If your organization works with multiple vendors for various solutions and services, you may face a variety of management and integration challenges.
Managing multiple solutions from different vendors can be complicated and difficult.
Understanding the problems with having multiple vendors and how to consolidate them will help you improve the management of multiple providers and avoid these problems in the future.
Coeo knows how important reliable vendors are to an organization and has helped thousands of organizations consolidate their vendors.
We want you to understand the challenges that exist when using multiple vendors and how to consolidate them so you can improve your user experience.
By the end of this article, you will understand the problems with having multiple vendors and the ways you can better consolidate and manage these vendors.
Problems with using multiple vendors
Using multiple telecom vendors that provide different solutions for your organization can make it difficult to manage the solutions. Some of the problems with using multiple vendors include:
Increased complexity
Multiple telecom vendors providing different solutions can make telecom operations more complex. It can be difficult to manage all the different solutions if they are provided by different vendors.
Each vendor may have different billing cycles, support systems, and communication protocols which can lead to inefficiencies and confusion when trying to manage the different solutions.
More expensive
Using multiple vendors at the same time will typically be more expensive. Paying different vendors for each service or solution will result in more expensive solutions.
Using multiple vendors requires multiple contracts and separate billing systems. These contracts will often be more expensive than if you were to consolidate vendors into one single provider.
By consolidating vendors, you will be able to negotiate better pricing since all your solutions will be managed by the same provider.
Inconsistent quality of service
With multiple vendors and services, there may be quality of service inconsistencies.
Different vendors offer different quality of service levels which can result in inconsistent quality and performance of your solutions and services.
The inconsistencies in the quality and performance of your solutions and services can result in poor productivity issues in your organization.
This can also negatively impact customer experiences and satisfaction if they are impacted by the network services and solutions.
Limited visibility and control
Having multiple vendors providing different solutions and services can make it difficult for your organization to view your network infrastructure and control the network solutions.
It is typically important for organizations to identify trends and analyze usage to optimize their network to improve network health.
If your organization uses multiple vendors to provide services, it will be difficult to consolidate the data required to do these types of analyses.
However, if your network vendors allow you to view each service and solution individually, there may be gaps in data that are missing.
Additionally, it can be difficult to manage each login to view each service from each vendor.
Click the link below to use this free tool to learn how you stack up against your peers and learn how to stop poor network performance, reduce outages, and learn best practices for maintaining a resilient network:
Ways to consolidate and manage vendors
Now you have learned the problems with having multiple vendors. However, it is also important you understand how to consolidate vendors to avoid these problems in the future.
Some of the ways to consolidate vendors include:
Install an SD-WAN solution
SD-WAN is an overlay network that is built on top of underlying network connections.
Since SD-WAN is an underlying network, it is flexible when it comes to what the underlying solution may be whether it’s fiber, LTE, or broadband.
SD-WAN allows you to manage your network while still using other carriers regardless of who delivers your SD-WAN solution.
This provides your organization with flexibility and gives you full control over the vendor you want to use.
Additionally, SD-WAN is a flexible solution that allows you to customize it to your organization’s needs. This allows you to manage your solution and the vendors your organization has services with.
Flexible SD-WAN providers enable you to see metrics inside your network that are transparent and alert you when your network is down.
This allows you to see what services within your network are working and which are not.
Additionally, not all services have 100% uptime. However, with SD-WAN vendor management, you can have a backup connection to avoid as much downtime as possible.
For example, if an organization has a broadband connection, and the connection goes down, they can have an LTE backup.
The LTE connection would activate when the broadband connection stopped working enabling the network to function properly.
Use a flexible network provider
Using a flexible network provider that can deliver many services will allow you to consolidate vendors into a single provider. Coeo, for example, consolidates and manages vendors on behalf of their customers.
This enables you to communicate directly through Coeo making your network services easier to manage.
For example, if you are using AT&T internet through Coeo, you would communicate any issues your organization is experiencing through Coeo, not AT&T. Coeo then ensures that the issue is resolved to your satisfaction.
Instead of having multiple vendors to communicate with for different services and solutions, Coeo enables you to communicate through a single point of contact.
Next steps to vendor management and consolidation
Now you know the problems with having multiple vendors and the ways to consolidate and manage these vendors.
This will help you determine if consolidating and managing vendors through an outside expert is the right solution for your organization.
No one wants to experience poor productivity because of poor vendor management.
It is important you understand the problems and solutions with having multiple vendors so you can resolve these problems in the future if your organization is experiencing them.
Coeo has helped thousands of customers consolidate vendors and knows how important it is for organizations to maximize the value provided by these vendors.
We want you to understand the ways to consolidate and manage vendors so you can avoid the problems created by using multiple vendors in the future.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about vendor management and consolidation or ask any questions you may have you can schedule an appointment.
Now that you understand the problems of having multiple vendors and the ways to consolidate and manage them, read this article below to learn more about how SD-WAN can help your organization with vendor management:
