Succeeding with Vendors 2

Monday, 08 September 2008 11:20AM

Succeeding with Vendors 2

SUCCEEDING WITH VENDORS

Pitfall #3 - Buyer's remorse

Bundling of wide ranging functionality for mass appeal is problematic for the marketplace in another respect as well. Once bundled, unwanted or irrelevant features are not easy, or worse yet, impossible, to unbundle. Many vendors of bundled functionality do not or will not allow for other best-of-breed functionality to be integrated. So, once a company has deeply vested – and invested – in these applications, they may find it difficult or impossible to adapt to new business scenarios. Re-energising their benefactors or corporate sponsors to take on the task of once again evaluating, paying for, and re-implementing a new application to replace the weak or failed one is any project manager’s worst nightmare. Moreover, having lost credibility in the benefactors’ eyes for having delivered less than adequate functionality, project managers often find it difficult to get buy-in for another bite of the cherry.

This situation leaves users dissatisfied and project managers with a serious problem. The typical response in such situations is to continue to ask for improvements and fixes. However once a vendor has received payment and moved on to another project, regaining their attention to focus on your problems is a rare. More money, time and effort at this point seldom produces the desired result. The opportunity to define and achieve success has passed.

Pitfall #4 – Experts in wolves clothing

This final pitfall is deceptively dangerous and must be guarded against at all cost. The danger to watch for here is the large number of legal application and implementation experts who will emerge during your project definition and vendor selection stage. These are most frequently users and each will have their own ideas about how best to solve their problems and which products are best equipped to meet their needs.

These are usually well-intentioned people with a genuine desire to help. Sometimes they will have been pre-sold by one of your friendly vendors and be absolutely convinced that a single product is the only one that can solve their problems. Just as you would not pretend to practice law or manage the books for your company it should be just as obvious that you have responsibility for your project and are best equipped to make these decisions on the legal department's behalf. If you are in doubt about the logic of this point please consider that regardless of whether you or your users drive product selection only you will be held responsible. These decisions are yours and must be owned by you as ultimate responsibility for success or failure will fall on your shoulders.

Unless you have tied yourself to the track by signing a contract there is always time to step out of the way. There will always be other trains to catch and other vendors to help you. So given these potential pitfalls, how do project managers and buyers avoid them?

Here are some suggestions...