FFIEC News

ITM Software Unveiled its Next Generation Vendor Relationship Management Module for its Business Suite

(Jan 29, 2008)-- ITM Software, provider of IT business management solutions, unveiled the next generation of its Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) module for the ITM Business Suite. ITM VRM 3.6 was developed through extensive work with some of the world's top financial institutions, where vendor management operations are under increasing regulatory scrutiny. By incorporating industry-specific business processes and templates, this release optimizes the vendor management process for the financial services industry.

Vendor Management is an enterprise-wide function. VRM 3.6 is designed for vendor management across the entire organization, making it possible for banks and financial services institutions to reduce their vendor spend and cost effectively address vendor compliance requirements. IT represents the greatest area for savings with ITM financial clients reporting spend reductions of as much as 10 percent. With most IT organizations spending nearly half of their annual IT budget on vendors, this equates to millions of dollars in savings.

For example, one large bank in Northern California saw savings of $350K in less than six months by using the ITM VRM solution to implement an IT vendor management program. Much of this savings was accomplished because they gained solid information needed to rationalize and consolidate vendors and contracts. Within the first two months, the bank finally had an integrated system for easily seeing all contract expiration schedules and were able to proactively evaluate each contract well ahead of due dates in order to maximize contract renewal decisions.

According to a recent study of banks and financial institutions by independent research firm, The FactPoint Group, increasing compliance regulations such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), or the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) are driving banks to establish a clear and consistent mechanism for continually evaluating and proactively managing strategic and risky vendors, while forcing banks to build a unified view of their vendors. The study reports that banks are taking an enterprise-wide approach to vendor management, while recognizing that IT vendor management is more complex than the management of non-IT vendors. In fact, 70 percent of participants believe that management of IT vendors is more complex than management of non-IT vendors. With this in mind, banks require a tool that addresses this complexity.

With today's announcement, ITM has introduced several capabilities designed to enhance and streamline their vendor management efforts, including a new portfolio focus, expanded financial analytics, and out of the box industry-specific vendor lifecycle and governance templates. These capabilities are delivered in a single solution that fully integrates with the ITM Business Suite for a complete IT management solution. With the ITM solution, banks now have the tools to reduce vendor risk and support compliance initiatives, while optimizing vendor value.

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