Forging Strategic Partnerships with IT Vendors

Exclusive research from the CIO Executive Council and CIO magazine

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Executive Summary 3

Findings 4

Creating Value 6

Conclusion 8

Methodology & Respondent Profile 8

Appendix 1: Strategic Partner Index Advisory Board 10

Appendix 2: Partner Actions and Corresponding Weighted Values 11

Appendix 3: Detailed Responses in the Six Vendor Categories 14

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FORGING STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS WITH IT VENDORSAn analysis and benchmark of partnering performance, and best practices for strengthening strategic relationships

Report compiled and written by Brendan McGowan, Media/Programs Coordinator, CIO Executive Council.

© CIO Executive Council & IDG Enterprise

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This report on IT vendors as strategic partners provides a numerical measure of the quality and depth of vendor partnering activities and characteristics in six major categories: business intelligence (BI), cloud, enterprise applications and integrators (enterprise), outsourcers, network, and storage. Members of the CIO Executive Council, a global peer advisory community, developed the survey to inform both corporate IT leaders and technology vendors on what it takes to be a true strategic partner today. The CIOs defined strategic partners as vendors that have gone beyond effective delivery of systems and services to become consistently transparent, responsive and trusted collaborators in creating value for the enterprise.

According to Ken Piddington, CIO of Global Partners, “most vendors only interact with CIOs when they are trying to sell something or when there is a problem.” Members of the Council define a strategic partner as a different kind of vendor, one that is not a mere transactional seller but a trusted and agile collaborator. The benefits of establishing these strategic partnerships include better working relationships, improved service levels and cost management, and better collaboration and communication.

CIOs are more incented than ever to enter into strategic partnerships, notes David McNally, IT executive advisor at research company IDC, a sister company of the Council under IDG. “It comes down to a challenge of talent—the labor pool is shrinking and solutions are far more diverse. When you consider these factors along with the acceleration of technology—notably the adoption of discrete cloud services—you find that maintaining in-house resources to support more diverse technologies is increasingly difficult. The ability to draw on the depth of resources that a strategic partner can provide is hugely beneficial.”

Respondents to the survey were initially asked whether they consider the vendors they were choosing to rate to be current strategic partners. Forty-six percent said, “Yes.” However, as the survey went more in depth, details revealed a more negative picture. For the Strategic Partner Index survey, 279 respondents provided 743 evaluations of their chosen vendors against the following 20 partnering actions in the areas of transparency, responsiveness and collaboration:

TRANSPARENCY

1. Delivers consistently against expectations

2. Provides stable sales force and account representation

3. Demonstrates strong R&D/innovation capabilities and thought leadership

4. Demonstrably understands my business and is invested in continuing to learn my business

5. Shares technology roadmap

6. Assesses how our respective technology roadmaps align with our organization’s strategic visions

RESPONSIVENESS

7. Escalates issues responsively to appropriate representatives within our respective organizations

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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8. Responds effectively to ad hoc needs and requests that fall outside contract parameters

9. Demonstrates continuous improvement and works toward improvement goals and metrics

10. Provides open and honest communication during all phases of the relationship

11. Aligns pricing with our specific situation/condition transparently and logically

12. Customizes product set and features to meet my organization’s specific needs

13. Capabilities keep pace with my organization’s evolving needs, such as global expansion

COLLABORATION

14. Integrates effectively with our suppliers, customers and other vendors

15. Suggests and brokers third-party vendor partnerships that provide additional value to us

16. Provides free, relevant advice to reduce costs, increase benefits or innovate, with our technology

17. Vendor’s staff acts as a seamless extension of our own IT staff

18. Is open to agreements that feature results-based incentives

19. Collaborates on new features or products for our mutual benefit

20. Is open to entering into joint ventures with shared risk and reward

Respondents indicated whether or not each action was typically and consistently being performed by their vendors. The final weighted averages of these responses—computed as Strategic Partner Index (SPI) scores—were low for most vendor categories: On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is indicates no partnering action and 10 indicates maximum partnering action, the average SPI score was only 3.23. Further, no individual partnering action of the 20 was indicated as consistently taking place by more than 55 percent of respondents.

