Because at the end of the day it’s how profitable you run your business that truly makes the difference. Those individuals which understand that both top line revenue and bottom line profits are equally important in every business, truly separates great leaders from mediocre ones when it comes to running a profit driven organization.

Cost reduction is important in business because it directly impacts the bottom line at no cost to an organization. (Unlike sales, which has direct material, labor, facilities, marketing, commissions, management, and administrative costs). By reducing costs, a company can increase its profitability and improve its financial health. This is especially important in times of economic uncertainty or when facing increased competition. 

Additionally, cost reduction can help a company become more efficient and agile, allowing it to respond more quickly to changes in the market. While top line revenue is important for growth, it is not sustainable if costs are not managed effectively. To draw an analogy, simply put “why would you place water into a leaky bucket?”

Therefore, a true balance between revenue growth and cost reduction is necessary for increase valuation and long-term success. 

billingoptimization#, costreduction#, expensereduction#, 3rdpartyvendormanagement#

Why are we trying to do everything in-house, and when do we start looking outside to experts who are better suited to improve our bottom line.

Here are some key considerations your company should be looking for as you determine if an outsourced managed service solution will create value for your company:

Does outsourcing align with our internal resource needs?

As you evaluate your internal staffing, resource roadmap, and internal processes, does a managed services solution allow you to unburden your staff so they can handle other business-critical activities?   Will a fully managed solution deliver the improvements better than we can internally?

Are their experts better than ours?

You need to ensure the VMS provider is designed and resourced by a team of subject matter experts that are focused on cost reduction and have the appropriate industry expertise to provide you with the required improvements to your organization.

Is our process proven to provide results?

Do you have a cost reduction strategy?  A proven process that begins with assessing the current state of your vendor agreements and contracts, resulting in demonstrated savings should be a prerequisite.  

Scalable and Reliable Service Level Performance

Can the provider meet your unexpected demands (higher number of new vendor diligence than you anticipated) and align with your growth plans to scale with your accordingly?

Are You Ready for Outsourcing?

If you are unclear if outsourcing makes sense for you, consider the following as objectives that outsourcing some or all of your Vendor Management Program is something you should be considering:

• Lowering Costs
• Streamlining Operations
• Implementing Best Practices 

In the end, outsourcing your Vendor Management function can make sense on many fronts.  It can send a message to your staff, executives, board members, and investors that your take seriously the responsibilities to mitigate third-party risk, optimize your operating costs, ensure regulatory compliance and strive for excellence.

Ask yourself these questions…

• Do you know how many assets your organization has and needs to track?
• How many users need to have access?
• Where are the assets located?
• Is the asset being used?

The benefits of asset management

Keeping track of the assets of the company is an important task that can save companies money and time. Asset management is the process of maximizing the assets of the company to provide the best returns to stakeholders. It can tell where the assets are located, how they are used, and when changes were made to them.

Here are a few examples

• Demonstrated compliance with the requirements and wishes of your stakeholders
• Better financial results because of better ROI and/or cost reduction
• Informed decisions from multiple angles, such as performance, profit and costs, risks and opportunities
• Risks managed when necessary and knowingly existent when acceptable
• Higher customer satisfaction
• Decisions also based on entire life cycle of assets (also when this exceeds the duration of other plans)
• Stability of the production in the long term
• Improved reputation towards your stakeholders
• Demonstrated compliance with regulation and legislation
• Traceability of decisions
• Improved knowledge management
• Increased attractiveness for shareholders

Vendor Management offers substantial assistance in the management of assets. Asset tracking lets organizations and individuals catalogue, track, organize, audit and manage information about assets of all types, from information technology assets to office equipment and company vehicles.

Added benefits of Asset Management 

• Good Business Practice
• More Meaningful Financial Reporting
• Improved Regulatory Compliance
• Improved Reliability
• Long Term System Integrity
• Cost Savings

Using a Vendor Management Solution to track assets

It is almost impossible to track assets properly without a vendor management solution that incorporates asset management into your cost reduction strategy. Systems like the one that is part of our flagship vendor management solution, VMS Platinum, are typically part of a fully managed service that enables businesses to not only cut costs but also: control expenses, drive service excellence and mitigate risks.  Our solution at Limitless Technology Cost Reduction Services also provides increased visibility and value from their vendors. We leverage our proprietary on-line software, giving you absolute visibility into your vendors and spend. No matter what the vendor or the services that our clients provide – they have a comprehensive view into their: services, contracts, rates, terms, conditions and spends through this sophisticated web-based solution.

