“Cowboys” exist in every industry. They promise the world and seldom actually deliver anywhere near this. One classic example of cowboys is within the construction industry.
The earthquake rebuild in Christchurch attracted hundreds of builders to the city, many looking to make a quick buck. Several years later, thousands of houses are now starting to show signs of poor work being completed by the minority of unregistered, unqualified and nonchalant builders that were attracted to the city. This causes huge headaches for the home owners and EQC (Earthquake Commission) who now must review the work and get it redone.
As in construction, there are a minority of “cowboys” operating in the IT world.
Information technology is becoming increasingly critical for the success of a construction company. As the call for transparency and accuracy gets stronger, companies must answer by ensuring that their systems are in place and up to date with the most recent requirements. Some of these include the ability to access project data across multiple sites, project managers and engineers to be able to gain visibility over multiple projects at once, and the reliability on email communications to complete work and relay information.
Because IT is important to construction companies, it is crucial to select IT vendors that will provide your company with high quality technology, suited to meet your needs.
This is where the cowboys enter. They may seem to be the best vendors when having initial discussions. They offer everything that you require and more so at the best price. It is only further down the track that you begin to realise the promises were false, the expectations unrealistic and the low quality of the solutions. Problems with system performance or lost data make cheap IT services seem very expensive from the rest.
Trusting your vendors is so important. After all, you are placing valuable company information in their hands. You want to know that it is going to be safe, secure and available when you need it. Gaining that trust can be difficult and require proof and validation of what they initially promised.
However, trial and error can be an expensive and risky option for finding the right vendor. If they aren’t what you expect, this can cost the company time, money and sometimes its competitive advantage. So how can you identify the right vendor without putting them through a trial first?
There are six key questions that can be asked to identify a good IT vendor and to help weed out the cowboys of the industry. These questions take both your company and the vendor through a journey and reassure you of their knowledge, skill set and capability for a range of important factors.
To learn about these six questions and how each one help you to choose the right vendor for your company, download our free eBook “Avoiding the IT cowboys”.
