The organisation is active in the financial sector and is thereby subject to the financial statutes and regulations applicable to that sector.

At Van Lanschot Kempen, the Procurement Department falls under the ‘Service Center Purchasing Contract Management & Facilities’. The department consists of two buyers, five contract managers, and one manager for contract management. Together they constitute 6.5 FTE.

Peggy Klingers is the manager for contract management and directs her team of five contract managers. She and her team use VendorLink on a daily basis to analyse procurement spending, inspect contracts, and comply with laws and regulations.

Rolling out VendorLink across the organisation

Peggy relates: “We started implementing VendorLink in 2015. At that time we were using another system, but that didn’t entirely fulfil our desire to roll out vendor management across the whole organisation.”

Furthermore, the procurement department of Van Lanschot Kempen had a need to:

• Make contracts accessible and open to inspection across the organisation
• Be able to establish who is responsible for each contract
• Measure and improve contract compliance
• Make an ABC analysis
• Account for procurement expenses to the DNB, EBA and NRA
• Be able to perform better risk management

Because Van Lanschot Kempen does its procurement in a business-driven way, it is essential to maintain an overview of the spending and contacts. “When you enter into a contract with a supplier, it often only becomes an issue again when something unusual happens or when it is about to expire,” Peggy says. “We had a strong desire to make our contracts easily accessible for all concerned. Thanks to VendorLink, we can check contracts more easily and we get an automatic reminder when a contract is expiring.”

Implementation of VendorLink

Peggy was personally involved in the process of implementing the new software. “Switching to a new system is always a bit stressful,” says Peggy. “When you switch from one system to another, you always lose something. We were familiar with the old system and suddenly had to work with a new system and new dashboards. At first we were no longer able to retrieve certain information, such as our contract numbers, in VendorLink. Fortunately we were able, in collaboration with VendorLink, to retrieve all the numbers from our old system and import them into our new system.”

Using VendorLink in the organisation

Van Lanschot Kempen uses the Spend, Contracts and Vendor Rating modules in VendorLink. “VendorLink is a really user-friendly and well organised system. I am rather visually inclined, and VendorLink scores highly when it comes to visualisation. For example, I can tell from the green bullets next to contracts whether we are compliant,” says Peggy.

In addition, the contract managers can call up the contracts for which they are responsible. “Because that doesn’t always happen yet,” Peggy says, “we print out reports for them; fortunately that is very easy in VendorLink. I can select by a number of fields, such as type of contract or expiry date, and I can see whether an exit plan is in place. These reports offer us immediate insight into the actions that need to be taken.”

Van Lanschot Kempen also gives many internal presentations on VendorLink. “We do that because we want everyone to consult the system,” Peggy says. “Within the modules we can work with user profiles, which enables us to give certain rights to each employee. This allows us to ensure that employees see only what they have a right to see or what they need.”

Starting with the Supplier Portal

At present, Van Lanschot Kempen is in the implementation phase of the Supplier Portal component of the Linked Plan.

Based on interviews and discussions, VendorLink is forming a picture of what Van Lanschot Kempen wants from the Supplier Portal. “In this way, we can give an accurate indication of what we want to do with the module, and VendorLink can then show immediately how we should deliver this”, says Peggy.

Better risk management, thanks to VendorLink

Since the banking crisis, the financial sector has had to deal with many more laws and regulations. Financial institutions are evaluated in terms of risk management, and are obliged to be able to show whether an exit strategy is in place for each contract and what the nature of that strategy is.

‘“At the start of this year we sat around the table with VendorLink to discuss how we use the system, what our concerns are, and what is on the agenda,” Peggy relates. “At present, our main concerns are the changing legislation and regulations, monitoring and reports. So it’s great for us that this is now facilitated in VendorLink.”

“Thanks to the clear reporting fields in VendorLink, we can show how we do our risk management for each contract.”

For each contract, Van Lanschot Kempen can say whether:

• there is a risk assessment
• this contract is in scope with De Nederlandse Bank
• an exit plan, exit paragraph and exit strategy are in place

These are reporting fields that the organisation can now very easily make open to scrutiny if they are evaluated. “Of course, these fields are not of equal importance for all contracts,” Peggy explains. “But, especially in the case of major SaaS or outsourcing contracts, our customers must be able to have confidence that we carry out sound procurement, and monitor and minimise risks.”

Van Lanschot Kempen is also keen to try to bring these reporting fields into the Supplier Portal later. “When you involve a supplier in the procurement process it is, of course, also good to offer insight into this documentation. In addition, we want to set up standard task for ourselves, whereby we can clearly see which documentation is retrieved every year, or which part of the contract needs to be evaluated.”

Results & collaboration with VendorLink

“Now that we are using VendorLink, we have a better view of when contracts expire and of who is internally responsible for the contract. Because Spend and Contracts are properly linked, we can measure contract compliance and work to achieve the highest possible level of compliance – something we previously could not make open to inspection,” Peggy relates.

“The nice thing about VendorLink, I find, is that it is a system with a wide variety of uses for all types of customers. VendorLink does not only present itself as a tool for the government or local authorities; it offers functionalities that are interesting for any type of organisation. That’s why we regularly meet with VendorLink and other customers to discuss our concerns and how VendorLink can help us with these. The system also has very regular new releases in which the specific wishes of customers are taken into consideration. It is a highly motivated club which gives us a lot of help.”