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back to article CIOs: Want to hit your IT suppliers where it hurts?

Some IT organisations seem to have their vendors just where they want them. The rest of us? Well, we’re not keen, and we’re starting to get mean. That’s why, following the success of our July Roundtable on IT governance, we’re asking our senior Reg readers to come to our next roundtable to pick apart another of the big IT …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I will keek mum

    A good client-supplier relation is one that benefits both parts.

    As demand has fallen so much, it is now a "buyers market".

    Some clients have decided this is a perfect moment to pressure supplier managers so they sign agreements that will make their companies lose money. As they are account managers, losing "their" client means being laid off...

    This is the type of client I would keep having relationship with.. but just to ripp them off for being so miserable.

    Chrysler decided to go this way.. and we know how well it ended..

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  2. msknight

    "Can you trust anything these guys tell you?" - no. Proof is still in the pudding IMHO. Put in a fork full and hope you don't get stomach ache.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Simple questions, simple answers

    "how do you know you’re getting the best deal?"

    You don't know and you can't know, outside simple deals where apples-to-apples comparisons are possible, there is no good way of knowing. Complex service contracts especially fail to include all the minute detail that make or break the satisfaction levels.

    It's not that one can't lay out a contract that includes absolutely every possible detail of the service, it is that doing that would take literally years. Like most complex requirement exercises, it will be invalid the moment is declared finished because the business and underlying technology will have changed so much that the old terms are useless.

    "Can you trust anything these guys tell you?"

    No, you can't. Except when it is in writing and enforceable in court. But if your relationship with your partner reaches the level where you seriously think of going to court to resolve disputes, your relationship is already screwed and you won't be getting anything remotely similar to what you intended to get in the first place.

    The only way of having a healthy relationship with a partner is making sure that it is a long term win-win (excuse the jargon) relationship for both parties. Opportunistic deals may look good in the short term but are a train wreck waiting to happen.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This week's article: CIOs: Want to hit your IT suppliers where it hurts?

    Next week's article: Suppliers: How to sell more and get the best deal out of your customers.

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  5. Otto is a bear.

    Why would you want to hurt your supplier?

    Every company is in business to make money, if the only way you can make money is by making your suppliers make less, then you and your suppliers are in big trouble. If your bargain drives your supplier out of business then, what, they cease to exist you have to change to another, and incur the costs of change, or maybe they get bought out by a less flexible company.

    Long term stable equitable relationships are always best, where both sides can give and take when necessary. But, thats not how we do business anymore, sad isn't it.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why would you want to hurt your supplier?

      >Long term stable equitable relationships are always best, where both sides can give and take when necessary. But, thats not how we do business anymore, sad isn't it.

      In the US at least the big boy corporations get fat stringing along the small fry which tend to lose money on said relationships but rely on saying we are an official supplier to big bad Brand X to get other more profitable customers. With the crony capitalism corporatism structure we have in place this is all but enshrined in law as the big boys always get what they want. Its just a darn shame most people are employed by small business huh?

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    2. Smitty Werbenjaegermanjensen
      Reply Icon

      Re: Why would you want to hurt your supplier?

      There are different types of commercial relationships.

      Some of my suppliers are very simply 'transactional' suppliers who add little value over and above that which another similar supplier could easily do. In this case, my relationship with said supplier is about cost, efficiency and reliability - classic SLA stuff and everyone knows the rules of the game.

      Other suppliers are true partners. These suppliers are adding value to my business through their skills, knowledge and capability. True partners will look not just at the project or operational objective, but at the business outcomes and work toward making those come about.

      Then there are companies in the middle of the two extremes, and to me these are the ones at risk. They're not efficient and they're not strategic. They're opportunistic - and when you're living from opportunity to opportunity life can be perilous.

      I certainly wouldn't want to 'hurt' my strategic partners - rather, I'd expect to tie their commercial success to my own commercial outcomes.

      I don't have the need to 'hurt' my transactional suppliers - we can easily move around there, so there's a natural inclination from those guys to keep me happy enough.

      Where I do like to ensure that I get best value is from the opportunistic supplier - things I do as one-offs. However, even then I prefer to ensure that I have a viable way of supporting and maintaining those things as needed, so I prefer even my opportunistic suppliers to prove to me that they're around for the long haul. Otherwise, all I am doing is buying a big bag of risk.

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  6. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    *Everyone* has to get something out of the relationship.

    The customer. Systems that do what they need (it's the ability to do what they need that keeps their business in business) even it it's not what they wanted.

    The supplier. They make an adequate profit to continue to deliver that level of service.

    When customers are too clueless about what they need or either side decides to milk the other for maximum profit (or minimum cost) that's likely when the bovine faeces hit the air removal system.

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