Pyramid sellers

Many transformation programmes – even quite modest affairs – will have multiple suppliers. It is common for supplier management to become a massively time-consuming task. This happens particularly when there’s some old-school behaviour raising its ugly head – such as inter-supplier responsibility-ducking, deadline-blindness or finger-pointing.

Ideally, this can be mitigated at the start of the programme, but in an emergency, vendor vendettas can be fixed by simply restructuring the chain of command. So, instead of all suppliers having equal status, and equal calls on your team’s time, you arrange them in a pyramid format. You make one supplier the prime player, responsible for the delivery of all the others. Then, the prime supplier becomes responsible to you for getting work out of the door and dispute de-fusing – and you don’t have to. You now have just one point of contact for contract delivery.

“Yes, but”, I hear you holler, “That’ll come with a price tag. The prime supplier will want to be rewarded for the risk and effort they are taking.”  

“Yes, but”, I reply, “The only other option is to find the budget for in-house resource to police the squabbles.” It costs the same either way, but there is every chance there is greater capability for the role within a large and experienced supplier company than inside your team.

This article is taken from Uncommon Sense: Alternative Thinking on Digital Transformation by Mark Aikman

Amazon location: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Uncommon-Sense-Alternative-Thinking-Transformation-ebook/dp/B08KSG513Q

Apple location: https://books.apple.com/gb/book/uncommon-sense/id1536877985