Vendorly [1], the vendor oversight platform for financial institutions, recently polled bankers and mortgage professionals on their organizations' vendor management processes, challenges, and technology capabilities. According to the survey, 59 percent of respondents said that they did not have a fully comprehensive vendor management program in place and 33 percent said that their organization's vendor management program needed improvement.
When asked about the biggest challenges their organization faced within vendor management, 36 percent of the respondents identified employee capacity to handle workload or vendor management as their greatest challenge. Among survey respondents, 40 percent said their organization had three or more full-time employees dedicated to their vendor management program with 39 percent stating they have less than three.
Around 44 percent said their organization is responsible for managing at least 100 vendors. "With such vendor volumes to manage, it is no surprise that the second biggest challenge cited by professionals was knowing who their vendors are and tracking them with 27 percent respondents citing this as a challenge. Vendor inventory size and management may also influence reporting frequency. When asked how often their organization monitors and assesses vendor performance, 30 percent of respondents said annually.
Around 47 percent of respondents said that their organization did not have a technology solution in place to help manage vendors, while 90 percent believed that technology would positively impact their vendor management program and process.
“The importance of technology to drive efficiency, increase due diligence and further improve an organization’s vendor oversight processes is becoming a realization for many,” said Jim Vaca, SVP, Vendorly. “However, as the survey results show, even though many have identified the need for a vendor management solution, a surprising number have yet to adopt or implement the technology. Our solutions allow for financial institutions to move away from historic and inefficient vendor management processes and transition toward a multifaceted vendor oversight program to help them achieve more efficient management of the process using much less human capital than otherwise would have been required without our technology.”
The survey, which was conducted between February and April 2018 looked at responses from banking and mortgage professionals with a third of them from mid-sized banks and the remaining respondents from small-to-mid-sized banks.