Managing vendor relationships
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The document discusses managing vendor relationships and provides tips for maintaining healthy partnerships. It compares the customer-vendor relationship to a marriage, going through typical stages from courtship to maturity. Key aspects of successful relationships include acceptance, trust, honesty, communication, having a shared vision and responsibility, and treating each other as partners.
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Managing vendor relationships
- 2. Managing Vendor Relationships Paula J Smith, ARIM & Angela Beaumont Techtonics
- 3. Techtonics **Insert Obligatory Sales Pitch **
- 4. Techtonics Privately held corporately governed 25 years NZ Owned and Operated RM, ECM, IM, EDRMS, IT, Mobile Solutions 70+ customers across New Zealand Double Digit Growth FY2012 Focus on long term partnering with clients OpenText Platinum Focus Partner
- 6. It’s a Relationship Image Courtesy of Accelerant Research – www.accelerantresearch.com
- 7. Courtship
- 9. Newlyweds
- 10. The Customer Vendor Relationship Produced by Scofield Editorial, Inc. http://youtu.be/R2a8TRSgzZY
- 11. Maturity
- 13. Top Tips Acceptance Trust Honesty Communication Shared Vision Shared Responsibility Partnership And above all, have fun!
Editor's Notes
- Brief IntroductionsThis session was always intended to be more workshop than lecture, so as we work through the presentation, if you have questions, observations or comments please ask them.We want the session to be as useful for you as possible, so feel free to get involved.
- This slide deliberately left in-- Here is the start of todays lesson, when a vendor comes to talk to you, their focus is on sales, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but vendors are looking for revenue opportunities. And if you are to have healthy relationships you must understand and acknowledge that perspective. One of the fundamental issues that vendors often face is the balancing act that is needed to manage the commercial reality that they live in as vendors, while wanting to deliver the best for you the client.And that isnt always an easy balancing act, and sometimes vendors get it wrong. For me personally, I came from a public sector background into TT as my first professional services role and it took me a while to adjust, after all - our profession is about sharing and reusing information, but from a vendor perspective, anything that we have created, has taken effort and investment and that investment needs to be recouped. So in a vendor world, there really is no such thing as a free lunch.
- Angela can deliver this,
- Its a relationship, and guess what Im not the only one to think so :)Accelerant Research in the USA have already mapped the stages of personal relationships to the stages of customer relationships that a vendor engages in with you.Thinking of your vendor engagement as a relationship may help you to better understand whats going on at each stage so that you are more informed, ready for the next stage.As vendors, we want long relationships with our customers, it has benefits for both parties, but only when you have a shared understanding and trust in each other.Dont expect to get this right first time either. Like our personal relationships, we have to get it wrong sometimes in order to understand ourselves better, our needs, our drivers - what makes us happy and most importantly whats best for us.
- CourtshipFor a vendor – this is all about getting to the next level, being successful in courtship to get you down the aisle (signed up) and into a long term commitment. - What attracts you to the vendor; besides the product - If you’re attracted to the vendor because of the product that’s like being attracted to a person because of their car; short term gain, long term…well who knows They key to moving past an initial, “these guys look cool” is to be realistic about what it is that’s attracting you to them, and to make sure that it can go deeper than a first look. Typically, our vendor relationships are multi year, partly because the projects we are involved in are multi year (to get RoI)In most vendor engagements this is the pre-sales process, a time where both parties are showing their best sides: - Vendors will wine and dine you, - You will see a lot of them and probably a lot in terms of time and number of people - You will also be putting your best face, after all – this is a 2 way engagement, so typically customers will demonstrate how ready they are, finances are in place, so happy to be here etc etc.TIP - What is really important here, is that we maintain honesty, honesty about why we want to work together, and don’t get seduced by the love being shown. Once the deal is signed, the attention does drop of and you move quickly into project mode.
- The Honeymoon Period The honeymoon period is the post contract period; it is the start of reality, of what is to come, still influenced by the heady days of courtship and we remember well the love we were shown.We are also typically more accepting and more "she'll be right mate" as a result.Even though contracts are signed, there are still usually a number of people talking to you; your account manager, project manager, consultants X many etcIt is during the mid point of this period where we start to understand the reality of the relationship we are now in. We may have had a clear idea in our heads of what this was going to look like in terms of time spent together, involvement, access to stuff etcFrom an ECM perspective this is also the time where the reality of the engagement and the contract we have signed really starts to become clear.
- And so as newlyweds we start the process of really living together, of being a couple.And the reality that started to dawn on us during the end of our honeymoon period are now harsh realities that we must work through together.For example, in our loved up state, we signed a fixed price agreement and we thought we understood what that was going to look like, but now our partner is behaving in a different way to that which we expected, we want them to be spending lots of time with us, talking, being around but they have a very clear idea of what the contract said and are working to that - because that was what we agreed. And that should make us both happy.As a newlywed it is time for reality.In vendor relationship terms, this is a risky point, it is typically where delivery teams uncover the "promises" made by sales people, where expectations are set or reset and there should be a lot of communication.It is the time where we uncover the habits we don't like, toothpaste left open, toilet seat up, dishes in the sink etc.Or from an ECM perspective, time spent on site, a level of arrogance we didn't expect, unclear processes, reluctance to work with other vendors etc.This is the time for very open, honest and regular communications. Where this doesn't happen, the relationship will head down an unhappy path, and that is something neither side wants.
- A slightly humorous look at the customer vendor relationship, and how vendors interpret some of the statements we make as customers :)
- PAULAHas anyone ever used some of those lines? I know I have :)If we are heading into maturity we have already dealt with any misunderstandings, differences in expectations or communication issues.ANGELAWe have accepted the habits of the other party that still drive us a little mad, but have both accepted in each other, the things that we like, the things that challenge us and make us grow.PAULAWe may have accepted that our vendor isnt always going to agree with us, and while we may not like being argued with (and those of you who know me know that I dont) we have accepted that sometimes there is a reason for itANGELABut to get here, we have to get through the previous stages, we have had to earn each others trust, demonstrate our capability, integrity and maintain credibility.PAULAWe will also have compromised along the way, that is the key to a successful relationship
- ANGELABecause where compromise cant be reached, this is the result. 2 parties who may want the same thing but cant agree on how to get there, cant talk to each other and so are incapable of moving forward.This isn't a blame game either it is an understanding that relationships are difficult, they need to be worked at, but they can be truly special