Why IT supplier governance fails without proper meetings
Introduction
Every CIO and procurement leader knows that governance is written into every major outsourcing or managed services contract. It’s the glue that holds accountability together: quarterly business reviews, steering committees, service delivery meetings.
And yet, in practice, these meetings are often the first thing to be dropped when calendars fill up. What happens next? The supplier governs itself, value leaks unnoticed, and the buyer loses control.
This article explains why IT supplier governance is not optional, why meetings are the engine of governance, and what companies risk when they don’t give their people the time to attend them.
What Is IT supplier governance?
Supplier governance is the framework of processes, committees, and reviews designed to ensure that what’s promised in a contract is actually delivered.
A strong governance model typically includes:
•Operational meetings (weekly or bi-weekly) for service performance.
•Management meetings (monthly or quarterly) to track KPIs, SLAs, and financials.
•Executive steering committees to align supplier delivery with business strategy.
Big outsourcing telecom contracts explicitly require quarterly stewardship reports and governance meetings to review performance and commitments . The reason is simple: governance is where control shifts back from the supplier to the customer.
Effective IT supplier governance provides the structure that ensures promises made at contract signature are actually delivered over time.
Why meetings matter in governance
It’s tempting to dismiss governance meetings as “calendar clutter.” But governance doesn’t live in documents alone. It lives in dialogue, escalation, and alignment.
Without meetings:
•No oversight – performance reports go unread, issues remain hidden.
•No leverage – suppliers make promises with no forum to track follow-up.
•No memory – institutional knowledge of disputes, escalations, and commitments evaporates.
In other words, skipping governance meetings is like owning a car but never doing maintenance: it works for a while, then breaks down in expensive ways. Without this rhythm, IT supplier governance becomes an empty framework.
The real cost of skipping governance
When governance breaks down, the risks multiply, and the collapse of IT supplier governance has direct financial and operational consequences:
1. Value Leakage
Industry research shows that 17–40% of contract value disappears after signature because customers don’t enforce governance. That’s millions lost to overbilling, missed credits, and under-delivery.
2. Supplier-Led Agendas
Without a customer-driven forum, meetings default to sales pitches. Suppliers use airtime to push upsells, not to be held accountable.
3. Increased Operational Risk
Incidents take longer to resolve because escalations have no regular forum. Chronic issues go untracked, compliance gaps widen, and IT leaders lose visibility.
4. Demotivated Teams
When internal participants see meetings constantly cancelled or deprioritized, they assume governance doesn’t matter. Accountability fades on both sides
Strong IT supplier governance creates the escalation paths needed to resolve issues quickly.
A real-world example (Anonymized)
Why governance meetings are hard to secure
If governance is so critical, why do companies neglect it? Common reasons include:
•Overloaded calendars of IT managers and engineers.
•Perception of low value, especially when meetings are poorly chaired.
•Supplier-prepared slides that repeat the same metrics without insight.
•Lack of escalation discipline, where issues are solved ad hoc outside governance.
The result: governance looks like a cost center rather than a value protection mechanism, when in fact IT supplier governance is a safeguard for performance and cost.
How to make governance work?
To avoid wasting time and money, IT supplier governance must be treated as business-critical. Here’s how:
1. Protect Time for Governance
Meeting attendance is not optional. Companies must free staff time, even at the expense of other activities, because governance is what keeps contracts healthy.
2. Use Governance to Drive Action
Minutes should not be “Excel tables of numbers.” They must capture decisions, actions, and owner accountability. A good rule: if someone who wasn’t in the room can’t understand what happened from the minutes, governance has failed.
3. Keep the Right Balance
Not every issue belongs in governance. Day-to-day firefighting can stay in operational calls. Governance is about trends, commitments, and escalations that affect business outcomes.
4. Document and Track
Suppliers must provide minutes that are more than slides. They should be written records that, combined with presentations, allow someone absent to understand the discussion and follow up.
The Bottom Line: governance is a risk mitigation tool
Every outsourcing or managed services contract embeds governance for a reason: it’s the customer’s safeguard against cost overruns, poor performance, and supplier opportunism.
Skipping governance meetings is not just “saving time.” It’s choosing to blindfold yourself while your supplier drives the car.
If your organization isn’t willing to commit the time, then you must admit: the governance framework in your contract is meaningless. And with that comes higher risk, wasted spend, and eventual loss of trust.
Conclusion
Governance is not glamorous, but it is essential. Meetings are not the problem — they are the tool. Without them, IT supplier governance collapses, leaving companies exposed to cost, risk, and supplier-led agendas.
If your company is struggling to secure attendance at governance meetings, the answer is not to cancel them. It is to recommit to the process, streamline agendas, and ensure that the right people are in the room.
Because in IT outsourcing, as in all supplier management, if you don’t govern your supplier, your supplier will govern you.
