The NelsonHall http://research.nelson-hall.com/ Vendor Evaluation & Assessment Tool (NEAT), is available to our buy-side clients now, and for a limited period free-of-charge to all sourcing managers within buy side organizations.

The initial suite of five NEAT tools, launched by NelsonHall today, assists strategic sourcing managers in assessing vendor capability in:

- Life, Pensions, and Annuities BPO

- Social Media Services BPO

- Customer Management Services in the Retail Sector

- Benefits Administration

- Payroll Services

Over the next year, NelsonHall will produce a wide range of NEAT tools to support strategic sourcing managers and category managers across a comprehensive range of business process outsourcing and IT outsourcing service lines, both horizontal and industry-specific.

The NEAT (NelsonHall Vendor Evaluation and Assessment) tools for strategic sourcing managers are part of NelsonHall's "speed-to-source" initiative. The NEAT tool sits at the front-end of the vendor screening process and consists of a two-axis model: assessing vendors against their "ability to deliver immediate benefit" to buy-side organizations and their "ability to meet client future requirements". The latter axis is a pragmatic assessment of the vendor's ability to take clients on an innovation journey over the lifetime of their next contract. Accordingly, in line with NelsonHall's typically pragmatic approach, we're not focusing on vaporware or long-term visions. We're evaluating to what extent vendors can take clients on a journey of development over the life of the next contract.

To add further value, clients are able to input their own weightings enabling sourcing managers to use NEAT as an interactive tool tailoring it to meet their own specific sourcing requirements and criteria.

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