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- "This is not a time to buy on
price," says Woody Benson, a principal with Lazard Technology
Partners. "Who you do business with is just as important as the
price."
- Don't buy critical products
or services from new partners without a replacement plan. "It's
much easier to gamble or take risks on noncritical, easily replaceable
network operations that may be available cheaper and more cutting-edge
from a smaller company. There are many cases where a young company
or a start-up can deliver a level of improvement that is so valuable
it is worth doing business with them," says Christine Heckart,
president of TeleChoice.
- But don't assume that because
a company is large or an incumbent that it's a safe bet as a provider.
No one is immune to shutting down sectors, spinning them off or
not delivering as promised, Heckart says.
- If you opt for a boutique-type
vendor with cutting-edge technologies, expect to be more diligent
reviewing its financial health. You can't take formal accounting
documents at face value these days, so study a wider range of
financial documents and talk to more references. You can lower
risk by deploying such niche solutions from new vendors incrementally,
one geography at a time, while integrating in failsafes, says
Dave Henderson, vice president of Americas customer services for
NCR.
Susan Marks is a freelance writer in Denver. She
can be reached at sjmarksco@aol.com. Illustration:
Christian Northeast
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