Supplier Buy-In

[Brock Sampson]

In what circumstances does a suppliers 'buy-in' to a host's collaboration initiative influence its livelihood?

[jahowt]

It really depends on the aggressiveness of the host company and their ability to source the material elsewhere.

We've had customers that brought the supplier into the product assessment during the sales cycle and had others that told the supplier to "get on board, or else." Both tactics have positive and negative results depending on the supplier's size and the percentage of the suppliers revenue that the host accounts.

Jason

[katy]

A general thing to consider is that solutions which are low-cost and high-benefit to all users are most likely to be adopted and used long-term.

When you look at collaboration costs to the supplier, the cost of hardware required to get to the host-buyer and man-hours, the cost of training users, the man-hours the supplier has to dedicate to getting the system going and ongoing use and maintanance are all factors.