Vendor Manager - Logistics/Retail/Internet Industry

Vendor Management Role:

- Vendor managers facilitate and maintain relationships between your organization and vendors/partners, negotiating contracts, creating standards for the vendors, and finding the best available vendors.

- Vendor managers also cultivate and maintain relationships with vendors, and they have fiduciary responsibility and signing authority for your organization.

- Vendor managers may choose to delegate signing authority to others, and if so will may impose signing limits and scope.

- The procurement manager leads the procurement team.

- They hold overall responsibility for the procurement process from the initial requisition, to selecting vendors, to negotiations, to invoice payment.

Procurement specialists perform a suite of potential tasks:

- Analyzing procurement objectives and needs

- Researching the market and assessing the options for meeting the procurement need

- Analyzing the cost structure of the vendors' bids, and seeing to the fulfillment of the agreement.

- In large organizations procurement specialists may focus on the procurement of a certain category of service or product, or on a certain geographic locale.

- Procurement specialists report to the procurement manager and are sometimes called a Purchasing Agent or Purchasing Clerk.