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.

The Vendor Management Process Defined

Reducing costs with lower price points and lower spend is no longer enough to give your vendor management team, and your entire organization, a serious competitive advantage. Effective development and maintenance of vendor relationships with your supply base is essential.

The vendor management process helps you achieve your organizational goals by:

• Evaluating supplier capabilities, including terms, pricing, and overall quality of your procured services
• Negotiation of contract terms and conditions
• Managing vendor relationships, and ongoing monitoring of invoices and performing regularly scheduled bill audits.

Why Vendor Management Matters

Vendor management is the system your company uses to interface with external suppliers. The capabilities, reliability, and affordability of each vendor can have a substantial impact on your company’s bottom line.

Vendor relationship management (VRM) is essentially risk management, and an essential business process for every organization. 

Vendor Performance Reviews

Whether they’ve been with you for years or are brand new to your company, vendors require regular performance reviews. The metrics established by your VRM team and your vendor contracts will provide you with the guidelines you need to determine how much value a particular supplier is providing.

A few metrics you might use as benchmarks when evaluating vendors include:

• Mutually-agreed-upon performance targets, e.g. volume of goods, server uptime, shipping delays, etc.
• Contract compliance
• In-house satisfaction, including vendor relationships with key team members
• Vendor risk based on company goals, market performance, and social and financial presence

Using these metrics, you can quickly and reliably identify your “problem children” among your vendors and address any unusual changes or ongoing problems. You’ll also have a jumping-off point for relationship improvement (as needed), and head off disasters before they can damage or even destroy a mutually beneficial relationship.

Continuous Improvement of Vendor Management Process

One important thing to remember about Vendor Management is that it is not static.  It is an ongoing process that can always be improved.  It is imperative that your company identify these opportunities for improvement and develop a strategic and tactical plan to implement them.  Some of the areas to focus on are:

• Cost Analysis & Metrics
• RFP Management
• Contract Review Procedures
• Bill Audit and Invoice Reviews

Who says relationships have to be hard? With the right team, a strong strategy, and a solid vendor management policy, you can reduce risk, streamline your supply chain, and provide powerful support to your company’s goals—today, and in the future.

Take control of your vendor management process, and build value along with strong relationships.

About Limitless Technology

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:

Phone:             407.330.4466

Website:          LimitlessTechnology.com

Business expansion and increasing regulatory scrutiny of vendor relationships are a few factors placing a heightened focus on vendor risk management within an organization. Not all vendor relationships are created equal. Using risk as a factor in your vendor management strategy requires a company to categorize their suppliers based on internal criteria, and then perform an appropriate level of ongoing oversight based on the determined level of risk. While the specific areas of concern may vary across companies, there are three types of risk that are common to almost all businesses.

Operational Risk
Operational risk is the risk that a company may experience if a major issue arises with your organization if a vendor’s process or system fails. This risk aligns directly with your reliance on a vendor, and is typically greater with vendors that provide services such as outsourcing, IT systems and data.

There are two good ways to mitigate operational risk: 1) perform periodic on-site audits and/or business reviews, and 2) create a back-up plan should you experience a failure with a high-risk vendor. These two risk-mitigation techniques are directly related, and should be implemented across the board, but especially for business-critical vendors.

Financial Risk
Financial risk is the risk that your organization is negatively impacted financially due to a vendor relationship.

Unmanaged costs tend to get the most attention. Most businesses have become focused on requesting competitive bids and negotiating terms. Often, those contracts were signed without knowledge of market conditions and rates (see our post about Optimizing Vendor Contracts).  Negotiating a good price has little to do with managing costs, which comes from enforcing contract compliance and performing periodic cost and contractual audits. It’s the work done after the vendor contract is signed that mitigates the risk of excessive unmanaged costs.

Regulatory Compliance Risk
Regulatory compliance risk is the risk that a supplier or vendor will violate a law or a regulation that your organization has placed on them as a prerequisit for doing business with you.

