Here are some more details of what this might look like.  I say ‘might’ because each organization is different, and before we begin, I’ll need to sit down with you and gain a complete understanding of your needs.  Here are a few examples.

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• Change management: Anytime you engage in an IT project, change is inevitable.  Sometimes it’s minor or incremental, but often it’s significant.  You need to prepare your organization for that change and manage that change during and after the project.  Failure to manage change often results in failure of your project.  For example, you don’t want to invest millions in a new technology only to get minimal user adoption because of poor change management.
   

• Vendor identification and selection:  You’ll want to ensure that you have effective processes in place for identifying and selecting qualified vendors.  In addition, you’ll want to ensure your contracts are effective at protecting your interests and fully address project budget, timelines, and specifications.  Finally, you’ll want to ensure your vendors are properly on-boarded.
   

• Identifying and managing risk:  Projects are never linear.  You’re going to have challenges that need to be managed.  Each day, week, or month, the project may hit a snag or veer off course.  There will be land mines that need to be avoided.  We do that by taking a proactive approach to identifying potential and actual risks and managing those risks throughout the project.  Failure to manage those risks, will result in projects not delivered to specifications, schedule, or budget.
   

• Managing communications:
   

  • Communications are arguably the most critical part of any project during the project execution phase.  Two elements of communications involve: (1) communications between vendors and the organization, and (2): communications about the project within your organization.​
     

  • Effective communications between vendors and your organization are critical.  Communications need to occur at the right times, at the right cadence, with the right people, discussing the right things.  Processes need to be setup to facilitate those communications.  We often seen that miscommunications due to ineffective communications processes result in major project shortcomings.
     

  • Communications about your project within the organization is also critical.  Your need to control your message.  You need to control who says what to whom and when.  When you lose control of this communication, you lose control of your project.  For example, what happens when someone on your project team, with limited information about a part of the project, miscommunication some critical information to an executive or stakeholder?  Let’s say they make an off the cuff remark about the project being over budget or not being delivered on time.  Such communications can have catastrophic consequences.  At a minimum you will take on enormous stress and spend an inordinate amount of time addressing the issue – time that could have been much better spent on other critical tasks.
     

• Independent vendor communications and status meetings: 
   

  • Perhaps one of the most important aspects of these services involves conducting independent communications and status meetings with your vendors.  The reality is that vendors will often not communicate to you or your team, such critical items as:
     

    • The real challenges they are facing;
       

    • Persons on your team that may be negatively impacting the project; and
       

    • Numerous other items which they feel may negatively impact your relationship with them. 
       

  • Therefore, these items may go unaddressed and create additional risk:  By having regular, independent communications with your vendors, I’m able to uncover those issues they may otherwise be hesitant to discuss.
     

  • Similarly, as an outside party, but your representative, I’m able to have those difficult conversations with your vendors that you or your team may not be able to have.  For example, your team may have a good working relationship with a vendor and seek to maintain that relationship.  However, sometimes difficult issues come up for which your team are not comfortable having those conversations for fear of damaging that day to day relationship.  That’s where I come in.  Through these independent communications, I can communicate in a more direct manner and resolve these issues. 
     

• Review vendor statements of work and contract negotiations: In order to protect your interests, and to ensure that your projects are to specifications and on time and on budget, it’s critical that statements of work reflect an accurate representation of what you want and what the vendor is going to deliver.
   

• Help define roles and responsibilities:  When roles and responsibilities are not clearly defined, chaos often ensues.  Who is the main vendor contact?  Who is the main contact on your team?  Can others within the organization make requests of the vendor?  Who signs off on work and when?
   

• Audit vendor invoices:  Vendor invoices can get complex.  There are billable hours, from many different persons, for many different tasks.  There are out of pocket expenses which must meet policies.  Who is responsible for reviewing these invoices?  How effective are those reviews?  How certain are you that all of the invoices are completely accurate?  How certain are you that you haven’t paid a duplicate invoice or for more than the vendor was entitled?