Vendor Relationship Management, Manager
Astreya · Hyderabad
A S T R E Y A
Manager — Vendor Management Office (AV)
Workplace Technology & AV · Careers at Astreya
Role Title
Manager — Vendor Management Office (AV)
Department / Team
Vendor Management Office (VMO) · Delivery Governance
Reports To
Manager, Vendor Management Office
Location
Hyderabad, India · Hybrid
Working Hours
Standard IST business hours (10:00–19:00 IST)
Employment Type
Full-Time
ROLE OVERVIEW
At Astreya, we deliver world-class workplace technology and AV services to premier global enterprise clients. As prime contractor, we rely on a specialized ecosystem of delivery partners to execute seamlessly. We hold ourselves fully accountable for end-to-end service delivery, which means establishing clear governance, aligned commitments, and rigorous standards across every vendor partner in our portfolio.
As Manager of the Vendor Management Office (VMO), you will lead an ambitious team of four across Levels I to III, driving full-lifecycle vendor governance for approximately eight key strategic partners. You will champion operational excellence across rules of engagement, SLA/OLA alignment, quality assurance, commercial performance, and risk management. Serving as a crucial leadership bridge between Astreya delivery teams and external partners, you will foster collaborative partner relationships while firmly upholding operational rigor and commercial boundaries.
If you thrive in high-impact leadership roles where strategic vendor oversight meets operational excellence and client delivery, this is an extraordinary opportunity to shape and scale our global VMO framework.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
1. Partner Governance & Rules of Engagement
- Establish and enforce robust rules of engagement across all partners, ensuring formal work orders, defined interfaces, and standardized reporting line-of-sight.
- Own the OLA framework that translates client SLAs and experience targets into precise partner operational metrics, targets, and escalation matrices.
- Lead the partner governance cadence, presiding over weekly operational syncs, monthly performance reviews, and quarterly business reviews (QBRs).
- Manage high-level partner escalations in person, travelling to partner offices and client sites across EMEA as needed to drive executive resolution.
- Maintain and refine the partner tiering and segmentation strategy to optimize governance intensity based on criticality and spend.
2. Performance, Quality & Remediation
- Oversee monthly partner SLA/OLA performance reporting, providing full portfolio visibility and proactively identifying trend drifts before service impact occurs.
- Direct an independent quality assurance program for partner deliverables to ensure unbiased performance scoring and accountability.
- Drive structured remediation plans (SIPs) for performance gaps, establishing clear milestones, exit criteria, and joint ownership through closure.
- Lead root-cause attribution analysis for complex, cross-partner major incidents in collaboration with internal delivery functions.
- Integrate partner performance reporting into client executive service reviews, presenting a unified narrative of service quality.
3. Commercial Governance & Penalty Flushback
- Direct commercial governance across partner rate cards, change control, billing rules, and gainshare/earn-back provisions.
- Manage the penalty flushback framework, ensuring that vendor-attributable service credits levied by the client are properly recovered via OLA contractual mechanisms.
- Validate chargeback evidence packages, including incident logs, RCA documentation, OLA clause mappings, and financial impact assessments.
- Ensure commercial alignment between vendor costs and client billings, collaborating with Finance to resolve variances.
- Provide performance insights to guide contract renewals, partner rationalization, and Procurement negotiations.
4. Team Leadership & Matrix Interfaces
- Mentor, develop, and empower a high-performing team of four direct reports across Levels I to III, fostering continuous professional growth.
- Optimize team portfolio distribution, establishing cross-coverage models to safeguard operational continuity across all key accounts.
- Drive seamless matrix collaboration across PMO, Delivery, Procurement, Legal, Finance, and Client Security functions based on clear RACI frameworks.
- Standardize VMO operating procedures, governance toolkits, and evidence templates to maintain agility as vendor ecosystems expand.
5. Partner Risk, Onboarding & Continuous Improvement
- Maintain the partner risk register and lead quarterly risk evaluations spanning delivery, financial, compliance, and concentration risks.
- Govern onboarding and ramp execution for new and expanding partners, ensuring strict adherence to readiness checklists and go-live standards.
