Job Title:  Director, Vendor Management

What You Need To Know

Shape a remarkable future with us. Build a career working for an industry leader that truly invests in their people – and equips them with leading technology, continuous learning, and the ability to bring their best selves to work. As the preeminent wine and spirits distributor, Southern Glazer’s isn't just one of Forbes’ Top Private Companies; it's a family-owned business with deep roots dating back to 1933.

Southern Glazer’s is proud of its well-earned positive reputation, continually achieving accolades for our outstanding workplace culture. We take pride in creating a culture where our people are valued, supported, and provided opportunities for growth and belonging.

As a full-time employee, you can choose from a wide-ranging menu of our Top Shelf Benefits, including comprehensive medical and prescription drug coverage, dental and vision plans, tax-saving Flexible Spending Accounts, disability coverage, life insurance plans, and a 401(k) plan. We also offer tuition assistance, a wellness program, parental leave, vacation accrual, paid sick leave, and more.

By joining Southern Glazer’s, you would be part of a team that values excellence, innovation, and community. This is more than just a job – it's an opportunity to build the future of beverage distribution and grow with a company that truly cares about its people.

Overview

The Vendor Management Lead is responsible for maximizing vendor value, performance, and outcomes across the full vendor lifecycle for technology vendors. This role partners closely with CIO and CDO leadership to ensure technology partners deliver measurable business outcomes, meet contractual commitments, and operate within acceptable risk parameters.

The role influences vendor selection and contract structure pre-signature and leads ongoing governance and performance management post-signature. The Vendor Management Lead establishes vendor management discipline through scorecards, governance frameworks and renewal strategy.  The Lead ensures vendors consistently meet service expectations, negotiated value is realized, and vendor relationships support the organization’s strategic technology objectives.

Primary Responsibilities

Vendor Lifecycle Management

• Maximize vendor value, performance, and outcomes across the full vendor lifecycle.
• Provide pre-signature influence to ensure vendor requirements are measurable and contractable.
• Ensure contracts include enforceable service levels, acceptance criteria, remedies, and governance provisions.
• Support vendor evaluation processes with structured scorecards and tiering frameworks.
• Facilitate vendor onboarding with standardized onboarding checklists and governance setup.

Vendor Performance & Governance

• Operate as a core technology governance and control function, enforcing vendor discipline, intake guardrails, and commercial accountability across the OneTech ecosystem.
• Establish and maintain vendor governance frameworks and accountability structures.
• Ensure vendors meet SLAs and XLAs and deliver agreed outcomes.
• Lead vendor governance cadence including operational reviews and Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs).
• Maintain vendor performance scorecards and governance trackers.
• Enforce Root Cause Analysis (RCA) discipline for service failures.
• Manage service credits, remediation plans, and corrective actions when performance gaps occur.

Vendor Value Optimization

• Drive realization of negotiated savings and expected vendor value.
• Lead SaaS usage monitoring and shelfware reduction initiatives.
• Manage vendor true-ups, license compliance, and consumption optimization.
• Partner with finance and procurement teams to improve financial outcomes and cost transparency.
• Produce value realization reports for leadership.

Vendor Intake & Portfolio Management

• Enforce vendor intake guardrails to reduce vendor sprawl and rationalize vendor portfolios.
• Support vendor tiering and strategic vendor prioritization.
• Identify and mitigate vendor delivery risks and vendor concentration risks.
• Manage ongoing vendor relationship engagements
• Provide timely inputs to Finance and AP related to vendor disputes, acceptance status, service credits, and contractual remediation to support accurate close and payment controls.

Contract & Renewal Strategy

• Lead vendor renewal strategy and renewal calendar management (12–18 months in advance).
• Develop leverage strategies for renewals, renegotiations, and vendor transitions when necessary.
• Partner with procurement, legal, and IT stakeholders to ensure favorable commercial and contractual outcomes.

Risk & Issue Management

• Identify vendor delivery risk and ensure follow-through on remediation plans.
• Manage chronic vendor underperformance and SLA disputes.
• Lead vendor executive escalations and resolution processes.
• Ensure vendors maintain compliance with contractual obligations and service commitments.

Deliverables & Artifacts

• Vendor scorecards and governance trackers
• Quarterly Business Review (QBR) materials
• Vendor performance dashboards
• Renewal strategy plans
• Value realization reports
• Vendor onboarding and governance documentation

Minimum Qualifications

• Experience managing technology vendors including SaaS, cloud providers, managed services providers (MSP), system integrators (SI), application managed services (AMS), telecom, or staff augmentation partners.
• Familiarity with leading enterprise and technology vendors across key categories, including ERP (SAP, Oracle, Microsoft), telecom (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile), cloud (AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure), and data platforms (Databricks, Snowflake).
• Experience designing or managing vendor governance programs.
• Strong understanding of service level agreements (SLAs), experience level agreements (XLAs), and performance metrics.
• Experience driving vendor accountability and resolving performance issues.
• Knowledge of vendor lifecycle management including vendor selection, onboarding, governance, and renewal strategy.
• Experience collaborating with CIO/IT leadership, procurement, legal, and finance teams.
• Strong negotiation, escalation management, and stakeholder communication skills.
• Experience working with Vendor Management Office (VMO) frameworks.
• Experience managing large enterprise technology vendor portfolios.
• Experience with vendor risk management and compliance programs

Physical Demands

EEO Statement

Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits, an Affirmative Action/EEO employer, prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type and provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training. SGWS complies with all federal, state and local laws concerning consideration of a qualified applicant's arrest and/or criminal conviction records. Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits provides competitive compensation based on estimated performance level consistent with the past relevant experience, knowledge, skills, abilities and education of employees. Unless otherwise expressly stated, any pay ranges posted here are estimates from outside of Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits and do not reflect Southern Glazer's pay bands or ranges.

If you have any questions or concerns about whether this posting complies/adheres with local pay transparency requirements, please contact the SGWS talent acquisition team at NationalTA@sgws.com