As retailers face material shortages due to climate emergencies and ongoing geopolitical issues, collaboration with suppliers is becoming increasingly critical. This applies to IT businesses too. IT businesses handle complex tasks across several technologies and infrastructures. A strong IT partnership will significantly impact an organization’s success because it influences quality, cost, and a wide range of other factors. So, how do you build a robust IT vendor collaboration that maximizes value for your organization? In this article at Information Age, Jarosław Granat, head of client engagement at Future Processing, shares tips on how IT organizations must build and maintain fruitful partnerships with vendors.
How to Strengthen Your IT Partnership With Vendors
Build Your IT Partnership on Trust
“Trustworthy partners can promote open and transparent communication in every IT partnership. For a partner to share any concern, challenge, or updates, there must be a safe atmosphere that can allow a seamless flow of communication between the two without any barriers,” says Granat. Remember, building trust is an ongoing process that demands equal effort from both sides. Partners must be ready to accept each other’s perspectives and values. Additionally, vendor collaborations must be free from secrets and based on transparency.
Foster a Commitment to Equal Involvement
IT partnership must not be dominated by a single party; rather, it should welcome participation, skills, values, and thoughts from both sides. Equal involvement in partnership undoubtedly brings better outcomes than a command-and-control model. Furthermore, incorporating a problem-solving approach will help in boosting client satisfaction and deliver valuable results.
Apply a Human-to-Human Approach
Often vendor collaborations are based on the price. IT partners with the highest price may often spend a higher amount of time, money, and resources on a project than it demands. On the contrary, partnerships that offer cheaper prices may come with challenges, such as a lack of skills and limited technical capabilities. Therefore, the author suggests basing your IT partnerships on a human-to-human approach, such as quality of service, skills, values, interests, culture, and trust. Both parties must promote open and transparent communication from the start to build a trustworthy relationship to add value to the successful partnership. To read the original article, click on https://www.information-age.com/how-to-maximise-value-from-it-partnerships-19518/.