- Oversee partner compliance tracking, including insurance validation, health & safety certifications, security clearances, and offboarding controls.
- Champion the VMO continuous improvement backlog, driving automation in scorecard generation, reporting, and evidence aggregation.
PERFORMANCE & SERVICE LEVELS
Key metrics reflecting success and performance impact in this role:
- Partner SLA / OLA Attainment: performance published monthly for 100% of partners, with drift identified before a client SLA is missed.
- Independent Quality Score: partner quality scored on its own for every partner, every month, with no blending into Astreya's own results.
- Commercial Accuracy (pay vs. charge): 100% of partner invoices for Tier-1 partners reconciled to rate cards, approved changes and client billing each month.
- Penalty Flushback: attribution and evidence pack completed within the agreed window for 100% of client-levied credits; vendor-attributable credits recovered through the OLA clause.
- Remediation Cycle Time: remediation plan agreed within 10 business days of a breach and tracked to its exit condition.
- Onboarding Lead Time: new partners and new partner teams onboarded to the agreed readiness standard within the agreed lead time.
- Governance Cadence: 100% of weekly, monthly and quarterly forums held on schedule with minutes and actions published.
- People & Capability: reviews and development plans for 100% of direct reports, cross-cover in place for every Tier-1 partner.
TOOLS & SYSTEMS
- Ticketing & Evidence: enterprise ticketing (ITSM) incident, request and change records, used as the evidence trail for SLA, OLA and attribution work
- Contract & Commercial: contract repository and rate-card registers, change-request log and service-credit schedules
- Governance: partner scorecards, risk register, action and remediation trackers, QBR and MBR pack templates
- Finance Data: ERP purchase-order, goods-receipt and invoice data for pay-versus-charge reconciliation
- Reporting: BI dashboards and advanced spreadsheet modelling (pivot, lookup, scenario models)
REQUIRED SKILLS & EXPERIENCE
Mandatory
- 8–12+ years of progressive experience in vendor, supplier, or partner management within IT services, managed services, AV integration, or facilities services, including 3+ years in direct team management.
- Demonstrated expertise governing subcontracted delivery under prime contractor arrangements, with back-to-back OLA/SLA structures.
- In-depth hands-on experience with service credit recovery, penalty flushback, and commercial dispute resolution backed by rigorous evidence gathering.
- Strong commercial acumen across rate cards, statement of work (SOW) change management, open-book pricing, and vendor invoice reconciliation.
- Proven leadership presence and executive negotiation skills, with a track record of holding firm positions with senior partner stakeholders through objective data and evidence.
- A history of navigating matrixed organizational structures alongside Delivery, PMO, Procurement, Legal, and Finance counterparts.
- Fluency in professional written and spoken English, and willingness to travel internationally across EMEA.
Preferred
- Prior experience managing AV integration, workplace technology, or corporate facilities service providers.
- Relevant certifications: SIAM, ITIL 4, World Commerce & Contracting (CCMP/IACCM), or CIPS.
- Track record of building, scaling, or modernizing a VMO or supplier governance framework from the ground up.
- Familiarity with ServiceNow Vendor Risk / Performance modules and enterprise BI reporting tools.
- Proficiency in additional European languages.
SCOPE & SPAN OF CONTROL
Key parameters framing the scope and operational span of the role:
- Team Leadership — Directly lead 4 FTEs: 1x Vendor Relationship Manager III, 2x Vendor Management Analysts II, and 1x VMO Intake & Compliance Analyst I (based in India).
- Partner Portfolio — Oversee ~8 strategic delivery partners spanning AV integration, facilities, networking, and service desk operations.
- Governance Forums — Lead weekly operational syncs, monthly performance reviews, QBRs, and ad-hoc incident reviews.
- Reporting Line — Reports to the VMO Lead (Service Delivery Director).
- Governance Boundaries — Partnering with Procurement and Legal (who finalize contractual terms), the VMO establishes performance requirements, tracks compliance, and ensures delivery excellence across all partner engagements.