This is becoming an increasingly important issue.  For example, nonprofit organizations like health plans, healthcare systems and credit unions, are heavily regulated by Federal agencies. In many cases certain regulations pass through you to your vendors.

If you’re in this situation, you’ll want to ensure your risk management procedures enable you to analyze how well your vendors are complying with the required laws and regulations.  Regularly scheduling a review of their practices to determine whether your vendors are aware of both new and existing regulations, and they have policies and procedures in place to implement them. Data privacy is of specific interest to regulators making it important to ensure compliance with laws, regulations and best practices proposed by the regulatory bodies.

There’s no shortage of risks when it comes to your vendors.  The key is to carefully assess risk so you can properly categorize and manage your most important and riskiest vendors. The last thing any company needs is to be held responsible for something their vendor did, because they did not manage the risk effectively as part of their vendor management process.

About Limitless Technology
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:

Phone:             407.330.4466

Website:          LimitlessTechnology.com

Vendor Management organizations use a set of criteria to determine whether or not the spend with a particular supplier should be governed by a contract. Not all spend needs to be categorized this way.   In some cases, a purchase may be conducted outside the standard contracting process to save time.  In other cases, a contract may have not been designed to address a unique purchasing requirement.

Whether the intent was to address supplier growth, to meet a unique need, or to circumvent an established process, a significant portion of your indirect expenses may not be covered by a contract. Even if a contract existed, would you know? Could you find it? Procurement managers who can’t find missing contracts are at a significant disadvantage.

• When it comes time to renew agreements, they are in a weaker negotiating position.
• Purchases made outside of a contract can expose their company to risk.
• Bringing more spend under strategic management is impossible.

Making Spend Under Contract a key metric, presents a real opportunity for organizations to take control of their sourcing. Contract-centric sourcing is the new paradigm that enables vendor management organizations to both accelerate their buying processes, improve compliance, and reduce risk.  It also allows you to make contract compliance the third pillar by which vendors are evaluated alongside technical and commercial capabilities.   Introducing contracts at the very beginning of the sourcing process, businesses can better ensure compliance with buying standards, and accelerate sourcing evaluations.  Integrating the contracts with a document management system also provides visibility into past contract performance data. This in turn enables enterprises to create a category strategy that will deliver the most long-term benefits to the company.

The key to remember is that contracts are not bad to have, bad contracts are bad to have.

About Limitless Technology

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:

Phone:             407.330.4466

As a company that provides this type of service, our team at Limitless Technology hears a great variety of reasons.  All of them are rooted in a few key areas:

• Organizations believe they already have a team that is responsible for this function. 

• The support required by the organization in an audit is going to put a drain on our resources.

• The misperception that a contingency based audit means you get “something for nothing”. 

• Expectations that the cost to address areas of opportunity will exceed the benefit

The fact is that a contingency based, no risk audit is not a promotional offer.  It is a business model that can be mutually beneficial to both the auditing company and the client.  It is important, however, that you evaluate this type of relationship.  It is our belief that this type of audit is the foundation for building a partnership that will last well into the future.  

• Our team and your team work together

We respect that every company and organization has the potential to audit their billings, re-negotiate their own vendor contracts and get some form of respectable savings.  Our goal is to produce maximum results by applying superior vendor management expertise, document management technology and using benchmark analytics that most companies would rarely be able to acquire on their own.  We have been successfully negotiating for companies who could have chosen to do it themselves.  We employ former vendor service negotiators and high level professionals, which are experienced in working with some of the largest and most well-managed companies in the world

• We are an extension of your team, and we do the heavy lifting

After a few meetings, with your team providing the supporting documentation needed to perform the audit, We do our best to limit any disruption to your business work flows, as we will negotiate on your behalf, to allow your team to stay focused on day to day management of your operations. WE FIND, FIX, FOLLOW-UP, and FINISH the tasks to make sure that it gets done and is done right. This is AN ENORMOUS TIMESAVER for your organization. We literally become a virtual extension of your employee base at no cost, because we write our checks from the savings, we obtain for you.

• Lack of trust

Trust is earned.  Our company has nearly 40 years of experience, and more than over 15 years providing Vendor Management Solutions and Cost Reduction Services.  Our clients have realized millions of dollars in savings as a result of our ongoing partnerships.  

