Keeping up with the Joneses: The Importance of Vendor Intelligence

I'm an Apple person.  I love my iPhone and my iPad. We use Macs at home. My kids own the full library of Disney Pixar movies on iTunes.  In the past, at every major release of the iPhone, I was super excited to upgrade. I’d be online ordering the new iPhone on the order date. I even stood in line once (many years ago and the line was short) to get the iPhone on launch day. But for some reason, I find myself on an upgrade year not even thinking about the new iPhone 7. It’s not because I'm losing sleep over the loss of the headphone jack and I know my diehard-Apple-fan-colleagues are going to disagree with me, but to me it seems that Apple products are getting way less exciting and way more expensive.  

Could it be time to abandon the iPhone?  

Luckily my colleagues are users across most major smartphone brands (I think we even have someone with a Blackberry) and I could quickly gather some facts about some of the more popular alternatives out there. 

Samsung? Isn't that the brand that spontaneously combusts?  Google has their own phone? When did that happen?

Akin to my decision on whether to move on from the iPhone, asset management firms often come to a similar crossroads; deciding whether an upgrade of your current application or operating platform, or a wholesale transition away from your existing vendor (or service provider) are difficult decisions for any business.  Unlike evaluating smartphone options, it takes significant time and no small effort to gather intel and evaluate your options. Citisoft has always had an excellent relationship with the vendor and service provider community; however, we realized that we need to stay much closer to the vendors and service providers that cater to the asset management community so that we can better serve our clients when it’s time for them to think about how to ensure their applications and operations can keep up with their business strategy.  Vendors and service providers continue to evolve to keep up with client and regulator demands, and we want to ensure that we’re evolving with them.

As Citisoft’s new Director of Vendor Relations, I have frequent conversations with vendors (and service providers) and our firm performs regular research on product offerings, services and roadmaps to keep our internal vendor knowledge up-to-date.  With this intelligence in our back pockets, we can fast-track initial conversations with our clients and prospects, as they strategically assess and plan an initial approach to overhaul their application infrastructure or transform their operational model. With leading edge information at our consultants’ finger tips, it changes that initial conversation from "Let me get back to you..." to "Here is what we know is out there...".

Circling back to my phone search and selection, I decided I must stay with Apple because I'm so heavily invested in their infrastructure (hmmm, maybe I should consider my Vendor Risk?). Perhaps someday when Woody and Buzz are not so popular in my house, I can consider the Google phone, but for now, I'll stick with iPhone and hope that the next set of ear buds that Apple designs will actually stay in my ears.