The Naked CIO: The V-word

Most CIOs are plagued by unwanted overtures from vendors. Why can't suppliers see that harassment might not be the best basis for a relationship, asks the Naked CIO.

Having a phone or email - come to that, any communication system - can be an irritant for a CIO. Why? Because of the relentless, daily badgering by vendor after vendor. They are expert at not taking no for an answer.

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It's a shame. The flood of pointless calls and emails swamps the few valuable ones. You see, not every call from a vendor is irrelevant to me. Some might even be useful.

But because of the barrage of pointless communications as soon as I know a call is from a vendor, I close up and go into rapid dismissal mode.

In a previous company I had a specific mailbox that I directed all vendors to. It was set to auto-delete.

But here's the thing. We need vendors. We need to know what is happening in various markets and what new technologies are emerging. Without this information we become out of date. So it's truly a love-hate relationship.

The amount of time I can spare for vendors depends on my focus and workload - and on whether my current initiatives are relevant to the pitch.

Also, I find networking at conferences and events a better way to get answers to my questions and gives me greater control over the conversation. The hard sell is always difficult to take.

Some of the conferences where they pay your way in exchange for time with the vendor are good. But even though these are beneficial, I sometimes end up feeling cheap and ask myself whether the only reason I attend might really be the free food and accommodation and whatever else is on the agenda.

Also I can only attend one or two of these per year, so it isn't as if I am really doing research. Other mainstream conferences and trade shows are good but tend to represent information overload.

I use silicon.com and other sites to research emerging technology or news-worthy innovations but then this does not necessarily give me a chance to evaluate what vendors are up to. Magazines can be good - when I have the time to read them - but I probably get more from the ads than the articles.

When I need to do research either for a request for proposal or just to investigate a specific technology I will look at exhibition lists to see some of the companies operating in the area I am interested in.

But none of these approaches seems to create the symbiotic relationship between vendor and company that allows for easy, manageable and non-irritating communications.

I am sure I could have lunch every day of the week and attend every Six Nations match weekend and a multitude of Premiership games if I were so inclined. But that would probably not help me establish the relationships my job requires.

I don't like to be rude about vendors. Yet their pestering makes it hard to be otherwise. The only offer I can make to vendors that want to talk to me is come down to my local after work. It seems to be the only environment where I don't care who I talk to or what I talk about.