These results show that CIOs see much room for improvement on the part of their vendors when it comes to acting like a true partner, both overall and in individual partner-oriented activity. It is the hope of the Council and the publishers of CIO magazine, a sister publication of the Council under IDG, that these scores and the underlying partner-defining characteristics will be fodder for CIO-vendor discussions toward mutual partnering improvement.

Accompanying this report is a spreadsheet-based rating tool that IT leaders can use to score their own vendors in a similar manner as was done in the survey. The results can then be compared against the vendor category benchmarks in this report.

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FINDINGSThe Strategic Partner Index survey was fielded from March to May 2012. The survey asked CIOs and other IT leaders to rate their chosen vendors on how well they performed as strategic partners. Vendors were grouped into primary categories of business intelligence (BI), cloud, enterprise applications and integrators, outsourcers, networking, and storage. Less than half (46 percent) of overall respondents perceived the vendor or vendors they rated as current strategic partners, using the definition developed by the CIO Executive Council: A strategically important vendor that

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has gone beyond effective delivery of systems and services to become a consistently transparent, responsive and trusted collaborator.

Looking at the vendor categories (Figure 1, below), the networking vendors fared best, with a high of 64 percent of respondents indicating these vendors were true partners. Cloud and BI vendors were least likely to be seen as current strategic partners, with only 36 percent and 39 percent of respondents responding favorably.

Figure 1: Respondent citing vendors as partners, by category

CategoryBase

(Total Evaluations)Vendor is a

Strategic Partner

Overall 743 46%

BI 110 39%

Cloud 116 36%

Enterprise 180 51%

Outsourcing 105 46%

Network 96 64%

Storage 136 42%

The picture becoms more stark when rating vendors on specific actions. Respondents were asked to rate each vendor on whether they typically and consistently demonstrated each of 20 different partnering characteristics or actions (see Appendix 3 for percentage responses by vendor category). These actions were identified as essential to true strategic partnering by members of the Council (see Appendix 1 for a list of these CIOs).

The responses were then calculated as Strategic Partner Index (SPI) scores for each vendor category. On a scale of 0 to 10—where 0 is indicates no partnering activity taking place consistently, and 10 indicates maximum partnering activ-ity—the average score was only 3.23.

The SPI score is a result of weighting the various partner actions to reflect their relative complexity and potential impact on value. For example, the action “Escalates issues responsively to appropriate representatives within our respective organizations,” was considered table stakes by CIOs, and given a weighting of 1. Meanwhile, “Is open to entering into joint ventures with shared risk and reward,” was considered a highly complex and potentially valuable activity, and was given a weighting of 4. (See Appendix 2 for the full list of weightings.)

Given these weightings, the maximum amount of points that any vendor could receive was 45 total, across the 20 criteria. For each vendor, the Strategic Partner Index score was calculated by converting the percentage of the total possible points into number from 0 to 10. For example, if a vendor received 15 points out of 45 total, it would have an SPI percentage of 33.3 percent, and an SPI score of 3.33.

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Average SPI scores by category ranged from a low of 2.47 for BI, to a high of 3.80 for outsourcing (see Figure 2, below). According to a number of CIOs the Council spoke to, BI vendors have only just begun to focus on relationships—they’d been previously preoccupied with perfecting their technology and winning accounts. Because the scores across all six vendor categories are so close together, and so low, the data shows an overall lack of consistent partnering activity across vendor categories in general.

Figure 2: Average SPI Score by Category (0 to 10)

2.47Business Intelligence

3.58Cloud

3.02Enterprise

3.80Outsourcing3.72

Network

3.06Storage

There is clearly a fundamental desire for strategic partnerships with vendors and the transformative value they can deliver. Given the relatively low numbers of vendors currently considered strategic partners and the even lower inci-dences of consistent performance of individual partnering actions, we asked Council member CIOs for techniques that have worked to build strategic partnerships in the areas of transparency, responsiveness and collaboration.

