Trust, common interests, and shared values are the foundation of any relationship. In particular, decentralized and/or smaller organizations can benefit a great deal from developing and maintaining good vendor relationships.
In the September 29, 2009 Peer Incite, Caltech's Eugean Hacopians gave an example of how he has established an excellent relationship with storage supplier Nexsan Technologies. Caltech’s philosophy is that IT is responsible for understanding the user requirements and for architecting the solution. What they need from their storage supplier is detailed information on how the storage works and advice on how the architected solution could be improved. They actively resist adding risk to the solution by constantly deploying the latest IT technology. Of particular importance to Caltech is flexibility in this relationship; they recognized that the IT solution is going to change as the true nature of the overall project requirements become clearer. Caltech reduces risk by using a “Lego” building block approach to design and by using the same components wherever possible. Buying building blocks from one vendor and knowing they have the flexibility to move these blocks around works better than attempting to optimize a “one-off” solution for a particular problem.
Action Item: There are as many different ways of setting up a good working relationship with vendors as there are of skinning a cat. One useful test of the quality of that relationship is whether your vendor's CTO or senior director (outside of sales) returns your call.
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