According to legend, to conquer Gordia, an invader had to untie a large, complicated knot. None succeeded. When Alexander the Great arrived, he simply sliced through it with a sharpened, carefully weighted sword. His easiest conquest. Multinational organisations’ have long been trying to untie their relationships with multiple UC and IT vendors in different countries. They form a knot of unfathomable complexity. Managing multiple vendors across countries leads to months of wasted, unproductive work. Invoices arrive in multiple currencies. SLAs have different terms. Vendors’ support engineers don’t speak the native language. It’s all very frustrating for managers and staff alike. The business suffers too. One solution is for multinationals to outsource to one global vendor with offices in multiple countries. But that has its own set of problems. There are no silver bullets. Until now.
Cause of multi-vendor frustration
Often this starts with the Sunk Cost Fallacy. Managers don’t want to change technology, as writing it off looks like an admission of failure. So old technology is retained. But when inevitably new technology is adopted, vendor numbers increase. Mergers and acquisitions can cause multi-vendor frustration. Often acquirers and targets retain their vendors. Local offices like using local suppliers. So, there are more languages and currencies.
Both managers, staff and the business suffer
Multiple global vendors can have consequences for managers, staff and business performance. When vendors avoid taking responsibility, support tickets go unresolved. One vendor blames another. Nobody owns the broken system and IT staff can feel impotent. With applications unable to work together, end users get frustrated and fatigued. Anything for an easy life. Quick negotiations are so much easier - even when better offers are available.
