Vendor Management Lead

This review provides a professional overview of the Vendor Management Lead opportunity, designed to help potential candidates understand the scope and benefits of this role.

About the Role:

As a Vendor Management Lead, you will play a pivotal role in shaping and executing the technology & tooling purchasing strategy, with a strong emphasis on maximizing value, ensuring compliance, and optimizing technology selections. This position sits within the Software Asset Management (SAM) and Sourcing team, a geographically dispersed group operating across multiple time zones to support a global customer base. You will collaborate closely with key departments including Legal, Finance, Architecture, Global Procurement, and Technology Leadership.

Your Mission:

Your primary objective will be to ensure that third-party providers are strategically selected, effectively governed, and continuously optimized to deliver maximum business value. This role focuses on outsourcing, staff augmentation, and black-box service contracts, requiring a blend of strong leadership, strategic foresight, and adept negotiation skills to manage complex vendor relationships.

Key Responsibilities & Advantages for Candidates:

• Strategy Development: You will own and define the vendor selection and governance strategy for crucial areas like staff augmentation, external development, and managed/black box staffing services. This offers a significant opportunity to influence the direction of technology sourcing.
• Global Vendor Strategy: Develop and implement a vendor location strategy (onshore/offshore/nearshore) that aligns with technology and broader RELX sister company strategies. This allows for strategic thinking around cost optimization, time zone management, and talent acquisition.
• Procurement & Legal Partnership: Collaborate closely with Global Procurement and Legal to establish preferred vendor lists, standardized contracts, and ensure rigorous compliance checks. This provides exposure to high-level legal and procurement processes.
• RFP & Negotiation Leadership: Lead the entire RFP lifecycle, from defining requirements and evaluation to vendor selection and high-stakes negotiations. This is a prime opportunity to hone and demonstrate your negotiation prowess.
• Performance & Risk Management: Build and manage governance processes for ongoing vendor performance, financial oversight, and risk control. This ensures robust operational management and risk mitigation.
• Strategic Reviews & Value Creation: Conduct regular strategic and operational vendor reviews to ensure contractual compliance, identify performance improvements, and unlock additional value from relationships.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Partner with IT stakeholders to ensure due diligence and governance for vendor onboarding and ongoing management. This requires strong interpersonal and communication skills.
• Sourcing Strategy & Consolidation: Collaborate with senior IT leaders to design innovative sourcing strategies and lead vendor consolidation initiatives, aiming to reduce fragmentation and cost inefficiencies.
• Innovation & Thought Leadership: Engage with vendors to foster innovation and leverage their specialist expertise, driving tangible value through renegotiations, rationalization, and new sourcing models.
• Best Practices & Reporting: Benchmark and introduce best practices from leading technology organizations, and establish key reporting metrics for cost savings, performance, risk reduction, and satisfaction.

Key Considerations for Your Career Path:

• Extensive Experience Required: This role demands substantial experience in IT sourcing, vendor strategy, technology vendor management, and transformation, ideally from a top-tier firm.
• Leadership & Negotiation Skills: Proven experience in leading RFPs, vendor selections, and high-stakes contract negotiations is essential.
• Deep IT Services Understanding: A solid grasp of the IT services landscape, including cloud, infrastructure, AWS, and managed services, is crucial.
• Proven Results: Demonstrable success in driving cost savings, vendor rationalization, and performance uplift will be highly valued.
• Financial Acumen: Understanding of financial governance, compliance, and risk management within vendor engagements is necessary.
• Large-Scale Portfolio Management: Experience managing substantial external supplier portfolios (over $100M spend) is expected.
• Excellent Stakeholder Management: The ability to effectively engage with technology, procurement, and executive leadership is paramount.

Why Join Us?

This is an excellent opportunity to join a team committed to innovation, collaboration, and excellence. You will contribute to a global leader in information and analytics, where your work directly impacts advancements in science and healthcare, ultimately benefiting society. The organization fosters a healthy work-life balance with a focus on employee well-being, offering benefits such as flexible working hours, comprehensive pension plans, generous vacation, study assistance, and various wellbeing initiatives.

If you are a driven professional with a passion for strategic vendor management and a desire to make a significant impact, this role offers a compelling path for career advancement.