From Vendor to Partner

Regardless of shrinking staffs and budgets, retailers are being challenged to create and innovate. Quite literally, you are being forced to “do more with less.” This is blurring the traditional walls and boundaries between a customer and a vendor. Gone are the days when a vendor presents a product or solution, the retailer purchases, vendor delivers and all move on. Vendors, like tekservePOS, are being challenged to think like the retailer.

From our chair, you are calling on us to get connected to your business, bring innovation, provide marketplace expertise and information, be quick and cost effective and understand what success is to you. Overall, view your challenges as our own and be a true partner, not a vendor.

As a vendor who has watched this unfold over the past several years, I wonder if retailers are truly ready for this type of partnership. You will have to take a long-term look at whom you’ve chosen to engage with while having a plan to make that partnership successful. It is critical that a plan for success is built upon clear lines of communication, documentation, expectation management, best practices, problem solving escalations and most of all, patience.

As investment in the vendor grows, moving from vendor to vendor will be less desirable and more complex. Success criteria must be mutually agreed upon and quite clear. From our perspective, we are being challenged more than ever to deliver stronger customer service built on a foundation of communication, best practices and a constant flow “thinking like the retailer.”

tekservePOS must also view our partnership with our customers differently. We are building our foundation on innovation, industry-leading best practices, automation tools, and increased communication, all while asking ourselves “What can tekservePOS do to make your job easier, more efficient and cost effective?”

We live in a time where true partnership has never been more critical. These partnerships must be consciously chosen based on a solid set of success fundamentals and a long-term plan.