TRANSPARENCY: Categorize your vendors and establish single lines of contact. When Ken Pidding-ton, CIO of Global Partners, set out to create a formal strategic partner program, he started by assessing who he was working with, and how they gave him value—from strategic vendors that were critical to day-to-day operations, to tactical vendors offering commodity products available from multiple suppliers.

Categorizing the vendors in this way afforded Ken the chance to reboot his relationships with them, especially from a communications standpoint. He advises technology leaders to establish a single point of contact within each vendor company, a conduit who can help lay the groundwork for a focused relationship. This increased transparency has led to gains for both sides.

CREATING VALUE

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“When clients establish a single point of contact, it’s just easier to do business,” agrees Jessica Converse, account manager at CA Technologies, an IT management software and solutions company that works directly with Piddington. “It gives us a chance to learn deep details about overall strategy, rather than continually ask about initiatives. We can simply align better.”

TRANSPARENCY: Build trust with open and honest communication. Bill McCorey, senior VP, Universal Parks and Resorts, believes that technology leaders have been conditioned not to trust providers when looking strictly at the bottom line—and that inhibits success in a lot of ways. “Business leaders have been hesitant to share both their immediate challenges and their future desired end-state with partners,” he says. “But the more I can share and make clear that something is a priority, the greater the chance for success.”

Building that trust means treating your vendor with honesty and expecting the same—in other words working with real transparency. When McCorey was at Circuit City, the vendor had overcommitted on critical point-of-sale and ERP implementations, putting themselves and Circuit City IT in a tight spot. McCorey needed to act as mediator between the vendor and his corporate leadership, advocating for more time and money to deliver the project successfully. The effort worked, building bonds between the vendor and McCorey. To this day, McCorey advocates a fair and balanced approach.

RESPONSIVENESS: Hold vendors to agreed metric assessments, and get creative. For Ken Grady, CIO and director of IT at New England Biolabs, the purpose of a strategic partner is simple: “I want you to be profitable, and me to be profitable, and for you to be less cost per unit (e.g., fewer IT tickets) over time.” To accomplish this, Grady relies on mutually understood metrics and a shared risk/reward model to help both sides focus on shared goals.

One example is Grady’s work with ISITE Design, a digital agency with offices in Boston and Portland, Ore. ISITE has been the principal architect and developer of the New England Biolabs website and Web content management system. To make sure that service was where it needed to be, Grady collaborated with his vendor to reevaluate the core metric that they had in place, which was turnaround time on ticketed issues. Both sides recognized that they needed to redefine how they measured progress: issue resolution, issue acceptance, and number of issues became much more important. Managing these expectations led to a closer working relationship. Biweekly executive meetings were set up to review the key metrics and provide an open forum between the two organizations.

COLLABORATION: Be open to shared investments. One of the most complex but potentially lucrative partnerships companies can have with their vendors is a formal joint collaboration. In his previous role as CIO of the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DCWATER), Mujib Lodhi worked directly with IBM to develop a system that would enable the utility to manage its assets. These include hundreds of thousands of water distribution pipes, valves, public fire hydrants, collection pipes, man holes, vehicles, water meters and working crews. The goal was a water diagnostic management system that would provide DCWATER with a dashboard on weather patterns, water use, and hundreds of other variables—helping them diagnose and even predict potential problems within the Capitol region’s aging infrastructure.

To accomplish this, Lodhi (who is now CIO of the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission) worked personally to align his own team with IBM’s already extant utilities management initiative. His organization put up 20 percent of the

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While overall SPI scores were low, the potential for meaningful strategic partnerships remains high—as these ex-amples from Council members demonstrate. Strategic partnerships are based primarily upon corporate execution, but are impossible without personal connection. “People do business with people, and it is all about the personal relation-ships,” notes Larry Bonfante, CIO of the U.S. Tennis Association. The fundamentals of responsiveness, transparency and collaboration are the basis of any healthy business relationship—and as CIOs demonstrate, when executed on a corporate level can lead to significant gains for both sides.

