We all know about PMO's or Project Management Offices. They were the trend and continue to be implemented across IT organizations as more and more companies focus on process and project management practices. But a new trend whose time has come is that of establishing a Vendor Management Office or VMO.

As companies continue to benefit from outsourcing and offshoring, creating a Vendor Management  Office makes a lot of sense. By creating a Vendor Management Office, companies can:

• Keep track of key vendors/suppliers and their rates
• Identify sub-contractors who the tier-one vendors are sourcing work from
• Ensure that rates are consistently applied across multiple vendors providing similar capabilities
• Reduce risk through dependency on one vendor by ensuring multiple vendors are capable of providing similar services
• Manage performance scorecards to weed out poor performing vendors
• Create an on-boarding process to evaluate new vendors

Interestingly few if any companies who are currently outsourcing their technology services have a Vendor Management Office (VMO) set-up. I believe that as companies evolve their vendor management practices and implement multi-vendor enviroments, Vendor Management Offices will become as common as Project Management Offices.