A big company, a small company. A company specialized in one thing or an organization that covers many different services across the board. How do you select who will be the best fit for your organization's needs? There’s so many different questions to ask before you even start writing out the request for proposal (RFP). However, your selection should solely be about who will make your organization successful in the area you’re looking to enhance and increase productivity. It’s certainly tough going through the process of replacing an existing vendor and bringing a new partner on board, but it’s necessary to make things better.
Being upfront and realistic about what you want is key to selecting a new vendor. It takes diving into details that the normal person wouldn’t really think about. Cost implications must be evaluated, availability of resources should be evaluated, the size of your business and the nature of your business should be evaluated as well. At the end of the day, it’s all about fitting your organization's needs when considering a new vendor.
Being trained in these situations can be advantageous for both parties. Typically, most vendors will be able to do the job that you’re asking of them, but can you both work together? Can you both be in sync with instructions, tasks, projects, meeting times and communicate effectively on both ends? You’re entering a partnership, and it should be treated that way from start to finish. If a potential vendor cannot or will not share the vision your organization has, then it’s just never going to work no matter how much you’d like it to. Within the partnership, you must be in sync at every level to produce great work that helps each side. I’ve found it beneficial to have frequent check-ins in the beginning and then scaling it back as necessary.
If you’ve got all the particulars squared away and the vendor has been selected, that’s when the real work begins. It’s been seen and proven time and time again; The teams that succeed trust each other to do their jobs and to do them well. As you have those regular check-ins with the vendor's rep, you should certainly bring up things that aren’t necessarily working but for the most part you must trust them to figure things out.
Just like anything else in business, there are effective and non-effective ways to get through this process. Know what you want out of a potential partner, develop the partnership by being honest and fair, maintain a great level of trust in the option you have chosen, and work together to sustain it all.
Charles M. Thomas is an operations professional, consultant, and writer who has held positions with reputable organizations as a facilities & operations manager, operations manager, and a technical writer. As a facility operations consultant with LACE Management Services, he helps organizations build their programs from the ground up, enhances their existing programs, and serves as a communicator for a generation of young professionals.