The CIO Strategic Partner Index survey was conducted by CIO in partnership with the CIO Executive Council, a global peer advisory service and professional organization of more than 500 CIOs. The survey was conducted online among the CIO audience and CIO Executive Council members via email invitations and/or pop-up site intercepts between March 28, 2012 and May 29, 2012 with the objective of evaluating vendors based on their strategic partnering capa-bilities. Respondents were offered a chance to win $500 cash as an incentive for completing the survey. Results are based on 279 individual respondents and 743 completed evaluations.

A broad range of industries are represented including high tech telecom & utilities (16 percent), financial services (16 percent), manufacturing (14 percent), healthcare (10 percent), education (8 percent), professional services (8 per-cent), and government (federal/state or local) (7 percent). Respondents are employed at organizations with an aver-age of $4.9 billion in company revenues and an average of about 13,700 employees. Eighty percent of respondents hold IT, networking or security management titles; five percent hold IT, networking or security professional titles; fourteen percent hold business management titles and one percent hold other titles.

A strategic partner was defined in the survey as a strategically important vendor that has gone beyond effective delivery of systems and services to become a consistently responsive, agile, and trusted collaborator in creating value for the enterprise. Respondents were advised that the vendors they chose to evaluate don’t necessarily need to be considered current strategic partners for their enterprise.

Respondents evaluated vendors across six technology categories—business intelligence, cloud, enterprise applica-tions & integrators, outsourcing, network and storage. Respondents could choose one or more vendors to evaluate within each category. Respondents were asked to indicate whether each vendor meets specific partnering criteria and were asked to check the box for the criteria ONLY if it is typically and consistently true for that vendor in how it interacts or is capable of interacting with their organization. It was possible to evaluate the same vendor in more than one category.

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CONCLUSION

METHODOLOGY & RESPONDENT PROFILE

cost of the multimillion-dollar effort, and, as he explained, “that demonstrated that I was serious on the whole part-nership.” Lodhi also provided top technologists from his team to work directly with IBM, sharing resources to further the initiative until its completion less than a year later.

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The 20 actions upon which the evaluations are based were weighted with values of one (1), two (2) or four (4), with each weighting corresponding to how complex and potentially valuable the action is in being a strategic partnering capability. A weighting of one means the action is relatively simple and low in its potential value contribution to the partners. A weighting of two is for actions that are more complex and have a higher potential value contribution. A weighting of four is reserved for actions that are most complex and have the highest potential payoff. The actions and weighted values, as well as the technology categories, were vetted by the SPI advisory board, all of whom are mem-bers of the CIO Executive Council. (Please see Appendix 2 for a list of the 20 actions and their corresponding weighted values.)

The margin of error on a sample size of 279 is +/- 5.9 percentage points. The margin of error on a sample size of 743 is +/- 3.6 percentage points. Percentages on single-select questions may not sum to 100 percent due to rounding.

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CIO Executive Council Strategic Partner Index Advisory Board

Shawn Anderson, Senior VP, Chief Procurement Officer, First Data

Ray Barnard, VP and CIO, Fluor

Ryan Bateman, Director of Technology, Sands Capital Management

Arun Kumar Bhaksara-Baba, VP, Global IT Risk Management, Johnson & Johnson

Steven Birgfeld, CIO, Hostess Brands

Larry Bonfante, CIO, United States Tennis Association

Paul Brady, VP and CIO, Arbella Insurance Group

Luann Bridges, Director Business Operations, CBS

Bill Brown, VP and CIO, Avid Technology

Brandon Brown, CIO, Trident Marketing

Frederic Chanfrau, Senior VP IT Regions, Information, Process and Organization, Schneider Electric

James Clent, CIO, United Orthopedic Group

Randy Gaboriault, CIO/VP IT, Christiana Care Health System

David Gift, Vice Provost, Libraries and IT Services, and CIO, Michigan State University

James Gaulke, VP of Information Technology, PDC Energy

Ken Grady, CIO, Director of IT, New England Biolabs

Joshua Jewett, Senior VP, Information Technology, and CIO, Family Dollar Stores

Raj Kushwaha, former CIO and Business Transformation, Zimmer Holdings

Charlotte Klock, Senior IT Executive Director, Chief Information Security and Privacy Officer, University of California, San Diego

Mark Kocour, Associate Principal, ZS Associates

Vince Kellen, CIO, University of Kentucky

Leonard Law, CIO, W.P. Carey & Co.

