Blog: Claudia Imhoff

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CIOs: Vendors should be your friends not your enemies

I ran across a very interesting blog from CIO Magazine written by Monte Ford. Mr. Ford is a Vice President and CIO of American Airlines. He starts off by castigating CIOs with the accusation that they don’t spend enough time trying to be good customers with their vendors. Instead, he thinks they spend too much time and energy trying to find fault with them – to the point that this exercise has almost become sport in IT shops.

Here are some tips from him as well as myself on becoming a good customer with your vendors:

1. Put aside your own interests and ego to consider what the enterprise and vendor want / need from this relationship. It is mandatory that all parties – your staff as well as the vendor – focus on the overall success of the project. For example, make sure everyone understands the goals and objectives of the vendor and the company.

2. Once these are understood, determine how to change your own processes while helping the vendor achieve their goals as well. Bend to a certain extent if you have to.

3. Everyone likes “being sold” – even Mr. Monte admits it. It’s nice to be wined and dined. But there are ethical reasons for being sold on a product. You believe in it; you trust the vendor; you want the product to succeed in your environment; and, yes, you want the vendor to succeed as well. That means that the vendor has to make a profit too.

4. You may have to convince the vendor that they may have to forego short-term profit for long-term strategic gain. And you are a key component to this strategic position. This is difficult but certainly critical to the overall viability of the vendor.

5. Help the vendor understand how they should work with your company. Share your goals, objectives, initiatives with them so they can better understand how their technology fits in. Let the vendors work with your detailed “worker bees” to figure what role they play, how they enhance the overall technological environment, how they must interface with other technologies, etc.

6. Many vendors need education about how they can become easy to work with – for your company and, ultimately, for other companies. Is their contracting process streamlined? Is there a central point of contact? Do they share in the intellectual property that may be developed? Do they give credit where credit is due (and do you)? Can you minimize the red tape on both sides to make the deal possible without giving away too much of the farm – on either side?

No company is the perfect customer and certainly, no vendor is the perfect vendor. But going into a relationship with a chip on your shoulder can only result in a lose-lose scenario. NOBODY wins! Believe me, I’ve seen this happen too many times before. If you find yourself in such a lose-lose position, the best advice I can give you is to walk away. Nothing good will come from such a relationship.

I hope these ideas help you determine the type of relationship you should have with your vendors. I welcome your contributions and comments regarding this entry. Please contribute to the IP about how your company has partnered with a vendor or with a customer that has worked in the past. There are many ways to “skin a cat”.

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