The Supplier You Should Replace

You already know which one

Almost every small business, asked which supplier is not working, can name them immediately.

What stops the change is not uncertainty. It is that switching is disruptive, the current arrangement functions after a fashion, and there is never a good moment.

So the relationship continues for another year, costing a little more than it should, and the same conversation happens next December.

The purpose of an annual review is to convert that background awareness into a decision, once, at a time when there is capacity to act.

What to review

• Responsiveness: how long things actually take.
• Price, against what is now available.
• Quality and consistency over the year.
• Dependence: what happens if they stop.
• Access: whether you control your own accounts.
• Effort: how much of your time they consume.

The last is the one that never appears on an invoice and frequently costs the most. A supplier who needs chasing weekly is expensive regardless of their rate.

Price drift is the quiet one

Worth checking specifically, because it happens without anybody deciding.

A rate agreed three years ago has been adjusted annually, sometimes automatically, and the current figure may be well above what the same service costs now.

Equally, the market may have moved the other way, particularly for software and hosting, where capability has risen and prices have not.

Getting one comparative quote is enough to know, and it does not commit you to anything.

Where you find a gap, raising it with the incumbent frequently resolves it, since retaining a customer is cheaper for them than acquiring one.

The dependence question

The part of the review that is not about performance at all.

For each supplier, ask what happens if they disappear tomorrow: an illness, a closure, a sale, or simply a decision to stop.

The ones where the answer is uncomfortable need attention regardless of how well they are performing.

That usually means holding your own access, keeping your own copies, and knowing who else could do it.

A supplier who is excellent and irreplaceable is a risk, and the remedy is not to replace them but to reduce what depends on them alone.

A worked example

A firm reviewed six suppliers and found four fine, one expensive, and one that everybody had been complaining about for eighteen months.

The complaints were about responsiveness rather than quality, and the cost was mostly the owner's time chasing.

They raised it directly, in writing, with three specific examples and a request that response times improve.

Nothing changed over the following two months, which made the decision straightforward rather than difficult.

They moved in February, having spent January collecting access, files, and documentation while the relationship was still functioning.

The new supplier was slightly more expensive and absorbed a fraction of the attention, which the owner described as the cheapest price increase they had ever agreed to.

Raise it before replacing

The step that resolves a meaningful proportion of these.

Suppliers are frequently unaware that a client is unhappy, because the client has been polite in every exchange while becoming steadily more frustrated.

A direct conversation, with specific examples and a stated expectation, gives them the information and gives you a clear position if nothing improves.

Put it in writing afterwards, briefly and without hostility.

If it improves, you have saved a switching cost. If it does not, the decision has been made for you and you can act without doubt, which is worth the two months it takes.

Be honest about switching costs

The reason inertia is not always wrong.

Changing supplier costs time, a period of reduced performance while somebody learns your situation, and the loss of accumulated context that a long relationship contains.

For a supplier who is merely disappointing rather than failing, that cost can genuinely exceed the benefit.

Which is why the review should distinguish between annoying and expensive, and only the second reliably justifies the change.

Quantify it roughly: what is this costing in money and hours, against what a transition would cost once. If the answer is not obvious, staying is defensible.

Prepare before you decide

The sequencing that protects you either way.

Regardless of the decision, spend the review confirming you hold what you would need: domain and hosting access, your own copies of files and content, a list of what they do for you, and any credentials in your own name.

Do that while the relationship is good, because it is a routine request then and a loaded one later.

That preparation also improves the current relationship, since a client who could leave is treated differently from one who could not.

And it makes the eventual change, whenever it comes, a fortnight rather than a quarter.

Include the ones you never think about

The review naturally covers whoever has annoyed you recently, which is not the same as everybody you depend on.

Your registrar, your host, your payment processor, your accountant, your insurer, and whoever holds your email are all suppliers, and most have not been assessed since they were chosen.

Those are also the ones where the dependence question matters most, because a failure there stops the business rather than inconveniencing it.

Add them to the list even when there is nothing to complain about, and answer only the access and dependence questions for each.

That takes ten minutes and is where the review occasionally finds something serious rather than merely irritating.

The counter-case

Annual reviews can damage relationships that are working.

A good supplier who has been with you for years is worth more than the marginal saving available from a competitor, and treating every relationship as a procurement exercise erodes the goodwill that produces favours when you need them.

There is also a version of this where a business changes supplier repeatedly, never accumulating a relationship with anybody, and blames each in turn for problems that are actually its own briefing.

If you have replaced the same category of supplier three times in four years, the review should be of your own side of it.

Review who you depend on. Change the one that is failing. Tell the good ones they are good, which costs nothing and is almost never done.

The review

1. List everybody you depend on.
2. Note what each costs in money and in your hours.
3. Ask what happens if each disappears.
4. Get one comparative quote where price has drifted.
5. Raise the problem before deciding to leave.
6. Confirm you hold access and copies, either way.
7. Change one, not all of them.

Step six is worth doing for every supplier regardless of the outcome, and it is the item that makes any future change straightforward.

Ending an arrangement mid-project is covered in firing a supplier mid-project.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.