What Is the Problem with Too Many Providers?

Some companies might think that it is good to have multiple providers for various network and IT issues because this creates a redundancy. In reality, this creates a convoluted system that can be hard to fix when something goes wrong.

First, this creates a financial headache. There are multiple invoices coming in from every provider. Some of the issues this problem might create include:

• It is hard to keep track of which bills are coming from where
• The contracts start and end at different times, making it hard to figure out who needs to be renewed when
• There are also fees associated with each bill and the structure might be different for every provider, making this issue hard to follow
• This also places a lot of stress on the accounting department

On top of this, if something goes down in the network, it can also be hard to figure out where the problem is located. Some of the issues include:

• Every provider starts pointing fingers at everyone else, saying it isn’t their problem, it is someone else’s
• The customer is serving as the man in the middle, spending countless hours on hold only to be told the problem is somewhere else
• Outages end up taking much longer to resolve, which costs the business money

The reality is that providers cannot see what the problem looks like for either the customer or other providers. Therefore, it is challenging to resolve service outages.

Why Is Having Too Many Providers a Problem?

The biggest issue with having too many providers is that nobody is able to take responsibility for something that goes wrong with a network or voice issue. Instead of the companies working together on the back end to get this problem solved, the customer is stuck in the middle doing all the work. In the meantime, the work is piling up, projects are falling behind, and clients are getting unhappy, which costs the business money. The good news is that there is a solution available.