Challenge
A professional services firm used a different vendor for its website, its marketing, its client intake, its live chat and its case-management software. Each was competent in its own area.
Nobody was responsible for how they fitted together. When something involved two vendors, the partners were left to referee a technical conversation.
Approach
We act as the firm's technical lead across all of them.
- Join the vendor calls and represent the firm's interests.
- Translate what each vendor needs from the others.
- Set out what a proposed feature involves and what has to change elsewhere first.
- Write up decisions and follow them through.
- Flag legal and compliance steps early, so the firm's own counsel can review them.
Result
The partners have one person to ask, and projects that touch several vendors now have an owner.
- Decisions made with the consequences laid out.
- Vendors working to one plan.
- Fewer stalled projects.
Our advice
If you have more than three technology vendors, someone has to own the joins between them. If that is nobody, it is you.
Related service: IT & CTO/CIO management.