Successful vendor partnerships are long term commitments—both parties should be in for the long haul. Like any relationship, it takes a significant amount of effort on both sides to make it truly successful. There are, however, a number of critical success factors to making vendor relationships work:
Establish the Account Team. Effective teaming is essential in vendor relationships. The Account Team should comprise technical skills and customer relationship management skills. There should be a point person on both sides to ensure that your needs are understood by the vendor and that the vendor is well represented in your organization.
Take Responsibility as a Team. As a working team, establish the initial project plan and accept joint responsibility for the successful implementation of the project plan. Clearly identify respective responsibilities and issues. Agree on due dates and deliverables. Over the tenure of the contract, additional projects and initiatives will continue to be added to the charter of the Account Team. Projects should be jointly prioritized and incorporated into the overall vendor strategy and implementation plan.
Avoid Pointing the Finger. Over time, there will be issues, such as slipped deadlines and missed deliverables due to a number of factors, including changing priorities on both sides, technology shifts and upgrades, and platform issues. Prompt elevation of issues to the Account Team and effective brainstorming as to the optimal, expeditious solution of those issues is best. Nothing erodes vendor relationships more quickly and more effectively than an us versus them mentality. Expend your efforts in finding creative solutions rather than assigning blame.
Communicate, Communicate, and Communicate. In many long-term vendor relationships, there is a strong possibility that both organizations will undergo some level of change over time in terms of strategies, technology, leadership, and priorities. Regular communication is absolutely critical to smooth relationships. On a regular basis, the joint account team should review priorities, address issues, identify additional areas of interest, and share changes in overall direction and strategy.
Recognize the Value of Partnership. Partnership is not an insignificant word. It means celebrating joint accomplishments together, and defining additional areas in which both firms can work together to make each other successful. Opportunities may include:
Joint development of initiatives that can be mutually beneficial
Expansion of the existing scope of the relationship to include additional initiatives that have evolved as a result of the accomplishments to date
Joint marketing in terms of references, testimonials, case studies, and success stories, directed to both internal and external audiences in each organization.
Plan for the Future. Keep abreast of vendor new product/solution release dates and upgrades, and ensure that your own planning for those upgrades begins relatively early. Involve your IT group and the Account Team in these discussions as well, and focus on changes on your user groups and how those will be communicated.
Understand that Customization Requires Maintenance and that You Must Pay for It. Customization is frequently attractive and desirable, but with all vendors providing upgrades to their standard decks on a regular basis, any customizations you implement will also have to upgraded and integrated, frequently at your own cost. Customization for the sake of minor cosmetic changes should definitely be evaluated in terms of their long-term value. For more substantial customization efforts, be sure both the vendor and your customization team maintain clear documentation of the work done, such that they can map to changes required due to upgrades and changes in baseline vendor products.
Participate in Vendor User Groups and Forums. You are not alone. Vendor user groups and forums frequently provide great opportunities to learn from others' experiences and find additional ways to utilize vendor products/solutions in your own environment. Collaboration is profitable on both sides. User groups can be leveraged to provide development forums, realizing substantial economies of scale if common deliverables can be identified.
Participate in Executive Advisory Boards/Chairman's Councils. At the strategic level, for those vendors with whom you maintain a substantial relationship, it makes sense to participate in leadership councils where decisions are discussed as to vendor direction, strategies, and tactics. Key client input is of high importance to vendors, particularly where those clients have a long-term commitment to their products and solutions.
Have Fun! Teaming with a vendor whose skills strongly leverage your own, and with whom you can achieve significant progress, can be an exhilarating experience for you and your team. Never lose sight of what you bring to them, and what they bring to you. Partnerships are never easy, but they are always worthwhile.
Most major e-learning vendors have tools and methods that are the result of hundreds and/or thousands of experiences with working with joint vendor/customer teams.
While the landscape of e-learning vendors can be challenging, the good news is that the best e-learning vendors are usually very interested in, and committed to, the success of their customers, because they know the success of their customers is critical to their future reputation and growth as partners.
For most e-learning initiatives within Global 5000 business organizations, you will likely find yourself working with multiple vendors to put together the strongest solution for your own organization. The right vendors for you will probably be the ones with the strongest capabilities and track record within the areas of e-learning products and services you have identified as the most critical to the success of your e-learning initiative.
Both you and your selected vendor(s) must make a significant commitment to providing the right resources and the right investments in your program success. Selecting the right vendors/ products/services is only the initial step to a successful e-learning initiative. Making that partnership work, ensuring the right resources are deployed, and reaping the necessary return on investment from each e-learning initiative requires a level of structure, commitment, and dedication well beyond signing on the dotted line.
Now that you have built it, will they come? This is a driving question in the field of e-learning initiatives. The only success is when the learners benefit from what is being provided, and when their learning needs to become more knowledgeable and productive are satisfied. In the next chapter, several approaches to ensuring the engagement of your learning community in the e-learning that programs provide will be explored.
Leverage the core e-learning expertise of successful e-learning providers to jump-start your e-learning strategy.
One-stop shopping capability in e-learning vendors is very rare; focus on the vendors with the strongest capabilities and track record within the areas of e-learning products and services that you deem the most critical to the success of your e-learning initiatives.
Let your e-learning vendor(s) work actively with you as a partner; e-learning initiatives which create a one-sided value proposition are rarely successful.
Map vendor capabilities and technology requirements to your own business and technology platforms; ensure that proposed vendor solutions are realistic given your current environment.
Expect creativity and flexibility in vendor pricing arrangements; vendors interested in a true long-term partnership will be happy to comply.
Share responsibilities, milestones, and successes; work together to overcome adversity and resistance.
Establish a bi-directional flow of communication; ensure that vendors are aware of changes in your strategies and infrastructure, and that you are aware and have input to changes in theirs.