The Right Partner
One of the most important aspects in any procurement is choosing the right partner. One way to help differentiate between vendors is to use the quadrants below to compare companies against their vision and their delivery capability.
Many organisations exist in the bottom right hand corner, high on deliver capability but low on vision. In many case this is not a bad place to select a vendor from, as long as the vision can be brought in from elsewhere, either within the distributor or from other external sources. Often, but certainly not always, this delivery security comes at a price as these organisations tend to resource projects heavily so secure success and this often puts the price out of reach of many distributors.
Other vendors exist in the top left. Again vendors from this quadrant have their place as their vision can provide a real differentiator to a distributor. However the price here is risk. Choosing vendors in this box needs to be the domain of organisations that have the delivery procedures to drive and control the project and the business resilience to cope with delays as the project hits the inevitable bumps in the delivery road.
Organisations in the bottom left hand quadrant need little mention here – simply avoid them. Why take the delivery risk if there is no vision to give any commercial advantage. The top right hand quadrant is of course the ideal place to select vendor from but the key is how to spot these, although tracking the life cycle of organisations can provide some clues.
New entrants often enter the market full of vision but with little deliver experience. As they engage the market the vision increases as does their delivery capability until they enter the Dream Team Quadrant for that all too short period of time. As they achieve success they meet deliver issues and support issues and often spend less time looking to the future, while their legacy software and customer base becomes harder to move towards the future needs even if the company can spot them. These challenges soon drag the vendor out of the visionary space.
Once the vendor is in the bottom right hand quadrant the direction the company takes will depend on the strength of the management and indeed business model. Strong companies will re-energise and move back into the dream team world, through recruiting expertises and in effect buying more capacity while also launching new products. However the danger is weaker companies hit more and more delivery issues and don’t invest to get off of the slippery slope into the bottom left hand quadrant.
Written by Mark Loosmore - Visit Website