It is the savings over time that is our greatest asset.  The clients that have been with us for the longest time, have realized the most benefit to their bottom line. 

• Misperception of “Something for Nothing”.

A shared savings Bill Audit is not something for nothing.  It is no risk service, that yields lower risk, identifies areas for processes to be improved, and provides improvement to your bottom line.  We do ask for an upfront shared savings advance to start the process. However, we provide a 110% money back guaranteeagainst that deposit.  This upfront fee provides a small amount of operating revenue and allows us to invest the upfront time and effort necessary to fully database the critical details that are so often missed in vendor billings and contracts. to accurately. 

Our long term goal is to provide Vendor Management Solutions which further cuts costs and produces bottom-line savings in your largest areas of complex indirect expenses. For your peace of mind, we don’t look to change service providers unless it is in your absolute best interest, and you agree with our recommendations.  These recommendations are the foundation of the contingency based, no risk audit. 

• Concern of unknown expenditure

The shared savings advance that we request from our clients is based on our understanding of the effort required to review your company’s spend and processes, look at your contracts, and identify areas of opportunity.  We collect this advance because we have real costs with internal employees, associated with the level of expertise, work and due diligence placed into every bill audit we perform. 

The bottom line is that we must PROVE the savings to be paid and – our Clients RECIEVE the refund, credit, or go forward savings before we invoice for our services.

About Limitless Technology

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:

Phone:             407.330.4466Website:          LimitlessTechnology.com

Gaining visibility to the right information, in the right format, is the first step in the spend analysis process.  Using that information in a comparative method, using industry and market knowledge, is referred to as Benchmark Analytics.  This is the precursor to identifying procurement savings, contract optimization, and vendor management process improvement for your organization.

Spend with contracted vendors

Spend with contracted vendors is a key statistic, as every dollar spent is important, and savings opportunities can be missed through off-contract purchases. Developing contractual relationships with suppliers can result in more competitive prices and improved payment terms. Bringing spend under contract reduces the number of suppliers, cutting administration overhead and concentrating purchases with contracted vendors. This, in turn, increases buying power and helps to create a culture of compliant purchasing within the organization. Tracking this percentage over time enables you to see if spend under contract is improving profitability.

Organizing your expenses by industry category

Categorization by industry is an important part of the spend analysis process. Internal account codes can
be used for analysis, but this is dependent on the quality and completeness of coding within the document management system. Often, purchases can be categorized incorrectly, inconsistently, or be missing entirely. If you consistently allocate vendors to meaningful categories, an overview of spend, suppliers and transactions makes it possible to identify outliers.  This provides the basis for further investigation.

Classify spend by business type and location

Another key piece of data to understand is what type of suppliers your organization works with, and where they are located. Again, this is data that can be hard to collate.  Creating a vocabulary of terms which are commonly used among your vendor management team, and are similar to what others in your industry use can be challenging. For example, if you have a requirement to have a certain percent of your business from “green” sources, how do you determine what “green”? How close to your business does a vendor need to be, in order to be considered “local”?

Accurate, up-to-date, consistently defined data can help in dealing with calls to increase spend with these businesses.  Having this data aids in demonstrating compliance with statutory or institutional policy, and policy making decisions such as implementing preferential spend initiatives. For example, you can start a debate about what is the right level of local vendors are right for your organization. There are both costs and benefits in supporting these businesses as they may not be as competitive on price as larger national suppliers, however they may offer better terms, local support, faster delivery and intangible benefits, such as contributing to the overall ethical position of your business.

Realize that your company data is probably not the same as the next guy

It is important to understand that accessing your business information is only step 1 in the process.  Your vendors, and their competitors, are serving many companies just like yours, and more importantly different than yours.  Believe it or not rates, terms and conditions can vary greatly from industry to industry and of course by size of business. How do you know your rates, terms, and conditions are the best they can be?  Unless you have an expert on your team that is familiar with every category, every industry and every potential vendor, you won’t.  This the final piece to the benchmark analytics puzzle…having the system, and the knowledge to compare those criticalities, and make sure your company is positioned to profit from gaps that are identified.

Data is a requirement for any business to survive, but the ability to analyze data and take action is critical if it is going to thrive. Using the right benchmark analytics, you can build a vendor management process, and systematically improve the overall profitability of your organization for the longer term.

