Measuring Supplier Relationships in a SIAM Model

Many organisations look to move to a SIAM model in the hope that it will improve communication and collaboration with its suppliers, but, suppliers are driven by the behaviours and decisions made by organisations who have dictated that relationship in their contracts.? So, how do you ensure the SIAM model does improve communication and collaboration, and you remove yourself from being another failing SIAM statistic?

Strong relationships are critical

The most important relationship to understand is the business, and its reliance on IT to deliver its product or services to the customer. Sitting down and getting a detailed view on requirements will uncover the dependency across your IT supply chain, and the criticality around its availability and reliability, to ensure products and services are being delivered on time and to customer expectations.

When we understand the business reliance on IT services, including the customer experience and feedback on how IT services are being delivered today; you will realise the gaps on improvements and a justified blueprint of how future IT services need to be delivered, including those from your suppliers, that are fit for purpose, and meet the desired goals that drive value to an organisation and its customers.

Developing the future blueprint for IT service excellence, is an opportunity to identify the stakeholders across your IT supply chain who need to be involved in delivering those services to the business, and responding to any incidents or requests raised. Building out a stakeholder map, will support the next activity around the governance and structure model needed for continuous success and improvement.

Desirable cultures need to be created

When understanding how the relationship will work with a SIAM provider, I look at two aspects. The first is the people, governance, activities, and measurements required. The second, is looking at the expectations of the relationship at a strategic, tactical, and operational level. This helps you identify the key deliverables with the right audience.

The governance and cultural behaviours need to be clarified, including regular monitoring of performance, ways to look out for potential risks, seeking new opportunities for innovation, and continuous improvement mechanisms put in place across the entire IT supply chain, including suppliers.

The best time to gain agreement on the measurements with your SIAM provider is to list them in an RFP when you go to tender and then entering these requirements into the contract. The detailed work on how, who, when, where and when can happen through a series of collaborative workshops that include internal stakeholders from the business, IT and the SIAM provider.

People first, expectations second?

I am forever saying “we need to know who the stakeholders are before doing anything.”? I cannot begin to tell you how many projects I have been involved in over the years, and we missed a critical stakeholder until too late into the project. It brings the entire project to a complete standstill. Not only is it demoralising and frustrating for the team, but you also cannot blame the key stakeholder when you are the one who forgot them. So, let’s make sure we get this bit right first!

The key stakeholders must include all members of whom are responsible, accountable, consulted and informed when delivering an IT service to the business.? This should be a blend of people who work in the business, across the IT supply chain and suppliers.? Consider all those who are working at a strategic, tactical, and operational level within your organisation.

It is good to identify a senior sponsor, to help give guidance on critical stakeholders to engage with. Not forgetting the stakeholders in your SIAM provider, who must be part of these conversations to ensure you’re building a successful future working relationship.

You would have started building out quite an extensive list of stakeholders by now, and these stakeholders are required for your future governance model, who will deliver on the contractual agreement, and meeting the measurements put in place for a successful relationship going forward.

Collaborative governance design

Whilst your organisation will have an idea of the governance model you want to have, it is imperative that the work is done collaboratively with all key stakeholders in your business, across the IT supply chain, including suppliers and your SIAM provider.

Working collaboratively is a mindset change and has proven statistically to drive better productivity within teams. Working collaboratively creates an inclusive environment, which is built on trust and an understanding of each others role, responsibilities, and capabilities. It supports a gap analysis on where skills or tools are needed to develop a more sophisticated and efficient way of working which benefits teams and organisations.

A recent article shared by Forbes UK on ‘Capturing the elusive benefits of collaboration’ talks about teams working in silo and competition across peers, doesn’t call for success.? Success comes from working together, asking questions, and having a safe space to do this.

Activities with your SIAM provider

Having a solid governance model in place allows for fostering a culture of team collaboration, brainstorming, resolving issues, preventing risks, identifying new opportunities for continuous improvement, sharing of expertise, and strategic innovation.

Creating spaces like this need to be well thought out and planned in advance. Prepare by doing the following:

1. Regular meetings that last longer than an hour should be scheduled in the diary well in advance.
2. Prepare all materials that will be used in the meeting and share these with the stakeholders at least 48 hours beforehand if you are expecting them to read and feedback in the session.
3. Ensure technology is available; online meetings scheduled, online templates being used for discussions, meeting rooms booked, AV equipment is ready, whiteboards, flip charts, working pens and post-it notes (if needed)
4. After the meeting, email meeting minutes and/or actions within 48 hours, with agreed follow-ups for action completion with the action owners.
5. Store all outputs of the meetings into a shared knowledge management system.

Here are my recommendations and what has worked well for me in the past:

Workshop?

A dedicated workshop focused on the SIAM provider engagement is important if you want the relationship to blossom over the months and years to come. Building trust and working collaboratively that supports your business to continuously improve the services being delivered and further strategic growth are outcomes of what is needed from the relationship.

Who wants to be in a relationship where you are not being supported to improve, grow, and become a better version of yourself?

Workshop outcomes should include a deeper understanding of the relationship with your SIAM provider and a detailed description of how this will be achieved, by doing what, by when and by who, at each strategic, tactical, and operational level. Consider the following:

People

1. Behaviour and trust principles
2. Value and purpose of the relationship
3. Alignment to your organisational values
4. A collaborative environment and culture.

Governance

1. Business Relationship Management policy
2. Operations Run Book
3. Governance processes, including reviews.
4. Roles and Responsibilities matrix
5. Communications Plan
6. Documented targets, objectives and KPIs
7. Shared Knowledge Management System
8. Service Review Board & Strategy Planning meetings.
9. Collaboration Review Sessions/ Away Days
10. MI Reporting/ Dashboards
11. Risk Register
12. Exit Strategy

Activities

1. What listed activities are required?
2. Where will the activities take place?
3. When should these activities happen?
4. Who should own these activities?
5. How will the activities be achieved?
6. What measurements are needed?
7. Who are the owners of the activities?

Measuring for success

Ensuring measurements are in place to support your ongoing relationship is just as important as the measurements you have in place for the delivery of your IT services. It is important that these measurements are documented and are SMART, in the sense that they are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound.

Having a workshop to discuss the governance and activities expected of your business relationship with your SIAM provider, should set you in good stead for knowing and understanding why you need specific measures to be put in place.

Again, working collaboratively with your SIAM provider, agree on these measures. Below are suggestions on what can be included:

1. Monitoring and reporting to track contract performance metrics, identify issues, and facilitate timely decision making and adjustments.
2. Provide a method for analysis, selecting stakeholders to create value-based initiatives, and their success and failure against agreed targets/ objectives.
3. Conduct a quarterly assessment on the capability & maturity of the business relationship model to ensure it is always meeting the desired objectives of the organisation and proactively creates a timeline action plan that quickly remediates and supports any improvements to be made.
4. Performance evaluation must be kept open, honest, and transparent to ensure a continuous improvement to the service is being consistently adhered to and ensures maximum business value is being achieved against the agreed targets and objectives.
5. Measurements include, but not limited to the operational processes & systems, costs to service, regular review board meetings, delivery & performance, and the resolution of issues.
6. Define the measurements for benefits and value and provide a mechanism to capture innovation and ideas for improvements.
7. Present the feedback from your end user community and the SIAM provider on the service being delivered and the continuous service improvement plan to resolve any issues.
8. Where possible, and where it has been agreed, the integration of AI technologies for performance analysis, review, and enabling faster processing, risk identification, and optimisation of services.

I would love to hear your feedback on how to create great collaborative teams in a SIAM model, feel free to reach out to me for a chat!

?