Senior IT Vendor and Contract Manager

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota•Eagan, MN

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior IT Vendor and Contract Manager is a key member of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of MN Procurement Services team, with primary responsibility for leading the end‑to‑end management of complex IT contracts and commercial agreements. This role owns the contract lifecycle from negotiation and execution through ongoing administration, renewal, and termination, ensuring contractual terms, pricing, SLAs, and compliance obligations are clearly defined, well understood, and consistently enforced. The Senior IT Vendor and Contract Manager partners closely with Legal, Procurement, IT, and business stakeholders to negotiate favorable contractual terms, manage contract changes, and resolve contractual issues. The role oversees vendor adherence to contractual commitments, including service levels, performance metrics, financial controls, and regulatory requirements, and leads remediation and “get‑well” efforts when contractual expectations are not met.

Requirements

5+ years of related professional experience. All relevant experience including work, education, transferable skills, and military experience will be considered.
Prior experience related to health plans, vendor management, and contracting activities.
Ability to develop and maintain relationships with leadership across the organization.
Ability to work independently, in a team, or lead a project.
Advanced problem-solving skills, conflict resolution, facilitation and consensus building skills.
Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, including presentations to senior leadership.
Demonstrated experience communicating with diverse internal and external audiences.
Relationship management skills with internal and external stakeholders.
Able to influence internal and external stakeholders to achieve desired outcomes.
Ability to proactively identify and resolve problems.
Advanced organization and prioritization skills and the ability to manage multiple concurrent requests while delivering exceptional customer service and guiding others on service expectations.
High school diploma (or equivalency) and legal authorization to work in the U.S.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor’s degree in business or related field

Responsibilities

Independently develop and maintain strong relationships with vendors, fostering effective communication and collaboration.
Monitor vendor performance, conduct regular reviews, and address any issues or concerns.
Identify and alert leadership of opportunities and solutions for performance improvement and cost reduction through vendor optimization and other means.
Works closely with business partners to ensure SLAs, deliverables, compliance requirements and expectations are adequately incorporated into RFXs and vendor contracts to facilitate the management of vendor performance.
Support the position of Blue Cross in vendor discussions.
Communicate with assigned business partners to ensure they are properly educated on Blue Cross expectations throughout the lifecycle of the relationship.
Works closely with Blue Cross Procurement Services Leadership to ensure Relationship Managers understand their contractual requirements for any engagement.
Addresses instances were recommendations are not followed.
Establish and monitor vendor scorecards (quantitative and qualitative measures of performance against selected SLAs and metrics) to monitor and manage vendor performance based on a defined set of criteria.
Establish new criteria as vendors, technology, and reporting ability evolves.
Provides on-going vendor scorecard reporting and analysis to Relationship Managers and Performance Managers to facilitate their ability to adequately monitor, review and act on vendors operational performance.
Leads the execution of various vendor management tasks, such as quarterly business reviews, semi-annual business portfolio reviews, vendor scorecards, as well as other performance management activities and reporting as required.
Facilitate regular business reviews with assigned portfolio of vendors to discuss vendor performance reporting, SLAs, deliverables, compliance requirements, other contract expectations, relationship health and improvement plans.
Navigate ambiguity and provide support, recommendations, and functional expertise to Relationship Managers, Performance Managers and Compliance Managers for problem resolution with assigned portfolio vendors.
With Blue Cross Procurement Services Leadership awareness, works closely with Business partners to diagnose poor vendor performance and assists to put in place "get well" plans.
Jointly with the Leadership facilitates the resolution of escalated vendor-related issues.
Lead cross-functional efforts across the enterprise, including teams such as operations, finance, compliance, security and legal to ensure seamless procurement processes.
Collaborate with internal stakeholders to develop and implement procurement strategies that align with business objectives.
Facilitate effective communication and collaboration between internal teams and external suppliers.
Mentors Analysts on the team and is able to lead workstreams.