About Limitless Technology

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:

Form:              Contact Form

Phone:             407.330.4466

Website:          LimitlessTechnology.com

Contract procurement begins with procedures followed by a business when purchasing services or products. The process starts when company managers identify a business need that must be fulfilled and ends when the contract is awarded and signed.

Contract optimization is the process of systematically and efficiently managing contract creation, execution, and analysis to maximize operational and financial performance and minimize risk. Unfortunately, many businesses lack the processes or systems required to optimally manage customer or supplier contracts.

Real improvement to your bottom line requires a focus on both areas, and methodically looks at three important parts of the system: processes, workflows, and technology. Together, these elements create a system that enables your vendor management team to standardize your approach, and organize contract management tasks.  It enables teams to use centrally-located contracts, templates, and standardized clauses efficiently. An optimized contract management system improves coordination, collaboration, and communication among team members.

Processes and Workflows

What’s the difference between a process and a workflow?  How do they work together?

• A process lays out a group of activities or tasks to be performed to accomplish an objective. It typically includes a defined start and completion.
• Workflows, however, describe the movement of these tasks throughout the entire process. They look at how the tasks are structured, related, ordered, synchronized, and tracked, and who is responsible for completion of them.

The more comprehensive the process and the more streamlined the workflow, the better they work together to create an effective contract management system.

Automation and Technology Improves Efficiency 

Streamlined workflows create efficiency. However, using document management technology to automate that workflow improves efficiency across your organization, and throughout your contract lifecycle. Creating a functional digital workflow with escalations and notifications from a document management system enables an organization to:

• Automate administrative and other simple tasks, allowing team members to perform strategic activities,
• Speed the content creation and approval processes,
• Synchronize data between departments to increase visibility across the contract lifecycle, and
• Proactively track and manage performance requirements and facilitate service levels with speed and precision.

Designing a contract management process that includes a document management system is the key to optimizing contract procurement (starting from scratch) and contract optimization (done periodically throughout the contract).  This systemic approach to managing vendor contracts will streamline the entire process, improve efficiency, and provide improvement to your bottom line.

About Limitless Technology

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:
Phone: 407.330.4466
Website:          LimitlessTechnology.com

When looking for a quality DM platform, there are some important things to look for.

Document Security

Document security is vital to any enterprise.  Access to documents can be controlled for different groups or individuals.  DM’s also create an audit trail of who has viewed a document, when it was accessed, and how it may have been edited. Managed documents are highly traceable and can be tagged to allow for automated alerts.

Improved Regulatory Compliance

Compliance requirements for certain documents can be extremely complex. Non-conformance can lead to fines, revoked licenses, possibly even criminal liability. Federal and state regulations often mandate strict security and privacy. A document management platform reduces the risk of non-compliance. Records retention schedules, for example, can be automated, and new documents can be more easily classified and stored.

Easier Retrieval

Searching for and retrieving documents can be very time consuming – and we all know time is money.  A document management solution, especially a cloud-based platform, can be a powerful, time-saving tool. Your organization can retrieve files using text search, or you can apply index categories to a document or folder.  As long as there is an internet connection, documents can be accessed from virtually anywhere.

Escalations and Notifications

Quite possibly this is the greatest benefit of a DM platform.  Having a 3^rd party system that is properly set up to notify your vendor management team of upcoming criticalities and escalate areas of non-compliance will reduce risk significantly.  Manually tracking important deliverables and upcoming contract expirations is a virtual impossibility in today’s business environment.  Keeping your organization from being exposed to unnecessary costs and risks will benefit the company and improve your bottom-line.

Better Backup and Disaster Recovery

Any document management solution should include a data backup and disaster recovery plan.  Using a cloud based technology of electronic documents, avoids physical documents from being damaged from fire and flood and other disasters. Also, because imaged documents are centrally stored they cannot be lost or misplaced after viewing. Documents are less likely to be misfiled, and if they are “relocated” accidentally, they are easier to locate with cross-indexing.

Whether your business manages your business documents in-house, or works with an independent 3^rd party, your company will reduce costs, improve efficiencies & mitigate risks by implementing a good document management platform.  You can be certain of that.

About Limitless Technology

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:

Phone:         407.330.4466

Website:       LimitlessTechnology.com