Mujib Lodhi, CIO, Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission

Ralph Loura, VP, CIO, Clorox

Jackie Lucas, VP and CIO, Baptist Healthcare System

Bill McCorey, Senior VP, Universal Parks and Resorts

Ken Piddington, CIO, Global Partners

Sandy Rasel, VP and CIO, Perdue Farms

Jeff Steinhorn, CIO, Hess

Michael Whitmer, former Global CIO, Hudson Global

APPENDIX 1

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Partner Actions and Corresponding Weighted Values

APPENDIX 2

One (1) means the action is relatively simple and low in its potential value contribution to the partners

• Capabilities keep pace with my organization’s evolving needs, such as global expansion

• Delivers consistently against expectations• Demonstrably understands my business and is in-

vested in continuing to learn my business• Demonstrates strong R&D/innovation capabilities

and thought leadership

• Escalates issues responsively to appropriate repre-sentatives within our respective organizations

• Provides open and honest communication during all phases of the relationship

• Shares technology roadmap

• Aligns pricing with our specific situation/condition transparently and logically

• Assesses how our respective technology roadmaps align with our organization’s strategic visions

• Customizes product set and features to meet my organization’s specific needs

• Demonstrates continuous improvement and works toward improvement goals and metrics

• Integrates effectively with our suppliers, customers and other vendors

• Provides stable sales force and account representa-tion

• Responds effectively to ad hoc needs and requests that fall outside contract parameters

• Collaborates on new features or products for our mutual benefit

• Is open to agreements that feature results-based incentives

• Is open to entering into joint ventures with shared risk and reward

• Provides free, relevant advice to reduce costs, in-crease benefits or innovate, with our technology

• Suggests and brokers third-party vendor partner-ships that provide additional value to us

• Vendor’s staff acts as a seamless extension of our own IT staff

Two (2) is for actions that are more complex and have a higher potential value contribution

Four (4) is reserved for actions that are most complex and have the highest potential payoff

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APPENDIX 3On the following pages you will find the detailed responses about the 20 actions of the survey respondents in each of the six vendor categories:

• Business Intelligence• Cloud• Enterprise• Outsourcing• Network• Storage

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45%Shares technology roadmap

39%Provides stable sales force and account representation

27%Provides open and honest communication during all phases of the relationship

44%Demonstrates strong R&D/innovation capabilities and thought leadership

17%Suggests and brokers third-party vendor partnerships that provide additional value to us

27%Assesses how our respective technology roadmaps align with our organizations’ strategic visions

Partner Action Ratings: BUSINESS INTELLIGENCEThe 110 evaluations for the Strategic Partner Index survey in the business intelligence category indicated whether or not the vendors in this category typically and consistently perform the following partner actions.

TRANSPARENCY

RESPONSIVENESS

COLLABORATION

33%Delivers consistently against expectations

35%Demonstrates continuous improvement and works toward improvement goals and metrics

28%Escalates issues responsively to appropriate representatives within our respective organizations

31%Aligns pricing with our specific situation/condition transparently and logically

33%Capabilities keep pace with my organization’s evolving needs, such as global expansion

23%Responds effectively to ad hoc needs and requests that fall outside contract parameters

28%Customizes product set and features to meet my organization’s specific needs

31%Provides free, relevant advice to reduce costs, increase benefits or innovate, with our technology

29%Demonstrably understands my business, and is invested in continuing to learn my business

