Tag Sourcing & Procurement

Entries 2 Total

The Width of Men’s Ties and Waste in IT

Sep 15, ’09 12:19 PM

A look at my prom picture from 1980 provides a wealth of information on how styles change over time, along with significant comic relief. Light brown suits? Fabrics not found in nature? And what’s with that tie? As we leave adolescence and join the workforce we quickly notice that even professional clothing styles seem to rotate through a never-ending series of changes, almost as if a system in New York was sending out random instructions to all clothing sales associates…“Three-button suits were last week, today it’s two-button again.”

Those with enough patience and a large closet can rest easy knowing that everything they have ever purchased will be in style again, if they wait long enough (well maybe not that particular tie.) Of course, this is style obsolescence, a variant of planned obsolescence, and its a big driver of product sales in our culture.

We experience this constant churn of products throughout our lives, from the consumer electronics that seem designed to fail right after the warranty expiration date, to the (some would say planned) inability to construct a road surface that will last more than one winter, thereby guaranteeing more road work for the next summer.

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Are You Building IT Partnerships or Vendorships?

Jun 2, ’09 10:17 AM

The words partner and vendor are thrown around a great deal in the IT environment, often with the word “strategic” attached (woe be unto you if you are only considered a “non-strategic vendor”). Its common to hear both words used in a single meeting between parties, or found within documents describing a business relationship on the drawing board. Are these words interchangeable in general use?

I would suggest that they should not be, and offer five traits of real business partnerships, a model that can pay great dividends to an organization.

(1) The Long-Term View – This is perhaps the key trait, and drives all the others. To take a long-term view, you must first have enough confidence in your new business partner that you plan for a multi-year business relationship from the outset. This includes the investment to create a comprehensive agreement that will support you well for several years, align incentives and rewards so that both parties benefit, and likely includes your personal involvement. At the start of the agreement, do you have enough confidence in this new partner that you can imagine working with them for many years, or would you swap them out at the first sign of trouble?

In practice this means that you will also have a longer view of the internal “score sheet” that we all keep for each partner, judging their performance but also the root cause of mistakes made, etc. Just as the stock market goes up and down but over time we (hope to) benefit from long-term appreciation, a partner tries to keep short-term blips in perspective, putting them in the context of the larger goals between the parties and the benefits that have been realized over time.

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