Humour

How to wage a vendor war-II

T A Balasubramanian concludes his two-part guide on how CIOs should wage successful battles with IT vendors

So now you have whittled your adversaries from the vendor world down to three potential lucky finalists. Your friendly mood continues with what you consider to be your dutiful due diligence, although it is clearly apparent to each of the vendors that this is an extension of the Spanish Inquisition. You have been grilling them further on the site reference visits, making them produce endless demos using your hairiest and scariest data, and you have met the entire organisation from the obsequious President down to the last man in the quivering security team at their gate. You have their best and final offers, and are in the process of trying to decide which one to go for. The obvious thing is therefore to get them in for another round of friendly questioning.

“But why is this necessary?” you may ask, especially if you have already decided that Sellina at More is the chosen one for Baffle. This is a damn good question. I mean, if you have not picked out the vendor you want to do business with by now (the one left standing at the end of the grilling, evidently) what have you been doing for the past three months? And what new information do you expect to gain from continuing this charade?

But due diligence means wringing necks sometimes, and if it so happens that you find it a great challenge to make grown men, and women cry, then so be it.

Here, then, are some inquisition tips to make sure that the last few vendors left standing can leave the room as gibbering wrecks:

Always get all their names and designations wrong. You could encourage Sellina from More by saying: “Well, well, Bellina, your company Bore is doing fine, I see.” You can add fuel to the fire by saying: “I always get you guys mixed up with the other lot.”

Tactics

Whisper loudly to the person on your team sitting next to you all the way through the presentation. Alternatively, say nothing at any point, just stare into the middle distance like a Spanish warlord looking into the horizon across the sea.

Bring in your most intolerant and impossible-to-please technical member of staff to ask random, difficult, and irrelevant questions. He may ask: “What if we insist on the requirement for printing cheques with exactly zero, or negative values?”

Laugh uproariously at the statement “...and I’m convinced that More can meet your needs in the most cost-effective way.” You might also say between bouts of laughter, “Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?”

Ask the presenter to go back to a point he was making about 15 slides ago, and watch him struggle with the “back” button as it laboriously un-builds all those fancy animated slides piece by piece. Do this at least three times.

Have someone come into the room and say that your managing director needs the overhead projector immediately. The vendor will now have to improvise and ad lib the presentation without the visual aids.

Ask to preview all of the slides before the presentation starts, then tell the vendor which ones you don’t want to see. Make it random.

Tell them they only have 15 minutes instead of 45 because the India-Pakistan cricket match is being televised early today.

Tell them at the very start that they should have asked permission before using your trademark on their slides, and that you are very angry. You get the picture. The Spanish act, done to perfection, will create the setting for a perfect win in any battle, if you know the rules and play by them.

The ceasefire

After the final battle, it is time to pull out the white flag. So now you are down to the final march, counting down from three to one.

First, tell all three exhausted vendors that they have won.

Then, get the cheapest guy in and really put the thumbscrew on him for the final price. Get his revised offer in writing after the vendor has broken down and agreed. Now, show this written offer of surrender to the most expensive guy, say, Maximum Corporation, whose front salesperson is Maxi.

You say, “Well, you know, we would love to do business with Maximum, but as you can see, you are 50 percent more expensive than this late offer from Less. We cannot ignore that, can we?”

Watch with amusement as Maxi does everything under the sun trying to convince her boss at Maximum to discount their offer. You would remember, of course, that he has already put this deal as a target achieved for this quarter, and probably used up his entire commission too, because you have been assuring Maxi and him that Maximum is in first place all along.

When you get their revised offer, in writing, take it to the middle vendor, which, of course, is Sellina from More. “We would love to give you the business but look at all the extra functionality we get for about the same price from Maximum.”

You can twirl your Spanish moustache and keep up your smug look while Sellina and her boss sweat it out making a revised offer to match everything from Maximum. When they promise to give you more functionality for the same price, THEN you can put the offers side by side and make a REAL decision on which one you want to go with.

The prisoner

Finally, you have More as your last standing adversary on the field. Having selected your vendor, you want things happening on site yesterday. You bludgeon Sellina into delivering equipment and people immediately, ignoring her cries that she still does not have a signed contract yet. That can wait for a few months. Prisoners have few privileges, and you must do everything in your power to make them remember that fact.

And so, at last, another great “business partnership” is born.