Companies must prepare now for the change in customer-supplier relationships

The integration of cloud computing into any organisation will spawn new types of customer-supplier relationships and transform existing ones. Clients may find themselves dealing, directly or indirectly, with several new types of supplier, which may need to be managed differently.

Cloud computing is primarily a business approach, allowing organisations to change consumption of a service to suit demand. As such, it has the potential to deliver significant benefit to businesses.

If you are considering adopting a cloud-based service, there are several things you can do to prepare for the new relationships:

• Understand your own capabilities: cloud services won’t remove the need for systems integration and service management skills – make sure you understand whether these skills will be provided by an external outsource partner, or in-house

• Start to use cloud services for low-risk applications: get experience in how to work with cloud suppliers by adopting cloud-based solutions in ways that cannot risk your established business

• Survey the supplier landscape: work out how you could bring together cloud service providers to meet your needs, and think through how the management of these services could be integrated with management of the rest of your portfolio

• Keep your sourcing options open: avoid entering into sourcing agreements that would prevent a move to cloud when the time is right: something to bear in mind when negotiating or renewing outsourcing contracts

• Select application suppliers with cloud in mind: if you are in the position of replacing applications or buying new ones, find out if prospective software suppliers are cloud-aware and planning to provide a migration path; keeping customisation of applications to a minimum will make cloud adoption easier.

Get to grips with these issues now and you’ll be ready to move fast when you (and your competitors) decide the time is right to adopt cloud technology.

To receive our full-length paper on customer-supplier relationships in the cloud or to speak to a PA expert about how to integrate cloud computing into your organisation, please contact us now.