Chapter 10
Managing the Vendor Relationship
In the IT profession, it's practically guaranteed that you will work with a service provider—if you don't already. But it's almost equally guaranteed that you've never been taught how to do this, or trained your staff on vendor relationship management skills; in fact, it may not have even occurred to you that managing the service provider relationship requires skills, disciplines, processes, and knowledge that you may not have.
The fact is, managing a service provider—be it an outsourcer, software-as-a-service provider, or cloud vendor—goes way, way beyond developing a good contract. You're managing a relationship, and the contract happens to just be a formal document structuring the relationship.
It is also much more complex than buying products from a vendor. When you're managing service providers who work side by side with your own staff—and provide direct service to clients and customers—there are complexities and problems that are not as apparent when purchasing a product.
Managing a service provider is also decidedly very different from managing a staff of employees. In fact, these two disciplines—managing relationships versus employees—are as different as night and day. With employees, you're sharing a common objective with the staff, which is to grow company revenue and meet business objectives and goals.
With the service provider's staff, you're on two different missions, as they're focused on maximizing their employer's value. ...
