Most organisations have a need to deal with a number of different IT and
communications vendors, both for individual projects and on an ongoing
basis. Usually, each vendor is selected for a particular class of product
or service they provide that is most appropriate to the client
organisation, with other vendors selected similarly for other classes of
product or service - the main exceptions being multiple vendors selected
in a particular product/service-class for the purposes either of
redundancy (business continuity) or of competition (panel arrangements),
or legacy contracts inherited through mergers and acquisitions.
Like any commercial relationship, close attention needs to be paid to the
effective management of these vendor relationships (or at the very least
co-ordination of vendor efforts) in order to maximise their benefit to the
organisation. As the number of different vendors and different technologies
involved increases, the complexity of managing these relationships
increases exponentially. Large corporations tend to have dedicated business
units for doing just that (not just with ICT, but across all strategic
suppliers). In smaller organisations, the need is just as great, but
responsibility for it tends to fall on IT management, or even general
management.
Sometimes, particularly in smaller organisations, it can all get a little
confusing; not to mention that the individuals tasked with this
responsibility in smaller organisations - usually senior management - tend
to be extremely busy attending to more pressing business needs.
There are two alternatives to this.
One alternative is to select a single vendor large enough to meet all of
the organisations IT and communications needs. However, this creates two
new problems. Firstly, it is extremely unlikely that a single supplier
will be able to provide the best solutions for all such needs - different
suppliers tend to provide better solutions for different needs. Secondly,
such single-supplier arrangements tend to lead to vendor lock-in (a
situation where the high level of dependence on the incumbent makes a
future change of supplier extremely difficult), which is unacceptable to
most organisations.
The other alternative is to retain a policy of using the best/most
appropriate supplier for each class of product or service, but to outsource
the management of projects undertaken by or ongoing relationships with most
(or in some cases, even all) of the chosen vendors.
saosce provide just such a service, which is ideally
positioned for most SMEs - those organisations which are large enough to
encounter similar ICT issues to large corporates (albeit on a smaller
scale), but not large enough to warrant dedicating an internal resource to
vendor management.
For a confidential discussion of your organistaion's ICT vendor management
needs, call saosce today on (08) 8233 5933, or email us at
info@saosce.com.au.
