IT procurement revolves around the activities necessary to acquire IT products and services,telecommunications,hardware,software etc.It involves establishing terms and conditions for providing services,price negotiations,performing market research,and communicating with the customers regarding the status of purchases.IT procurement activities majorly fall under the enterprise wide project management process.Some of the documents involved are:
a)Requests for Information(RFI) b) Request for Proposal (RFP) and c) Request for Quotations (RFQ)
IT Vendor Management and IT Procurement usually go hand in hand,however both have some specific areas to focus on.
Vendor Management
a)Vendor management is mostly focused on maintaining the relationships with third parties and mitigating the risks associated in dealing with them.
b)The goal is to ensure that all vendors are functioning as per the agreed contracts and are adhering to the company’s standards.
Procurement
a)Procurement’s objective is to save company’s money and reduce the risk related to contracts.Contracts that are due for renewal are also reassessed under procurement process.
b) Aim is to reduce costs ,license fee etc.Under procurement process negotiating for the best price is one of the main objectives.
c)The terms and conditions are also reviewed to check if they are in alignment with the contract and are in favor the company’s interests.
