The Evolution of Vendor Oversight in the Post-Pandemic World

It is time to accelerate innovation of the organization’s approach to vendor management.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about unprecedented economic disruption as companies have moved from offices to working from home. The traditional ways of working evolved rapidly, and companies are now focused on monitoring and increasing productivity from a remote workforce. Organizations are accelerating their reliance on third-party vendors, partners, supply chains and external digital services.

Therefore, it is time to accelerate innovation of the organization’s approach to vendor management.

The traditional vendor management model focuses primarily on relationship and contract management. With the advent of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and a general increase in regulatory focus, including the recently released OCC Bulletin 2020-10 highlighting risks from third-party cloud computing, data aggregation, FinTechs, general third-party oversight and board responsibility. The requirements for vendor oversight have expanded into liability for how vendors meet regulatory obligations, despite not being regulated entities. The resulting due diligence, periodic on-sites, manual sample testing of transactions/accounts, complaints monitoring and information-security audits require significant internal and external resources.

Most of these tasks have been managed through spreadsheets and collaborative software, both of which are inefficient and cumbersome to administer. Now is the time to assess vendor management and implement a flexible and scalable vendor-monitoring program leveraging technology and automation.