Third Parties

Almost every business has critical third party suppliers upon which it relies. Increasingly many businesses are built with outsourced functions fulfilling major parts of their value chain. The most successful achieve a co-operative relationship with their suppliers backed up by mechanisms to ensure the required service, and value, are delivered. But this is often not the case and significant costs can leak out in increased relationship management overheads and service delivery issues. Often major risks exist at the suppliers that are unknown until they impact supplier and buyer alike. Kingston Smith Consulting are one of the few firms able to both identify the root cause of issues with third parties and offer the expertise and commercial skills necessary to deliver pragmatic and sustainable solutions. Our services include:

• Reviewing existing outsource relationships identifying, analysing and resolving operational and relationship issues to the satisfaction of both parties.
• Advising you on the negotiation of new and renewing supplier contracts and assisting in due diligence work on the third party. A flawed contract will exacerbate, and often create, service issues in the future. Our specialists can ensure that the commercial clauses you specify are appropriate to your needs and not merely legal boilerplate.
• Assisting in the establishment and operation of Service Level Agreements, Key Performance Indicators and Management Information in respect of the supplier’s service.
• Performance of contract compliance reviews, assisting in conflict resolution and verifying financial recoveries.
• Performing risk reviews of your suppliers, either broad based due diligence or focused reviews such as the third party’s readiness for a business continuity incident.
• An increasingly common business challenge it the transition from one outsource supplier to another. Our consultants have helped manage these hugely complex and risky projects in other businesses and can support you.
• A full ‘turnkey’ outsource governance capability in which our consultants manage the oversight framework to monitor your suppliers. We leverage our expertise to help you manage your suppliers to deliver maximum value.