Vendor management
Verify the work you are paying for
Most of a facility budget is spent with companies you cannot supervise. The invoice states what was charged. Without an independent record, the annual performance review is one opinion against another, and the renewal gets decided on relationship.
- Attendance verified on site
- No licence for the contractor
- Insurance expiry tracked
What it changes
Where contracted spend leaks
Time on site is asserted
Four hours on the invoice, and nothing in your possession that says otherwise.
Work is undocumented
The job was done. The owner asks for proof. There is none, and you carry that.
Repeat visits go uncounted
The same fault three times in a quarter, billed three times, with no record connecting them.
Insurance lapses unnoticed
Discovered after an incident rather than before one, which is a risk transfer that did not happen.
Portals go unused
Contractors will not maintain accounts in every customer’s system, so the portal you bought captures a fraction of the work.
Vendors cannot be compared
Two contractors, the same scope, and no common basis on which to choose between them.
How a visit is recorded
Four facts you get without chasing them
- 1
Attendance
Check-in on site, recorded with time and place, against the work order.
- 2
Scope
The same procedure your own technicians follow, with the evidence steps required.
- 3
Departure
Check-out, so time on site is recorded rather than claimed on an invoice.
- 4
Record
The whole visit attached to the asset and available to your owner reporting.
Adoption
A link, not an onboarding programme
Vendor portals fail for a structural reason: no contractor wants an account in twelve customers’ systems, and the small firms doing your best work are the least likely to comply. DFM sends the job as a link. They open it on the device they already carry, work, and check out.
- No licence, no seat, no credential to maintain
- Works in a browser on any device
- The resulting record is identical to work done by your own staff
- Certificates attach to the asset as well as to the visit
What you can then measure
Comparisons the record makes possible
- Attendance against the agreed window
- Time on site against time invoiced
- Proportion of visits leaving evidence
- Repeat failure rate within ninety days
- First-time fix rate by trade and by vendor
- Insurance and certification currency across the panel
Questions people ask
- Will contractors actually comply with this?
- The ones who refuse are usually the ones asked to create an account and remember a password. A link that opens the job on their own device is a much smaller ask, and compliance reflects that.
- Can we block dispatch when insurance has expired?
- Expiry is tracked and surfaced before it lapses, so the decision is made in advance rather than discovered afterwards.
- Does this replace our procurement or accounts payable system?
- No. It produces the verified record of what was delivered and feeds it to those systems through the API or export.
Keep reading
- Vendor and Contractor ManagementMost facility spend goes to companies you do not employ and cannot supervise.Open
- Smart Work OrdersA work order is the unit your budget, your SLA reporting and your audit trail are all built from.Open
- Analytics and ReportingFacility reporting usually measures how diligently a system was filled in.Open
Ready to see DFM in action?
Book a demo and see the platform running against a building like yours.