Are Your Vendors Too Big to Care? - TEM and Call Accounting Technology Blog - TeleManagement Technologies, Inc.

We often hear from frustrated IT managers who bear the scars of dealing with large vendors. Being ignored in favor of other clients, waiting days for a callback, the list goes on. That’s not to say that all large vendors don’t care about their customers. Plenty do. However, we hear frequently about implementations that take months to years to complete due to other large client demands or because customer service employees are not empowered to take action themselves and need to kick a request up to another level.

As a smaller company working in this industry for over 25 years, we know firsthand the advantages of being smaller and nimbler than the big guys. And we’re not alone. Forbes has written about some of the advantages of working with smaller companies. We have some of our own as well.

Here are a few of them:

More responsive.

Top of the list for most companies. It means being able to pick up a phone and reach a live person who actually works inside the company. It also means that if you get voicemail, you know you’ll hear back within a couple hours max. Same thing with emails.

More agile.

When you need to make adjustments (and everyone does), smaller vendors are more able to turn on a dime to get those changes made without making you jump through a lot of hoops and wait for a response.

More creative.

More often than not this is due to the camaraderie that develops inside smaller organizations. Employees share more knowledge. And, since there are less levels of authority to go through, they can use their creativity on the spot to help a client. That means you will typically get more collaboration, even on challenges that that relate to, but do not directly pertain to the solution they sold you.

More stable.

While it’s always possible that a smaller vendor will get acquired by a larger one, it’s usually the big box companies that do the acquiring. And it can be a nightmare because your projects can take a back seat to all the restructuring that is happening in the background. Stability means that updates and upgrades will be smoother, and your product isn’t going to become obsolete because another product (courtesy of the acquisition) has taken its place.

Experience counts as well.

Smaller organizations tend to hang on to their teams longer. That means their employees acquire more knowledge and experience from each other and through working together on projects.

That’s certainly the case here at TTI. Our veteran team has years working together in the industry, helping companies control telecom expenses and operate more efficiently. We have the confidence to tackle just about any issue, because we’ve seen most of them. Smaller vendors are more popular than ever, especially in this dynamic and volatile industry. Give us a shout and share your telemanagement challenges with us. We’re here to help!