Experiencing trouble with one of our vendors.

Vendor X has been dropping the ball bigtime lately. Wrong parts coming in all the time and missing parts when we actually need them. We ordered a fuser and a tray comes. Silly crap like that.

I am a rookie when it comes to vendor management. My questions is how would you go about trying to find another vendor?

We are mainly an HP shop with some Xerox's sprinkled around. All the plotters and MFD's have service contracts with another 3rd party vendor.

I'll be honest I am looking for some guidance. Part of me wants to get the guys HP certified, but I heard that was a bear to get done. Some of the guys said it's really hard to provide warranty work for HP. Either way we need a vendor who can step up and deliver. This crap is getting old. We are coming out of our baseline evaluation period soon, and customer sat is a KPI we are rated on.

I'm afraid if we don't get this turned around it could really keep us from running like a well oiled machine. We already have enough challenges as it is. We don't need a vendor messing this up for us.

Thanks for any insight.

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Comments

Everyone

I've always had a preference for working directly with the manufacture whenever possible. I've worked directly with Dell and HP for servers before, and that to me seemed far better than dealing with a middle-man vendor.

CDW, as I'm sure you know, is one of the major vendors out there, and one I've had the most experience with. It really depends on your rep. I've had some good ones, and some really bad ones.

If the vendor has been good for you in the past, but isn't doing so well now... try to speak with someone other than your rep. Make a complaint, or ask to have a different rep assigned to you. Let them know you're unhappy and that you will take your business elsewhere if things don't improve quickly.

It's always good to shop around. There are plenty of vendors out there, the big names aren't always the best. Smaller vendors will often work harder to make you happy, although they may not always be able to get you the lowest price on the equipment itself like the big vendors can. You have to balance the service and support costs with the equipment costs and get the big picture. It may be better to pay a slightly higher upfront cost on the hardware, then save money on the service and support, or vice versa.

rwmidl

I agree with what Everyone said, if at all possible just deal directly with the manufacturer. Using Dell, I've always had really good experiences working with them. I've even had them help with hardware that were long out of warranty.

If you have to deal with a third party, I'd document the issues you are having and then schedule a meeting with your sales rep. Bring all the issues to the table, explain the issues to the rep and tell them flat out we need to get these resolved or we are going to have to look at other options. Give the rep time to research the issues and get back to you in writing. I'd also follow up in writing to the sales rep about the meeting, what was discussed and anything that was agreed to/time frame for response, etc. If the rep can't resolve the issue to your satisfaction, then start soliciting bids.

I'd also consider figuring out how much money/man hours you are loosing by the vendors not living up to their SLA (I'm guessing these vendors and their contracts have some SLA, if not time to re-negotiate the contract). If you have to solicit bids, and say the manufacturer has a higher price, you might be able to justify the higher price by telling management "look, vendor A is less however because of issues with them we end up spending Y in terms of loss production/man hour loss. Manufacturer A costs more then vendor A, but if you look at what "extra" we spend Manufacturer A ends up being less" (hopefully that made sense).

MrRyte

Rather than just jump to another vendor, set up a conference with the vendors regional/district managers listing specific issues that need immediate resolution. Don't threaten them; just let them know that you're losing confidence in them and give them a deadline to make things right.

Switching to another vendor means having to familiarize the new vendor on your business processes which may affect productivity.

WafflesAndRootbeer

N2IT wrote: »

Vendor X has been dropping the ball bigtime lately. Wrong parts coming in all the time and missing parts when we actually need them. We ordered a fuser and a tray comes. Silly crap like that.

I am a rookie when it comes to vendor management. My questions is how would you go about trying to find another vendor?

We are mainly an HP shop with some Xerox's sprinkled around. All the plotters and MFD's have service contracts with another 3rd party vendor.

I'll be honest I am looking for some guidance. Part of me wants to get the guys HP certified, but I heard that was a bear to get done. Some of the guys said it's really hard to provide warranty work for HP. Either way we need a vendor who can step up and deliver. This crap is getting old. We are coming out of our baseline evaluation period soon, and customer sat is a KPI we are rated on.

I'm afraid if we don't get this turned around it could really keep us from running like a well oiled machine. We already have enough challenges as it is. We don't need a vendor messing this up for us.

Thanks for any insight.

What exactly are you servicing? Getting HP certification is as easy as farting but it takes a little more effort cause you gotta go through the online tests though the value is worthless. When I worked for CompuCom, they just gave us the answers to the online tests and we took them to get the certs and that's how everyone else is doing it these days for the most part though you can take training from HP which is VERY expensive.

it_consultant

We had these issues with Synnex, we dumped them for SHI and Ingram Micro and have had a much better experience. Ingram can be a pain because some of their call centers are not north american based, but they have access to a lot of stuff at a much better price then CDW.

N2IT

it_consultant wrote: »

We had these issues with Synnex, we dumped them for SHI and Ingram Micro and have had a much better experience. Ingram can be a pain because some of their call centers are not north american based, but they have access to a lot of stuff at a much better price then CDW.

We should talk sometime.

-Patrick