9 IT Vendor Management Best Practices For Better ROI in 2026

92% of Forbes Global 2000 companies rely on IT outsourcing. 

But with so many tools, platforms, and third parties involved, vendor management has quietly become one of the most critical (and complex) parts of modern IT. 

Too often, vendor registrations are overlooked or reduced to a few forms during procurement instead of being treated as a strategic, ongoing responsibility.

That mistake prevents you from making the most of your vendor partnerships. 

Let’s look at some IT vendor management best practices to help you get more ROI from your IT vendors.

TL;DR:

• Vendor relationships need to shift from a reactive one to a mutually beneficial approach. Transparent communication and shared outcomes should be introduced from day one.
• Use evaluation frameworks to assess vendors, then implement continuous monitoring to keep delivery on track.
• Beyond that, try to standardize transactional oversight while enabling cross-functional teams to manage vendor clusters efficiently.
• Lastly, keep an eye on the behavioral signals of your vendors and apply cognitive principles where appropriate.
• Workwize, an IT hardware lifecycle management platform, can help you take away the chaos of managing multiple vendors for hardware logistics with our network of global suppliers and a platform to manage all assets from one dashboard.