As a CIO, how do you handle vendor relationships?
This story will cover best practices for maintaining successful relationships with technology vendors to ensure not only project success but long-term strategy and customer service to your company (and its customers). Looking for best practices and tips from CIOs and their vendors who are doing this well. Story to run on a Microsoft website.
Answers (2)
Jonathan J.
Buy "rides" on existing infrastructure for your business operations instead of reinventing it - this is "The Cloud"
Relationships should always be two ways. For example, when at Weitz & Luxenberg, I engaged FedEx in a partnership where both firms provided resources to develop an enterprise shipping solution meeting the needs of our category of business. We both gained a piece of software at the end of it, but reduced the cost of it significantly for us both. The more information you provide and the less you simply try to squeeze out the best price, the better value you will get. I see this time and again, and I know from the consulting/vendor side how the least profitable clients often get the worst team and lowest priorities, especially after it's clear that there's no money to be made on the project.
Jake K.
Chief Business Solution Architect, Industry Business Consulting, SAP America
Best Answers in: Business Analytics (4), Education and Schools (1), Enterprise Software (1)
I'm talking from the perspective of a company managing a long term strategic technology vendor and not a casual software supplier. Any vendor relationship strategy has to be managed as a partnership, especially in these days where moving from one enterprise software vendor to another will cost the organization time, effort and business (money is an underlying cost in all cases).
What this means is expectations need to be set out very clearly at the very beginning (starting with vendor sourcing); key performance indicators that will be used for measuring customer satisfaction will have to be agreed upon with the vendor also.
Another critical aspect is the vendor management itself that has to be done in close conjunction by the internal technology group in tandem with the strategic purchasing professional. This way the relationship with the vendor is managed not just by the buyer as a supplier but by the internal technology group as a strategic initiative. This would help manage the criticality of the vendor on the internal technology roadmap.
An ongoing metric of how technology vendors measure against competition on an ongoing basis is through a periodic review of their product roadmap strategies and rank alongside the competition and how does it impact us as the customer.
Lastly, any vendor management strategy has to include contingency planning - what circumstances would trigger a change and who are the potential contenders to take over; how is the contract protecting the company in the event of such takeovers (data retrieval and migration capabilities, source code and functionality ownership for transfer, ownership of customized add-ons to vendor supplied source code etc.)
