You and your team manage dozens or even hundreds of supplier contracts across different regions.
A major project deadline is approaching, and everything seems on track – until you get an urgent message.
One of your key suppliers missed a critical milestone.
Panic sets in.
You check your inbox. No updates from the vendor.
You dig through shared drives. The contract is outdated – no one has the latest version.
You ask your team, but everyone has a different answer.
“Did we even define a clear deadline for this?”
“Who approved their last change request?”
“Did anyone track their past performance?”
It’s a mess. And now, it’s your mess to clean up.
Why This Keeps Happening
Vendor relationships don’t break down overnight.
They fall apart slowly – because of unclear expectations, misalignment, and miscommunication.
Many companies assume their suppliers know exactly what’s expected of them. In reality, information is often scattered across different teams, tools, and conversations.
Take contract negotiations. A vendor pushes back on a key term, so procurement discusses it internally over email. The decision is made in Slack. Someone updates the Word document – but an old version is mistakenly sent to legal. By the time the final contract is signed, it’s unclear which details were agreed upon, and no one has a single, definitive version of the contract.
Now fast forward six months. A supplier fails to meet a key deliverable. The procurement team points to the contract. The supplier swears they never agreed to that. Who’s right? Nobody really knows.
The same lack of clarity happens with performance tracking. Many companies assume their vendors are performing well – until they’re not. Quarterly reviews often rely on outdated reports, gut feelings, or anecdotal feedback. When a supplier underperforms, there’s little historical data to show patterns or justify corrective action.
The problem isn’t bad suppliers. The problem is a lack of transparency.
How Leading Companies Fix This
For the last 2 decades, our consultant company Aventario helped major global players fixing their supplier management chaos. There is no shame in having such chaos, because the bigger the company, the more complex is their vendor onboarding and contract approval cycle. But it surely is shameful to not do anything about it.
71% of companies cannot find 10% or more of their contracts – Journal of Contract Management
Smart companies don’t just hope their suppliers will perform well.
They create systems that ensure it.
The first step is eliminating scattered negotiations. Instead of relying on email chains, Slack conversations, and document attachments, all vendor discussions happen inside one platform. While there are plenty of tools available for procurement-first vendor management challenges, like Jaggaer, Procura or Ivalua, the options for multi-lot tenders and SOW-heavy contracts are limited.
With managedsuppliers, every contract negotiation is structured, logged, and tracked – without the need for external tools. This means no lost details, no version confusion, and no endless email threads.
Contracts themselves need to evolve beyond static PDFs or Word Documents sitting in a folder. In managedsuppliers, contracts aren’t just documents – they’re structured data sourcs. This allows for real-time updates, instant visibility into the latest terms, and seamless approvals. If a key clause changes, it’s updated across the system, ensuring that everyone – both internal teams and vendors – are always working from the same source of truth.
Contract terms also matter. Many companies start from scratch every time, leading to inconsistencies and long legal reviews. A built-in clause library changes this. Instead of reinventing agreements for every vendor, teams can insert pre-approved, battle-tested clauses suited to their project and supplier type. The result? Less risk, faster approvals, and clearer vendor accountability.
Transparency doesn’t stop at contracts. Performance tracking must be real and measurable. Instead of relying on disconnected spreadsheets, managedsuppliers provides a structured framework for tracking vendor commitments over time. While performance data still requires input from internal teams or suppliers, having a centralized system ensures that no information is lost. It becomes easy to compare past performance, identify trends, and spot issues before they escalate.
Finally, companies need a single source of truth for supplier commitments. When vendor data is fragmented, it’s impossible to enforce accountability. In managedsuppliers, every agreement, contract amendment, and performance review is stored as structured data – not just as a collection of documents. This means every supplier action is trackable, comparable, and transparent.
The Bottom Line
Vendor transparency isn’t about adding more tools. It’s about removing friction.
When expectations are clear, trackable, and aligned, supplier relationships improve. And when supplier relationships improve, your entire business runs smoother.
The best supplier relationships don’t happen by accident. They happen when companies build clarity into every step of the process.
Is transparency a challenge in your vendor management process?
We not only provide the software to keep control over your vendors, but also the experts from our consultant company Aventario to solve existing vendor problems to give you a clean start for future growth.
Let’s talk.