Vendor Management: Not Boring, We Promise! (Save more money while reducing your risk.)
This session delivered on its name with a lively and insightful conversation that reframed vendor management as one of the most overlooked, yet mission-critical aspects of multifamily operations.
The discussion opened with a staggering statistic: on-site teams are managing between 150 to 200 vendors per community—and that doesn’t even account for corporate software and services. With the rise of AI and increasingly decentralized systems, the burden on teams to manage vendors has never been greater. Yet the topic remains underserved, often leading to disjointed processes, costly mistakes, and under-leveraged relationships.
The panel featured voices from across the industry—Ben Steward, Dustin Lacey, Rich Voinovich, and Daniel Paulino—each bringing first-hand experience with the frustrations, failures, and frameworks that define effective vendor management.
One of the central themes of the conversation was the importance of starting with internal alignment before even entertaining new vendor conversations. Paulino advocated for an “internal-to-external” strategy—identifying pain points and strategic priorities before chasing the next shiny tech solution. Lacey and Voinovich agreed that without a clear definition of success metrics from the outset, teams can fall into reactive vendor selection that doesn’t tie back to core business needs.
This is particularly relevant in an era where slick Figma prototypes and polished pitch decks can obscure the realities of product readiness. The panelists warned operators to look beyond visual polish and demand proof of concept before committing to pilots. Functionality must be verified—does the product actually work?—before investing time and budget into long-term rollouts.
Stakeholder alignment was another recurring theme. Vendor selection isn’t just an IT or marketing decision—it affects legal, finance, operations, and on-site teams. Including too many voices can paralyze decision-making, but including too few can derail an implementation. Paulino urged the audience to identify influential executives who are known to swoop in late and stall progress, and instead bring them into the process early. Assigning one internal lead to coordinate all inputs was cited as essential to keeping vendor selection on track.
When it comes to pilots, the panel emphasized structure, transparency, and accountability. Paulino introduced the idea of a “research charter”—a shared document that outlines objectives, KPIs, timelines, and what success (or failure) looks like. This tool not only builds trust with vendors but also ensures everyone is aligned from the outset, making outcomes easier to evaluate.
The panelists didn’t shy away from their own mistakes. From being burned by vendors who over-promised and under-delivered, to getting locked into auto-renew contracts without centralized tracking, each speaker shared hard-won lessons. The key takeaway? Trust is good—verification is better. Always dig deeper than the sales pitch and ensure terms like SLAs, uptime, and exit clauses are clearly defined.
Budget flexibility was also tackled head-on. While budget cycles are traditionally rigid in multifamily, all agreed that mid-year reallocation is both possible and necessary in fast-changing markets. Paulino stressed that executives care more about value than adherence to a 10-month-old budget. If a new vendor delivers better ROI, justify it, find the budget, and make the change. “If you’re not reallocating, you’re not optimizing,” he said.
Contract and expense management drew particularly passionate responses. Voinovich described the nightmare of manually combing through GLs to find tech spend and stressed the need for tools that centralize contracts and surface insights. With so many properties operating semi-independently, organizations are missing out on volume discounts, losing visibility into active contracts, and wasting money. Centralization and renegotiation, the panel agreed, are fast paths to cost savings and operational credibility.
The conversation then turned to compliance and risk—especially critical with the rise of AI-powered tools handling sensitive resident data. The panel underscored the importance of understanding SOC 2 compliance, data security, and breach response protocols. Real-life examples—including a payments vendor failure that caused late fees across a portfolio—illustrated how vendor mistakes can quickly become resident experience issues.
Balancing innovation and risk isn’t easy, but it starts with clear expectations. The advice? Don’t exclude startups—but do hold them accountable to roadmaps and timelines for compliance milestones. And above all, make sure contract language protects your organization.
The session wrapped with a lightning round of hard truths and hot takes. The worst contract clause? Unlimited logo usage rights—even after a one-property pilot. The sneakiest trap? Auto-renewals in inboxes of employees who no longer work there. The biggest money sink? Managing contracts manually.
The final takeaway was clear: Vendor management isn’t back-office admin—it’s strategic leadership. As technology and complexity increase, operators need systems, discipline, and transparency. The organizations that treat vendor relationships with the same rigor as resident experience or leasing strategy will be the ones that thrive in the next phase of multifamily.
Here is the replay: