How do you create "Skin in the supplier game"?

Todays Cloud technologies offer organisations numerous choices. However, successfully realising benefits requires organisations to carefully manage multiple 3rd parties to deliver a common goal.

When embarking on implementing new tech, organisations need to consider applying different strategies to manage their suppliers.

1. Existing Suppliers – identify those who are in the future state and those to be served notice. A strategy to manage the transition between suppliers needs to be defined and carefully executed
2. New Suppliers – the process to select a new vendor needs to look wider than functionality and consider the opportunities to build a long-standing partnership in what will be a multi-year relationship
3. Solution Integrators – with the technology known, a supplier needs to be selected to technically configure the solution. Consideration needs to be made about the benefit of using either the Tech Vendor or a separate partner
4. Client-side Delivery – outside the technology scope, other capabilities required to fulfil client-side delivery requirements need to be in place. This includes programme delivery (including supplier management) change management, architecture, data, testing and org design

Producing and running a plan to manage service levels and performance is systematic and a science.

However, this only gets you so far. What is needed is the empathy to understand and craft outcomes for all parties to enable them to work to a shared agenda. This creates the skin in the game that gets you through the tough times. This is an art.

The benefits of deploying cloud technologies can only be realised if organisations effectively manage the numerous parties required to deliver the solution. Supplier management and governance is one of the key ingredients to successfully landing new solutions and requires due attention in delivery.

Have a look at some recent example case studies below.