Sometimes, confusion arises about the difference between choosing a vendor and a solution. It shouldn’t be so because choosing a solution and obtaining a supplier in the bargain is, for the following ten reasons, the best way to achieve a superior result:

1. Focus on Meeting Needs: Prioritizing the selection of a solution means you are primarily concerned with addressing your specific needs and requirements. This approach ensures that the chosen solution aligns with your goals and objectives rather than being influenced by the preferences or limitations of a particular vendor.
2. Flexibility and Innovation: Opting for a solution allows you to explore a broader range of options from multiple vendors. This flexibility can be crucial for innovation, as different vendors may offer unique features or methods to solve your business needs. You're not limited to a single vendor's offering.
3. Competition and Cost Efficiency: Encouraging vendor competition can lead to cost savings. When vendors know they are competing for your business, they may be more inclined to offer competitive pricing, better terms, or additional services to win your contract.
4. Avoiding Vendor Lock-In: Choosing a vendor involves committing to their ecosystem / platform. This can lead to vendor lock-in, where it becomes costly and challenging to switch vendors or migrate away from their solutions. By focusing on the solution, you maintain more control and flexibility over your business capabilities and technology stack.
5. Customization and Integration: A solution-centric approach allows you to customize and integrate various components to best fit your needs. You can select the best tools and services from different vendors and make them work seamlessly together, optimizing your business capabilities.
6. Futureproofing: Technology and vendor landscapes change over time. Prioritizing solutions over vendors allows you to adapt to evolving needs and take advantage of emerging technologies without being tethered and limited to a specific vendor's roadmap. At the same time, it is always wise to choose a solution that is based on the most modern technology.
7. Vendor Neutrality: By choosing the best solution, you can maintain a neutral position when evaluating vendors. This neutrality can lead to more objective decision-making, free from biases or pressure to select a specific vendor.
8. Risk Mitigation: Buying a modern industry-specific off-the-shelf app solution is much less risky than a vendor's idea of how to develop an app. Moreover, buying a solution that is part of an industry suite makes it much less risky as you expand and benefit from a complete solution.
9. Scalability and Growth: A solution-oriented approach allows you to scale and adapt your business capabilities as your business develops. You can select new vendors or technologies that align with your evolving needs without significant overhauls.
10. User-Centric Focus: Ultimately, the goal is to provide the best experience for your users, customers, and end-customers. Choosing a solution that meets user needs, regardless of vendor, ensures that you prioritize user satisfaction.

In summary, vendors are essential in providing applications and services; selecting the right solutions for your business needs offers flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and happy users – which in truth is essential in today's rapidly changing business and technology landscape. Being prepared allows you to remain adaptable, avoid lock-in, and optimize your business capabilities to meet your goals effectively.

Diversity is Good for Business

The expression "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" is a wise piece of advice that means you shouldn't concentrate all your resources, investments, and efforts on a single venture. There are several reasons it's unwise to do so:

1. Diversification: Putting all your eggs in one basket leaves you vulnerable to the risks associated with that basket. If that basket, such as a stack of software, encounters difficulties, you could suffer losses. Diversifying your bets across multiple baskets spreads risk and reduces the potential for heavy losses.
2. Risk Management: By diversifying, you can manage risk more effectively. Different assets or ventures have different risk profiles, so when you spread your resources across a variety of options, you're less likely to be severely impacted by a downturn in any one area.
3. Opportunity Cost: If you focus solely on one thing, you may miss out on other opportunities. Putting all your resources into a single venture means you're not exploring other potentially beneficial options. Diversification allows you to capture multiple opportunities simultaneously.
4. Lack of Adaptability: Markets and circumstances change over time. What's a good strategy or tactic today might be different in the future. Diversification allows you to adapt to changing conditions and pivot when necessary.
5. Emotional Impact: Relying on a single basket can lead to emotional stress and anxiety. If that basket faces challenges, it can significantly impact your organization's mental and emotional well-being. Diversifying can reduce the emotional impact of setbacks.
6. Loss Recovery: If you lose everything in one basket, it can be very difficult to recover. Instead, if you have spread your bets, you are better positioned to recover from losses in one area by benefiting from gains in others.
7. Expertise and Knowledge: Different opportunities may require different skill sets. By diversifying, you can develop a broader range of skills and expertise.

Diversification is a fundamental principle to reduce risk and accelerate opportunity. When building and maintaining your software application portfolio, it's a sensible approach to choosing the most capable solution to enable better business processes and happier users. To that end, diversification is so important that if two solutions are equivalent, selecting a new supplier over an existing one is often the better choice.

15. jan. 2024
Peter Björkman