contracts on your behalf.

If you have questions regarding how to manage vendor contracts and service agreements and would like more information regarding fully managed vendor management solutions and how to increase your bottom line contact LIMITLESS at (866) 504-4050.

The primary objective of financial reporting is to provide useful information for decision making. Without proper documentation of all business financial aspects including expenses and vendors, it can be difficult for any company to not only determine whether a supplier is meeting its quality standards, but also for investors to be able to make financial decisions regarding the value of the company.

Lack of transparency in financial reporting and vendor management financial information, in any industry, has implications for investor trust. Companies that understand the importance of transparency in financial reporting, are also well informed about the psychology of the investors. Complex and opaque vendor management and financial reports gives no idea about the true financial, vendor and expense risks involved in the company.

The financial reports must include:
• Understand-ability. The information must be readily understandable to users of the financial statements.
• Relevance. It must be relevant, accurate and current.
• Comparability. Ability to provide financial comparisons.

Without proper management it is difficult for investors to access required financial information about companies, such as price levels, market depth and audited financial reports to include supplier and vendor expenses, documents, agreements and contracts.

Businesses with effective financial reporting practices but lacking collateral are also more likely to receive credit. Lending institutions will have more information on which to base their decisions, reducing their need to require high levels of collateral. It is essential for investment and doing business that every business should have effective financial and vendor management systems in place.

For more information on how to implement a vendor management solution, schedule a free consultation or ask questions, contact LIMITLESS at 866-504-4050.