hen it comes to buying and selling IT services, personal relationships count. Services providers want to foster good relationships with their cli
ents as a way to shut out the competition. IT managers seek partners with proven track records and an understanding of their business goals.
"There needs to be understanding and trust between both," says Robert Mason, CIO of MicroAge Inc. in Tempe, Ariz., and head of the reseller's new services division.
In fact, Mason is mulling over the possibility of MicroAge's offering vendor-managed inventories to the IT services industry. In a former position as an IT executive at GE Lighting, Mason helped design a program to manage Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s inventories, restocking the giant retailer when inventory levels indicated it was time. Similarly, he says, an IT services vendor, responsible for managing a customer's desktop assets, might be in a position to proactively deliver upgrades.
Some vendor-client relationships become too close for comfort, necessitating that the terms of the relationship be recast. That was the case with Perot Systems Corp.'s two-year-old megadeal with Swiss Bank Corp.'s inv
estment banking unit, according to an industry source. As Swiss Bank found out, services vendors that are frequently on site can get overloaded with requests from business units. They then find themselves engaged in projects without first having set priorities.
And, if the vendor is paid based on time and materials, there's an incentive to keep busy without worrying much about the business value of the activity.
New terms of the Perot-Swiss Bank agreement established a stronger framework for activities handled by Perot Systems, in Dallas. For example, any project undertaken by Perot Systems for Swiss Bank must help control costs, increase efficiencies, or provide higher levels of customer satisfaction. The amended agreement also downsizes the scale of Swiss Bank's commitment to Perot Systems by reducing the original, 25-year, $6.25 billion outsourcing contract to 10 years and about $2.5 billion. Swiss Bank also lowered its nearly 25% investment in Perot to 15%.
Finding the right level of commitme
nt between parties can take time. But the flexibility to restructure contracts is a sure sign of a mature and healthy relationship.
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hen it comes to buying and selling IT services, personal relationships count. Services providers want to foster good relationships with their cli
ents as a way to shut out the competition. IT managers seek partners with proven track records and an understanding of their business goals.
