The Wandering CIO

Many CTOs or CIOs have championed the “buy it, don’t build it mantra” (including yours truly).  But the implication of buying things is effective vendor management.  Vendor management – choosing which ones and how many – affects our core ability to deliver service to the businesses we serve.

If we have too many vendors, or poor vendor management practices, we will spend too much of our precious time and resources in vendor dog-and-pony shows, playing golf, managing interoperability conflicts among vendors and trying to herd all the vendors into cohesive IT services.

I believe there is a very real “tax” each time a new vendor is added to the roster. One CIO in an article I read quantified the cost in man-hours of dealing with a vendor. He estimated that a one-product vendor requires more than 80 hours of staff time each year in a best-case scenario. And some vendors can chew up MANY hours with demands for meetings, nondisclosure events and other activities that may be less than valuable from the perspective of getting things done.

Quantifying the cost of using a vendor can be a very important counter-weight to decisions, often made by the purchasing group, that might save us $12 on a product but cost us thousands of dollars in staff time.  (BTW, I have seen many examples of this in “real life”)

One way I have seen to get a handle on things is to place vendors in three tiers according to how much time and how many resources you commit to each.

•   The top-tier vendors are your strategic partners in software, hardware and services.  Spend all the time necessary with them.  Examples for us include Cisco, HP, Microsoft, NetApp, etc.
• The middle tier is where the trouble can start. This tier comprises vendors that have a product or service that is essential to our organization. Often, there is a great push to add best-of-breed vendors to this middle tier. However, the investment you make in time to support these middle-tier vendors can be substantial.
• Then there are the lowest-tier vendors, those that supply standard products or services. These vendors usually require little interaction. Such vendors may wish to become more important, but you should try to keep interactions with them as infrequent as possible.

Other thoughts:

• What IS our complete list of vendors?  Where is it maintained?  Who has the rights to add or remove vendors?
• Where is the “relationship” housed?  In the National Service teams or in purchasing?  Seems to me there is a difference by tier.
• There should be a formal feedback process to our top-tier vendors at least annually on how we think they are doing and what we have coming in the next 12 months that they could possibly help with.

How do you mange your vendors?

Like many people in the Technology world I watched Apple’s iPad announcement this week with intense interest.  Unlike most people I am interested not in the consumer space  – but rather how could this device be used for business.  How could a new category like this be used?

Opportunities for the iPad in financial services:

Those who stand to benefit the most from the iPad are financial advisers who are constantly meeting clients on the go, says Doug Dannemiller, senior analyst at Aite Group.

For advisers, data visualization and presentation are key. And one of the most interesting aspects of the iPad is its zoom and flip page capabilities, which means it can be shared with a client more easily than a laptop, Dannemiller points out.

“I see the laptop as not a good collaborative tool,” he explains. A laptop computer acts as a barrier between the adviser and client, since it is only one person (presumably the adviser) who will handle the keyboard, hit the return key and flip the computer round to face the client. (continue reading…)

“The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.” -- William Gibson

Gibson’s line is one of those sexy aphorisms that crystalizes a whole theory of the relationship between technology and society.  What makes Gibson’s phrase so appealing is the idea that we can get a grip on what is to come if we just examine today’s cutting edge. To understand the future of mobile technologies, study how the hippest teens in Tokyo use IM. To see what ubiquitous broadband produces, go to Seoul.  To see the future of gaming watch this video:

Now imagine this type of technology in the workplace and not just in the home.

In my company we have spent millions putting in Video Conferencing all around the world.  Making a video call is actually easier than making a phone call because all nodes have a full directory of all the other nodes loaded so it’s just point and click with the remote.  However our employees are still intimidated by the technology and are afraid to use it, or call the help desk to initiate a call.  How many other areas are people intimidated by technology and therefore we aren’t getting the investment returns we expected?   How can this technology be used to lower barriers to adoption and yes, even make things fun in the workplace?