Gatekeeper ’s Post

DORA is fast approaching. Your vendors are critical to your compliance efforts. 📝 Ensure your vendor contracts are compliant with these key requirements: ✅ They're in writing and digital (paper is allowed but it's gonna be a nightmare if you do it that way) ✅ Include mandatory clauses ✅ Conduct vendor due diligence ✅ Identify conflicts of interest ✅ Develop robust exit strategies How are you approaching this? Let us know in the comments/ https://hubs.ly/Q02v0F8G0

🚨 52% of businesses cite new regulations as a top concern for the next two years. Financial institutions, are your vendors ready? Ensuring vendor compliance isn’t just about contracts—it's about protecting your business from legal, financial, and reputational risks. This guide dives into how to keep your vendors aligned with ever-changing regulations. Check it out and share your thoughts:  https://lnkd.in/d3Xjqxjh

Vendor monitoring, also known as ongoing monitoring, involves overseeing the vendor's performance to determine if the vendor is performing as required by the service levels and contract terms. Strunk's Vendor Manager enables you to continuously monitor and manage your vendor relationships. #strunk #vendormanager

📄 New Article Alert: Is the Customer's Contract Paper Dead? 📄 Ridwaan Boda and I recently wrote an article exploring the evolving landscape of IT contracting and the relevance of customer-drafted contract terms in an era where vendors are increasingly pushing their own 'standard terms.' We delve into: - The shift towards vendor-prescriptive terms - The implications for customers procuring IT services - Strategies for ensuring customers can still leverage their own contracting terms to manage IT risks and maintain favourable commercial outcomes. 🔗 Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/ejcTuhge #ITContracting #CustomerContracts #VendorManagement #RiskManagement #MSAversusStandardTerms

Unreasonable customer terms can make negotiations go on forever, but being pragmatic and only including “must haves” instead of “nice to haves” can keep standard customer terms relevant and useful.

Your vendor's performance must be monitored on an ongoing basis throughout the life of the vendor relationship. But, how should you maintain #ongoingmonitoring and what are the best practices to follow? Check out this blog to learn more: https://lnkd.in/gt5rVWQa #vendormanagement #continuousmonitoring #vendormonitoring

Vendor relationships are never perfect and at any point an issue may arise. Having a strong issue management process is key to resolving concerns or issues with your vendors quickly and effectively. Learn the 5-step process in this blog: https://hubs.ly/Q02l2NNk0 #vendorissues #issuemanagement #vendorrisk

Large annual contract value for managed services deals took a hit during the first three months of 2024 in Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ), declining 15 per cent year-on-year. This is according to tech search and advisory firm Information Services Group (ISG), which claimed that, outside of A/NZ, the Asia Pacific (APAC) IT and business services market delivered a "resurgent performance". In the firm's latest report for its Asia Pacific ISG Index, which looks at commercial outsourcing contracts with annual contract value (ACV) of at least US$5 million, ACV for the combined market of managed services and as-a-service (XaaS) rose 25 per cent for the quarter year-on-year, to over US$5 billion. This is the first time this is happened in the region since the second quarter of 2022 and the first raise after five quarters of declines. Reseller News NZ

DORA is going to be far-reaching when it comes to your vendors if you’re in the Financial Services sector. You need to be putting in processes and governance now. A gap analysis is a useful start. Here’s what you could do to get started with DORA compliance. -Identify every ICT vendor that could fall within the remit of DORA. -Perform compliance checks by contacting every ICT vendor with a DORA-specific questionnaire. -Bring new information from your ICT vendors into your organisation. -Uncover and document several risks as specific DORA risks. -Implement a Vendor and Contract Lifecycle Management (VCLM) approach to improve prospects of compliance with DORA. Is DORA going to impact you?

Continuing from where we left, It's not uncommon for vendors to deflect responsibility when issues arise, especially in complex systems involving multiple parties. In this case, both vendors were confident that the problem was on the other vendor's end due to the nature of their respective services and systems. It took almost two days of brainstorming to pinpoint and fix the problem. The payment gateway vendor had implemented modifications to their payment system as part of their system improvement initiative. Unfortunately, during the integration process, the software vendor overlooked these changes and continued to use the old code. This oversight led to open transactions not being flagged appropriately, resulting in the issue experienced during the registration process. Once the cause was identified, the issue was successfully fixed. This incident highlights the crucial role vendors play in our daily lives and the importance of thorough integration and communication between vendors to ensure smooth operations. The ownership, clear communication, configuration management and equal maturity of all vendors are critical for delivering SLAs in vendor supported solutions. The impact of vendors is not limited to just an organisation but may encompasses over all functioning of society. In the next post, we’ll  delve into the topic of Vendor Management and explore strategies for optimising vendor relationships, enhancing operational efficiency and mitigate risks. Best Regards