5 Common Pains of Dealing with Vendors

Too often, our new clients have worked with vendors that stall, mislead and ultimately lose communication during project iterations. The Vendor-client relationship can teeter back and forth based on a vendor’s performance and a client’s articulation of their specific needs.

 

As a client needing the vendor’s service, you rely on their knowledge and prowess to aid you in making an informed decision regarding what solutions will fit you best. Below are the 5 most common pains of dealing with vendors:

1. Vendors can be inexperienced with their own solutions and show a demo that works nothing like your finished product. If the vendor does not know the capabilities of their solutions, then they may overestimate and promise more than they can deliver, leaving your company without the solution that they need to grow. Wouldn’t you feel more secure in knowing that person knew the real-life limitations and best ways to implement their product?

2. Sometimes, as sales people, vendors outright lie to get your business and often go with the turnover of sales staff, they may even go so far as to criticize other departments of their company and say that the help desk does not offer support or that the engineers are the real problem.

3. Since you know your company better than any third party, articulating your business needs and setting expectations is often left to you, but a vendor needs to do their part to help you put your needs to their services. A vendor not listening or being conscientious of your company’s needs may not be their fault entirely, since they are sales people often occupied with trying to get the sale, and they often are unable to detect the reasons behind your questions.

4. If you find that your vendor’s documentation is lacking and seem irrelevant to your unique needs, then it may be time to focus on building a custom solution from the ground up. Documentation that revolves around the solution and its capabilities without addressing how it can be implemented for your company could mean problems later in the project.

5. Keeping in contact with your vendor can mean the difference between completion of iterations towards the project and stagnation of progress in your project. It shouldn’t be up to you and your company to keep communication lines open, your project should mean as much to your vendor as it does to you.

At Ayoka, we understand that your pain points need to be addressed. We will take the time to listen to you, meeting with you and your employees in-person to elicit requirements and perform analysis. We prefer to work closely and collaboratively with our customers – and we provide experience with open-source or other innovative applications that are powerful enough to generate business intelligence for small business. At Ayoka, client satisfaction is our number one priority. Ayoka is committed to your business’ success and we strive to create partnerships built on mutual trust and respect that will grow as we help your business grow. Contact us today for a complimentary consultation.