It seems most IT / Telecom executives are disenchanted with their current TEM provider, but switching software platforms is a painful process. Besides, they don’t see any “good” alternatives when they look at the market anyway. Many times enterprise executives don’t want to go through this migration pain and come up with a strategy to “negotiate” a better solution. As renewal time approaches, the enterprise and current provider both work hard to craft a contractual solution to address improved service and avoid this pain.
- Enterprise view: My risk is reduced if I can secure better service by structuring a better contract with tougher SLAs and performance guarantees with financial penalties.
- Vendor view: This is not my only unhappy customer and I have a playbook to address. First, let me re-assign my best resources to the account to find savings, correct the back-log of outstanding tickets and make the customer feel supported. Then, I agree to more SLAs as deftly as I can to retain the business in exchange for a multi-year deal.
These viewpoints combine to allow both parties to ignore the many previous performance issues and gloss over the reality that the only reason the enterprise has decided to stay is it is too painful to switch TEM providers.
Unfortunately, this “negotiated” outcome will not yield any sustainable improvement in the overall service, and the cycle will re-start when the contract expires.
If you’ve found yourself needing to break this cycle, contact us. We’d be happy join you on a path to success.
