Changing Your Vendor - Not as Easy as Changing Your Shirt

"Say, a salesman from a translation company has been after me for the last few months, and he wants some business from us. Shall we look into changing vendors?"

What's your first answer to this question?

When I'm not in the market to change vendors and I observe that it's not appropriate to go into the matter too deeply, I usually pull one of several quick answers out of my drawer and use it:

• "No."
• "Sure, we can include the vendor in the next request for proposal."
• "Forward him to me and I'll find out more."

I have nothing to fear by looking into a new vendor, of course, except that things that aren't broken now, could get broken with a different vendor, and who wants to trade the devil you know for the devil you don't know?

Last week one of my clients asked me the question about changing vendors. Sensing there was time for a little bit of education, I let her be the expert by suggesting a short true-or-false quiz:

True or False:

1. You're convinced that your current vendor is much too expensive. ("much" is an important word here.)
2. Our engineers and your other service providers, like the Web team, cannot work with the current vendor.
3. Your in-country offices are complaining loudly about the current translation work.
4. Your customers overseas are complaining about the current translation work.
5. You hate the vendor for some other reason, and dread working with it.
6. You're not inclined to let me to fix the problem.
   

I recommended that, if she scores 2 or more True, we can look into peeling off one of the languages and trying the new vendor. If she scores 1 True, we should have a chat with the current vendor and work something out.

If she scores 0 True, she is in the localization minority and should count her blessings early and often.

I also mentioned that a switch of almost any magnitude will involve a lot of re-plumbing and education. In my experience, the current vendor is charging a fair price for good, steady, reliable work, and is making my client look good (or at least, not embarrassing her). OTOH, if she really wants to make a switch, we should select a time of relatively low volume and a project/language of relatively low risk to do so.

What do you think about changing vendors? I often see problems in the chemistry with project managers. That's an easy change to make, probably easier than most people realize. But don't discard the vendor just because you don't get along with the project manager; they have others, and if they want to keep your business, they'll help you switch.