Vendor and contractor management
The largest line in the budget is the least verified
Most facility spend goes to companies you do not employ and cannot supervise. The invoice states what was charged. Without an independent record of what was delivered, the annual review is one opinion against another and the renewal is decided on relationship.
- Attendance verified on site
- No licence for the contractor
- Insurance currency tracked
The exposure
Where contracted spend leaks
Time on site is asserted
Four hours on the invoice, and nothing in your possession that contradicts it.
Delivery is undocumented
The owner asks for proof that the work was performed. There is none, and the exposure is yours rather than the contractor’s.
Repeat visits are not connected
The same fault three times in a quarter, billed three times, with nothing linking them into a warranty conversation.
Insurance lapses unnoticed
Discovered after an incident rather than before one, which means the risk transfer you paid for did not exist.
Portals go unused
The smaller firms doing your best work are the least likely to maintain an account in your system, so the portal captures the wrong sample.
No basis for comparison
Two contractors on the same scope, and nothing but anecdote on which to award the next term.
Adoption
A link, not an onboarding programme
The structural reason vendor portals fail is that no contractor wants credentials in twelve customers’ systems. DFM sends the job as a link. They open it on the device they already carry, check in, follow the same procedure your own staff follow, and check out. The record is identical.
- No licence, no seat, no credential to maintain
- Works in a browser on any device
- Certificates attach to the asset as well as to the visit
- Their work appears in your reporting alongside internal labour
After a quarter
Comparisons the record makes possible
- Attendance against the agreed response 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
- Cost per visit and per asset by supplier
- Which supplier your own crews have to go back behind
Questions people ask
- Will contractors comply with this?
- The ones who refuse are usually the ones asked to create and maintain an account. A link that opens the job on their own device is a much smaller ask, and compliance reflects that.
- Can we prevent dispatch when insurance has expired?
- Expiry is tracked and surfaced before it lapses, so the decision is made in advance rather than discovered during an incident review.
- How do we use this in a contract negotiation?
- Attendance, time on site, evidence rate and repeat failure rate are facts rather than positions. Most of the value shows up at the first renewal after adoption.
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