T for Technology – The IT Crowd
Remember in school when you played any game that required a team? We would randomly select captains of said team and give that person the otherworldly power of selecting his/her squad. I will never forget the cringe building up as you realize you are one of the last five left and the sheer delight of not getting picked last. Picked last once or twice, terrible idea – 0/10 would not recommend.
To draw a parallel from that story, the same happens when selecting partners and suppliers in your business. We are all continuously evaluating and assessing qualities in partners to give ourselves the best chance of winning by selecting the best possible team from the available pool. In the natural world this Darwinian concept of natural selection can be applied to our survival of the fittest selection method in business.
In the IT field that has many sides to it we will be needing a lot of different service providers and products to make our business work. Competing products and services even in a local environment are plentiful. There are several companies in your direct area that provides the exact same services and sells the same products. We can include, IT technicians, network technicians, software developers, hardware suppliers, printing supply stores, mobile operators, and internet service providers (ISPs). All of them doing basically the exact same thing, your job is to select the best ones for your business.
What makes a partner in IT services the “fittest”? Having been on both ends of the field on this one I would say that there is a reputation that precedes always. There must be someone that you have done something for that is worth a recommendation. Start with reviews that is available on either Google or Facebook even if they have a page. Learning from other experiences. Also take the bad or really good reviews with a pinch of salt. There are some crazies out there that will give out 1-star reviews only because there isn’t a 0-star or less option.
This perception created by scores of fans is probably the most asset to the provider and the best barometer for someone looking for service providers. A word-of-mouth recommendation is always a good foot in the door for both sides If you are supplying, ask your customers and clients for recommendations to their friends and families. If you are looking for service providers, ask you peers and colleagues for their recommendations.
There are a few other factors that impact our decision making. Costs is obvious, not all of us need to pay for the “best” when we can select from a pool of businesses with reasonable pricing. If it is something almost disposable, it helps to play the field. You can give for instance another company a chance in supplying printer cartridges, this wont damage your existing relationship and you will find out first hand if the service/products were good enough for the price you paid.
Talking about relationships, this is another vital factor in partner selection. Building a trusted relationship with someone that has access to your most personal information is very important. It is very scary if you have your whole life on a laptop and need to hand it over to a stranger for fixing. Imagine the things they can find! And who they can share it to. Wouldn’t you rather give it to someone that you trust? Building that relationship is beneficial to both parties and keeping it healthy even more so. Many times, entering into some sort of service level agreement is the outcome everyone wants, we establish loosely the grounds of working together and what is expected of each partner. If it is a new provider you are selecting, test them out with a few smaller jobs until you can establish trust
There are some partnerships that forms around the niche of a specific service or product. In this instance it is born out of necessity, still there is a ground for keeping the partnership healthy even if one side is running a monopoly item. Being in the good books might give you additional discount or preferred supplier status.
By assembling a formidable team gives you the opportunity to excel in areas that you might not have ventured into before. Every provider brings with it the expertise that is needed to make things work that you wouldn’t even know where to begin. Rather spend the time to find providers that is going to deliver the correct product/service, at the right price and on time.