Your Business Users Need You To Work Differently — Are You Ready?

Economic power is shifting to emerging geographies, causing businesses to innovate in order to serve new customers. Global demographic trends result in changes to user expectations of technology, pushing new IT delivery models. Increasing energy concerns drive businesses to rethink where and how they operate — and also where they source technology in the world.

All of these fundamental market forces create an environment where businesses must change the way they source and manage technology. Users increasingly self-provision new technologies like mobile applications, smartphones, tablets, and cloud offerings to innovate and keep up with these business changes. As users acquire their own solutions, businesses become burdened with increasing numbers of vendors, integration points, and poorly understood contractual obligations.

Few organizations are fully prepared for the impact that these changes will have on vendor-related risk and on business capabilities that rely on vendors as part of their delivery. Business users don’t think about the sourcing and vendor management (SVM) implications of their self-provisioning, and most SVM executives don’t have the time, resources, or emerging-technology expertise to educate those users. But with the stakes so high, it’s time for SVM Professionals to change their perspective from supporting the business to guiding business users who need new vendor relationships to achieve their objectives.

Use Your Unique Role To Drive Your Organization’s Success During This Change

Forrester believes that SVM Professionals are uniquely suited to lead their organizations through the next decade of change. SVM Professionals have the skills to manage complex supplier ecosystems, detailed knowledge of end-to-end sourcing processes, and the nuanced ability to balance costs, risks, and value in third-party relationships. The SVM Professionals of the future can’t be tactical, reactive order-takers but must instead become orchestrators of complex, technology-enabled business solutions. Best-in-class SVM Professionals are already preparing for this transformation by investing in new skills, embracing technology change, and implementing innovative sourcing models. What are you doing to get ready?

Prepare To Lead Your Business Users Through Confusing Technology Changes

Forrester’s Sourcing & Vendor Management Forum 2011 will help you get ahead of the most fundamental changes affecting you and your organization. At this Event, we will address the dramatic changes taking place in technology sourcing and help you set a clear strategy and road map for the future. By attending the Forum, you will understand the skills, management practices, and technology delivery models that will help you lead your organization through this change.

Who Should Attend?

• Enterprise executives who must outperform at a sourcing level to ensure their firm’s success.
• Sourcing executives who need to create sourcing strategies that drive business results.
• CIOs and senior IT managers who need to make critical innovation-driven sourcing and vendor management decisions.
• Procurement executives who execute sourcing strategies that must balance risk, cost and business value.
• IT service managers looking to optimize their spend, governance practices, and geographic footprint.
• Vendor management professionals who are responsible for ensuring that sourcing relationships deliver the business results promised.

Why Attend?

The Forum is designed around three track sessions:

• Setting Innovative Sourcing Strategies.Do you have a sourcing strategy in place that takes advantages of new technology offerings, such as mobile devices and cloud-based IT services? In a technology environment characterized by constant disruption, SVM Professionals need a steady hand to guide their technology sourcing decisions.  This track will help you set your sourcing strategy in order to take advantage of trends such as the innovation offshore services marketplace and new “as-a-service” delivery models. We will also provide an overview of innovations in the major technology marketplaces and highlight new players that are disrupting the status quo.
• Preparing For New Sourcing Execution Models.Are your business partners getting ahead of you in the technology buying cycle? Are you confident that your organization is getting the best deal that it possibly can from the marketplace? This track will help you adjust your vendor selection and negotiation processes to keep pace with the most innovative sourcing practices. We will highlight how other leading companies have applied their knowledge of vendor strategies, sales incentives, anddiscounting methods to generate cost savings and enhance value for their IT and business counterparts.
• Transforming Vendor Management. Are you keeping pace with business demands for innovation? Are you maximizing the value of the relationships that you have in place? Your organization’s traditional capabilities may have served you well in the past, but that doesn’t mean you have the skills to stay relevant in the future. This track will share case studies and examples of how leading companies have applied strong vendor management to revolutionize their traditional sourcing and innovation practices. We will highlight how leading companies are applying new governance models to balance business value, costs, and risks in their vendor relationships, and we will show how cutting-edge sourcing tools and services are changing the discipline of sourcing.

Register