Managing Suppliers

Partnership

Despite every precaution, there will be many problems to be encountered during a project of this nature and many of them will be associated with the suppliers of software, hardware and associated services. Project success demands that these issues are resolved in timely fashion and in a manner that is mutually beneficial to the institution and the supplier(s). It is important to establish friendly and productive working relationships and a culture of partnership with suppliers from the outset.

It is advisable to always be respectful towards a supplier and to be prescriptive and precise with complaints or requests and accommodating with the proposed solutions. Taking this approach requires institution's personnel to "walk in the supplier's shoes" (i.e. consider the commercial benefit for the supplier when making requests) and adopt a policy of not blaming the supplier for everything that goes wrong.

Some multi-national suppliers and their systems have often received bad press, but it must be accepted that they are very large organisations and both internal and external communication is inevitably more challenging than for smaller suppliers working from one office location. Therefore, every effort should be made by customers to talk to the larger organisations regularly at all levels. Building relationships with the supplier in this conciliatory way usually produces similar responses and positive conclusions to disputes more often than negative ones.

This type of relationship must be beneficial to an implementation project. Remember, it is also important to the supplier that the implementation is a success. If it is, the organisation will be a satisfied customer and the supplier will expect good references. The opposite can be extremely damaging to the supplier's reputation and the prospects of future sales within the same community.

Contracts

If required, there will be contracts between the organisation and suppliers for:

• software licensing;

• software upgrades;

• software support; and

• hardware and networking facilities support and upgrades.

Our Contract Negotiation infoKit enables you to chart a course through the minefield of contract negotiations.