September 25

Vendor Agnostic

One of the elements you should consider when putting together your IT strategy is who your third party consultant is that maintains no ties to any of your other vendors. Sure, maybe they know them and they are friendly and such, which they should be, but there’s no financial interests in the other party.

The reason that this is important is because everybody needs a double check against who they’re working with. If you have an outside non-interested – financially or from an ownership standpoint etc. – consultant, it’s a lot easier for you to feel comfortable making a decision. You get a second set of eyes you need because when you’re at the Director/CIO level, you want to make sure that the decisions you’re making are not just seen by your eyes.

Look for a consultant that doesn’t have a tie to any other IT firm. Expect to pay a premium rate for it because if they’re not being paid for the solutions that they’re helping to locate, it’s fairly expensive for them to go from one project to another. So you may find that they are on retainer agreements or that it’s a fairly high single engagement.

Just another tip for you to try to help out with your IT purchases…