Case Study
West Bend Insurance
How West Bend Insurance Company went from managing contracts and vendors across multiple disconnected systems to a seven-person vendor management team with quarterly executive reporting and a track record of measurable savings.
Journey
For a growing insurer, vendor management is the function that keeps third-party relationships, contracts, and risk under control. When Amy Palm took over as West Bend’s vendor manager, she inherited an ecosystem of contracts and vendors spread across multiple systems that didn’t talk to each other. Vendor management activities focused primarily on contract management and some risk management activities. Amy wasn’t sure what to prioritize first and what would bring the greatest value to the enterprise.
West Bend brought in Vendor Centric to assess their operations and build a plan. The result was a prioritized roadmap tied to specific staffing requirements. The roadmap was the key to building the business case for headcount and a more structured approach to rolling out vendor management competencies to the enterprise .
Today, West Bend has a seven-person team and a quarterly steering committee with executives from IT, Commercial and Personal Lines underwriting, Human Resources, Internal Services, and Legal. They track negotiated savings, contract volume, and ROI on a scorecard that goes to leadership every quarter. The team is shifting from generalist roles to specialized ones.
Challenge
Three Systems, No Visibility
West Bend Insurance Company is a property and casualty insurer of moderate size, with a strategic focus on growth.
However, the vendor management function was not structured to support that growth. At the time, Amy Palm was operating across three separate tools: a vendor risk management system, a contract repository, and a standalone tracking log for incoming requests. Because the systems were not integrated, requests arrived through multiple channels without a standardized intake process, and the organization lacked a clear, consolidated view of total third-party spend.
Contract renewals were similarly inconsistent, as contract ownership was distributed across the business with varying levels of experience and capacity—some owners managed dozens of agreements, while others managed only one. While Amy understood the changes required to strengthen the program, the volume of needs made it difficult to establish a clear starting point. To identify best practices and develop a scalable approach, West Bend began researching vendor management experts and ultimately engaged Vendor Centric. Amy noted “We had so many areas of opportunity, we weren’t sure where to even start? What would bring the greatest value to the enterprise?”
Strategy and Solution
Operational Assessment, Competency Framework, and Prioritized Roadmap
Vendor Centric led the engagement with an operational assessment that measured West Bend’s current state against what a mature vendor management function looks like, scoring each area and flagging opportunities for improvement. Out of the assessment came a set of deliverables designed to give West Bend a clear path forward. Key aspects of the engagement included:
Operational Assessment and Competency Framework: A structured evaluation scored West Bend’s vendor management maturity across multiple areas, identifying gaps and prioritizing what needed to change first. From that assessment, Vendor Centric defined the competencies the team should own. West Bend didn’t want to centralize all vendor management activity, so the recommendation was a hybrid model where vendor management handled certain competencies centrally while contract owners kept responsibility for others.
Prioritized Roadmap, Staffing Plan, and Governance: A sequenced plan laid out what to build first, what comes later, and what can wait. Critically, the roadmap linked each competency to staffing requirements, giving Amy the data to request the resources needed to support each competency. The assessment also recommended establishing a Vendor Management Steering Committee with executive representation from IT, Underwriting, HR, Internal Services, and Legal, giving the program a direct line to senior leadership.
Amy still has that roadmap on her wall.
“The most valuable outcome was the roadmap—paired with defined competencies and an aligned staffing plan. We used it to align priorities with our steering committee and to guide the rollout of each subsequent competency. As we prioritized the competencies, we were able to communicate clearly to leadership: if West Bend wants to continue maturing this capability across the enterprise, this is the staffing required to deliver it.”
– Amy Palm, Vendor Manager, West Bend Insurance Company
The Result
From Siloed Operations to a Center of Excellence
West Bend took the assessment, roadmap, and staffing plan and moved quickly from recommendations to execution. The team used the prioritized roadmap to sequence work, stand up repeatable processes, and clarify ownership across the organization—establishing consistent intake, defining roles and responsibilities, and standardizing how contracts and vendors are evaluated. The result is a seven-person vendor management team today (with additional growth still on the roadmap) and a contract lifecycle management tool that centralizes workflow tasks, contract records, and vendor information in one place. With a stronger foundation in place, the team has increased visibility for stakeholders, improved consistency in day-to-day execution, and created a scalable operating model that can support continued business growth and more disciplined third-party oversight.
The team now consists of contract analysts, a vendor financial analyst, and a lead vendor analyst, among other roles. In December 2025, they made their first specialist hire: a contingent workforce analyst focused on a specific contract category. That hire marked the shift from generalist roles to dedicated focus areas.
The three disconnected systems were consolidated into a single contract lifecycle management platform. The team’s scope goes far past contract review. They handle vendor research, RFI/RFP support, and vendor contract compliance issues. For West Bend’s largest vendor relationships, the team provides strategic management rather than just contract oversight.
The team reports to leadership quarterly with a scorecard that tracks department costs against savings, monitors roadmap progress, and compares performance year over year. The function reports up through Legal, not Operations. That’s unusual, and it says something about how seriously West Bend takes vendor oversight.
“Vendor Centric set us up for success. They gave us the roadmap, the staffing plan, and independent guidance to allow us to have the right conversations. We had so many things on our list that we wanted to do, and now we have a framework for how we roll it out, where we start, and where we’re going to get the biggest value.”
– Amy Palm
“West Bend shows what happens when an organization treats vendor management as a strategic function, not just a compliance exercise. Once they aligned the right structure, staffing, and roadmap, Amy and her team were able to start producing real ROI.”
– Tom Rogers, Vendor Centric
About West Bend Insurance
West Bend Insurance Company is a property and casualty insurance company with over $2 billion in revenue. Since 1894, West Bend has come to stand for excellence through the use of innovative insurance products, steady growth, and financial stability. Headquartered in West Bend, Wisconsin, the company works with independent agents across 14 states.
Industry
Property & Casualty Insurance
Company Size
$2B+ revenue
Services
- Operational Assessment
- Competency Framework Development
- Improvement Roadmap & Prioritization
- Staffing Plan & Resource Planning
- Organizational Design
Could your contract management operations use an upgrade? Vendor Centric can help you establish a first-class contract management program based on industry best practices that create efficiencies in your organization and help you maintain compliance. Schedule a call today.