“You are Not Your Vendor” is the title of my most recent column published in CIO magazine and Network World magazine. You’ll read in the article why it is critical you never rely too heavily on a vendor. As much as we’d like to say we’re “partners,” reality is that the vendor/customer relationship is adversarial. It’s up to everyone to constantly try new solutions, because lock-in to a vendor can cost you dearly when a competitor moves to a better solution that might be faster and/or cheaper. Your competitiveness relies not only on your adaptability, but that of those who supply you. This is extremely true in IT, where product lifecycles are often very short. But it’s true in all vendor relationships. It’s important all businesses overcome vendor Lock-in to avoid carrying too much legacy cost, and to continuously explore better solutions that can help you enhance – possibly redefine – your Success Formula.
Along this line, I thought it might be fun to list the top 10 Vendor Lies I’ve heard in my career – often ignored at great cost:
- Of course our application is 100% compatible with that
- That feature was in the demo, and will be available to you in just 3 weeks after purchase
- Our customer service people are some of our best trained engineers
- That problem only exists in the demo – it won’t happen in your installation
- Your installation will be on-time and on-budget
- We never point our finger at another vendor if you have a problem
- Working with an outsourcer is easier than doing the work yourself
- Our prices are firm, we never discount at end of quarter
- We can seamlessly integrate into your business – you’ll never see a glitch
- With our product strength, we’ll never go out of business