Explore How to Manage A Multi-Supplier Environment with the SIAM Solutions

by Emily Vancamp Professional IT Certifications

Today let’s talk about how SIAM contributes in a multi-supplier environment. Well, managing the multiple suppliers of business and IT services seamlessly integrate them, to offer the single business facing IT organization. It results in fulfilling the business requirements.

SIAM has been evaluating the prevalence of managing the different functions. Over the past decades the industry has witnessed the evolution of the outsourcing models and their supporting SIAM solutions.

What is SIAM and why is it gaining popularity?

SIAM stands for Service Integration and Management is the way of applying IT service management roles and principles where a lot of different groups from multiple businesses are involved in the overall delivery of the services.

It ensures that you have received maximum value through offering governance, management, integration, assurance and collaboration with all service providers. It supports the providers to understand how they fit into the service ecosystem and how they subsidise the occupational consequences and purposes.

New Challenges in Multi-Supplier Environment

The study through Gartner has elaborated that SIAM providers reported that 22% of their consumers are already availing their services. The global market of SIAM Professional is expected to grow at a considerable rate in the next 5 to 6 years.

Verticals such as banks and securities, manufacturing and ordinary resources are leveraging it the most and simultaneously a massive scope of growth lies in the government, education verticals, etc. The development of service desks with SIAM services is also becoming the trend.

Although, the lack of willingness among the service providers to support the procedure of integration is the major restraining factor. It hinders the development of the SIAM market. Hence, businesses need to navigate via the following challenges to successfully integrate SIAM.

Lack of a single pane of glass across multiple suppliers

The lack of strong governance leads to the problems of issues like reconciliation and work replication because of the non-standardized tools and applications, uneven levels of details sharing across components teams.

Conflict among the SLA’s and Lack of Standardization

Various suppliers have different standards in terms of work procedures and the work environment. Each one has the test setup for the validation and issues arise when the quality assurance teams change the set-ups to fulfil the standards.

Lack of seamless ticket hand-off among suppliers

It occurs in different cases that the processes don’t provide integration points for the different suppliers working on the different factors of the procedure. Unlike the standard procedure for execution, various suppliers operate at the different procedure maturity level causing the integration issue.

The Requirement of Advanced SIAM Solution

As the enterprises required the easy and cloud based, plug and play integration which can empower their business with the scalability, improved security and the faster way to integrate actions across the different toolsets guaranteeing holistic and enhanced governance.

Businesses need a system which seamlessly integrates suppliers and allows them to run their service management processes individually. Hence, reducing the requirement to change their procedure and tools for service integration.

Now, we will look forward to solutions which will help to reduce the above challenges.

Here are some key factors consider when managing the multi-supplier with SIAM Solutions:

Defining clear roles and responsibilities: Clearly demonstrate the roles and responsibilities of each service provider. It involves the roles of the service integrator and the supplier. Then, develop the governance structure which highlights the decision making procedures, escalation processes and communication protocols.
Go with the effective service integrator: Understand that service integrator is the main factor of the SIAM model and responsible for integrating the services and managing the relationship among the different suppliers. Select the service integrator with the experience, expertise and the good understanding of business needs.
Standardize procedure and tools: Develop the standardized procedure and tools across all suppliers to ensure efficiency and consistency. Also, focus on implementing service management processes like incident management, problem management, etc.
Develop the Single Point of Contact: Designate the single point of the contact for each supplier to facilitate the communication and issue resolution. It should be responsible for managing the relationships, addressing concerns and collaborating activities among the consumer and the supplier.
Enable collaboration and communication: Make sure to create the culture of collaboration and open communication among all stakeholders such as the service integrator and individual suppliers. Make sure to use collaboration tools and regular meetings to make sure that everyone is aligned and informed.
Flexibility and Adaptability: Make sure to remain flexible and adaptable to manage the changes in the environment, technology review and supplier relationships. Day-to-days reviews and updates the SIAM model to fulfil the business needs.
Risk assessment and management: Identify and manage risks associated with the multi-supplier environment. Implement contingency plans and mitigation strategies to address the potential problems that may occur.

Developing and managing the SIAM solutions within the multi-supplier environment requires the appropriate planning, communication and collaboration. It is an ongoing procedure which requires continuous monitoring and enhancement to ensure the successful integration and delivery of different services across the entire ecosystem.

Final Thoughts:

Through the above information we have demonstrated how SIAM Foundation manages the multi-supplier environment. Alongside, what challenges occur in multi-supplier environments are also elaborated.

To overcome these hurdles, advanced SIAM solutions are imperative, offering a unified platform for streamlined governance. As SIAM's global market grows, businesses must navigate challenges and adopt progressive solutions for integrated and efficient multi-supplier environments.