Prince ...and what it means to keep your vendor management practices up with the times

Since Prince’s passing, the lyrics to his song “1999” kept coming to mind, which then triggered me to think about how vendor management has changed from then to now.

Quick confession – I’m old enough to remember when Prince’s song “1999” came out in 1982. I thought 1999 sounded so far away. Yes, quick pause, I am old enough to have dust bunnies as pets, in college we didn’t have a class called History but we were required to take Prof Nostradamus class on Future and my coloring books were cave drawings. I digress. 

Vendor Management in 1999

By 1999, I had done some work in vendor management. We set up call center listening and script review procedures. We were doing the rudimentary stuff around third-party risk management without even knowing it. In 1999, all we were worried about was Y2K. Dec 31, 1999 and Jan 1, 2000 were dread-filled, but nothing collapsed. In retrospect, we learned that the work we had done to dust off legacy code may not have saved mankind but sure helped us all update our procedures.

You’ve looked at your program since then, right?

Flash forward a few years – when was the last time you re-visited your vendor management policy and platform to make sure it still fits? The regulatory expectations have changed. Have your practices evolved to keep up? More importantly, is your software still based in housing everything in paper files, word documents, excel spreadsheets? If so, it’s time to refresh your process. This isn’t a Y2K point in time dread scenario; it’s a “Why to keep up" moment.

Times have changed. Regulations have changed. Expectations have changed. Venminder is here and we can help. We have the tools. We have the technology. We can make you better, faster, more compliant… oh, that’s a 6 Million Dollar Man reference. Let’s not go there.

Our approach is more modern and much less expensive.

Ensure your third party Policy, Program and Procedures is up to date. Download our Vendor Management Umbrella series.