23%Collaborates on new features or products for our mutual benefit

27%Integrates effectively with our suppliers, customers and other vendors

15%Vendor’s staff acts as a seamless extension of our own IT staff

17%Is open to agreements that feature results-based incentives

11%Is open to entering into joint ventures with shared risk and reward

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48%Shares technology roadmap

51%Provides stable sales force and account representation

35%Provides open and honest communication during all phases of the relationship

43%Demonstrates strong R&D/innovation capabilities and thought leadership

38%Suggests and brokers third-party vendor partnerships that provide additional value to us

35%Assesses how our respective technology roadmaps align with our organizations’ strategic visions

Partner Action Ratings: CLOUDThe 116 evaluations for the Strategic Partner Index survey in the cloud category indicated whether or not the vendors in this category typically and consistently perform the following partner actions.

TRANSPARENCY

RESPONSIVENESS

COLLABORATION

42%Delivers consistently against expectations

50%Demonstrates continuous improvement and works toward improvement goals and metrics

37%Escalates issues responsively to appropriate representatives within our respective organizations

44%Aligns pricing with our specific situation/condition transparently and logically

45%Capabilities keep pace with my organization’s evolving needs, such as global expansion

34%Responds effectively to ad hoc needs and requests that fall outside contract parameters

28%Customizes product set and features to meet my organization’s specific needs

39%Provides free, relevant advice to reduce costs, increase benefits or innovate, with our technology

32%Demonstrably understands my business, and is invested in continuing to learn my business

34%Collaborates on new features or products for our mutual benefit

31%Integrates effectively with our suppliers, customers and other vendors

32%Vendor’s staff acts as a seamless extension of our own IT staff

29%Is open to agreements that feature results-based incentives

31%Is open to entering into joint ventures with shared risk and reward

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48%Shares technology roadmap

41%Provides stable sales force and account representation

33%Provides open and honest communication during all phases of the relationship

36%Demonstrates strong R&D/innovation capabilities and thought leadership

28%Suggests and brokers third-party vendor partnerships that provide additional value to us

27%Assesses how our respective technology roadmaps align with our organizations’ strategic visions

Partner Action Ratings: ENTERPRISEThe 180 evaluations for the Strategic Partner Index survey in the enterprise category indicated whether or not the vendors in this category typically and consistently perform the following partner actions.

TRANSPARENCY

RESPONSIVENESS

COLLABORATION

32%Delivers consistently against expectations

32%Demonstrates continuous improvement and works toward improvement goals and metrics

33%Escalates issues responsively to appropriate representatives within our respective organizations

30%Aligns pricing with our specific situation/condition transparently and logically

37%Capabilities keep pace with my organization’s evolving needs, such as global expansion

37%Responds effectively to ad hoc needs and requests that fall outside contract parameters

34%Customizes product set and features to meet my organization’s specific needs

34%Provides free, relevant advice to reduce costs, increase benefits or innovate, with our technology

36%Demonstrably understands my business, and is invested in continuing to learn my business

38%Collaborates on new features or products for our mutual benefit

32%Integrates effectively with our suppliers, customers and other vendors

22%Vendor’s staff acts as a seamless extension of our own IT staff

18%Is open to agreements that feature results-based incentives

20%Is open to entering into joint ventures with shared risk and reward

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38%Shares technology roadmap

52%Provides stable sales force and account representation

51%Provides open and honest communication during all phases of the relationship

25%Demonstrates strong R&D/innovation capabilities and thought leadership

29%Suggests and brokers third-party vendor partnerships that provide additional value to us

24%Assesses how our respective technology roadmaps align with our organizations’ strategic visions

Partner Action Ratings: OUTSOURCINGThe 105 evaluations the Strategic Partner Index survey in the outsourcing category indicated whether or not the vendors in this category typically and consistently perform the following partner actions.

