This is the second part of a two part article. In the first part I spoke about the importance of horizontal relationships and their importance and benefits of managing them properly. In this part I turn to look at the vertical relationships.
What are vertical relationships?
Vertical relationships are management and executive levels sitting above you in your organisation. These relationships are mapped to the vertical relationships in your vendor’s organisation.
Benefits of managing these relationships?
Conversations at this level should be more strategic and both parties can discuss their company’s roadmaps and look at customer problems that need to be resolved. This allows both vendor and customer to align their innovation strategies to resolve problems.
Sometimes despite your best efforts you may need to escalate issues to the executive level. It is a whole lot easier for this level to deal with issues if they have established a trusting relationship.
It is important to ensure that relationships at this level are strong in vendor management. If someone leaves a vendor or customer organisation you will need to re-establish those relationships.