Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Strategic partnerships with vendors - possible?

I was having a discussion at a client recently where the topic of "strategic partnerships" with vendors came up.

Given that one definition of strategic is "planned to achieve an advantage", I agree that partnerships can be strategic...just not for the customer.

See, paying someone to think for you is one thing...allowing someone whose job it is to sell you stuff to do your thinking for you is, in my opinion, a totally different thing and somewhat akin to setting the fox to guard the henhouse.

Anyone got any good counter-examples?