TRANSPARENCY

RESPONSIVENESS

COLLABORATION

49%Delivers consistently against expectations

47%Demonstrates continuous improvement and works toward improvement goals and metrics

49%Escalates issues responsively to appropriate representatives within our respective organizations

47%Aligns pricing with our specific situation/condition transparently and logically

33%Capabilities keep pace with my organization’s evolving needs, such as global expansion

47%Responds effectively to ad hoc needs and requests that fall outside contract parameters

34%Customizes product set and features to meet my organization’s specific needs

38%Provides free, relevant advice to reduce costs, increase benefits or innovate, with our technology

43%Demonstrably understands my business, and is invested in continuing to learn my business

36%Collaborates on new features or products for our mutual benefit

24%Integrates effectively with our suppliers, customers and other vendors

45%Vendor’s staff acts as a seamless extension of our own IT staff

46%Is open to agreements that feature results-based incentives

26%Is open to entering into joint ventures with shared risk and reward

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55%Shares technology roadmap

44%Provides stable sales force and account representation

50%Provides open and honest communication during all phases of the relationship

44%Demonstrates strong R&D/innovation capabilities and thought leadership

41%Suggests and brokers third-party vendor partnerships that provide additional value to us

38%Assesses how our respective technology roadmaps align with our organizations’ strategic visions

Partner Action Ratings: NETWORKThe 96 evaluations for the Strategic Partner Index survey in the networking category indicated whether or not the vendors in this category typically and consistently perform the following partner actions.

TRANSPARENCY

RESPONSIVENESS

COLLABORATION

45%Delivers consistently against expectations

46%Demonstrates continuous improvement and works toward improvement goals and metrics

47%Escalates issues responsively to appropriate representatives within our respective organizations

46%Aligns pricing with our specific situation/condition transparently and logically

43%Capabilities keep pace with my organization’s evolving needs, such as global expansion

36%Responds effectively to ad hoc needs and requests that fall outside contract parameters

26%Customizes product set and features to meet my organization’s specific needs

47%Provides free, relevant advice to reduce costs, increase benefits or innovate, with our technology

42%Demonstrably understands my business, and is invested in continuing to learn my business

36%Collaborates on new features or products for our mutual benefit

40%Integrates effectively with our suppliers, customers and other vendors

34%Vendor’s staff acts as a seamless extension of our own IT staff

23%Is open to agreements that feature results-based incentives

19%Is open to entering into joint ventures with shared risk and reward

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48%Shares technology roadmap

40%Provides stable sales force and account representation

46%Provides open and honest communication during all phases of the relationship

46%Demonstrates strong R&D/innovation capabilities and thought leadership

37%Suggests and brokers third-party vendor partnerships that provide additional value to us

24%Assesses how our respective technology roadmaps align with our organizations’ strategic visions

Partner Action Ratings: STORAGEThe 136 evaluations for the Strategic Partner Index survey in the storage category indicated whether or not the vendors in this category typically and consistently perform the following partner actions.

TRANSPARENCY

RESPONSIVENESS

COLLABORATION

43%Delivers consistently against expectations

36%Demonstrates continuous improvement and works toward improvement goals and metrics

44%Escalates issues responsively to appropriate representatives within our respective organizations

44%Aligns pricing with our specific situation/condition transparently and logically

37%Capabilities keep pace with my organization’s evolving needs, such as global expansion

32%Responds effectively to ad hoc needs and requests that fall outside contract parameters

19%Customizes product set and features to meet my organization’s specific needs

39%Provides free, relevant advice to reduce costs, increase benefits or innovate, with our technology

29%Demonstrably understands my business, and is invested in continuing to learn my business

21%Collaborates on new features or products for our mutual benefit

32%Integrates effectively with our suppliers, customers and other vendors

29%Vendor’s staff acts as a seamless extension of our own IT staff

15%Is open to agreements that feature results-based incentives

15%Is open to entering into joint ventures with shared risk and reward

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The CIO Executive Council is a member-led executive organization, consisting of current and future business leaders working to impact the intersection of business, technology and strategy. Our mission is to foster measurable value for all members by enabling them, through peer reliance and outreach, to apply the knowledge, insights and best practices of their peers to the success of their enterprise and personal achievement.

To learn more about the CIO Executive Council, visit council.cio.com.