Do vendors have your customers on ice?

The violent winter storm that slammed Texas did damage well beyond the Lone Star State. Credit unions and community banks across the country were scrambling to deal with disrupted service because a server was located in the pathway of the storm. In a situation like this, you’d expect the vendor to resolve the problem quickly, right? Wrong! Even several days after the event, digital banking servers continued to crash and credit unions and banks had no solutions to offer their clients.

This is just one example of how dependent banks and credit unions are on vendors to deliver important services. Disrupted service, regardless of the cause, no longer is a local problem. A disaster in Texas affected credit unions’ digital banking systems across the United States.

Your members or customers blame you, not your vendor, when digital banking goes down.  Upset and angry customers want the problem solved fast. If you’re not contracting with vendors for required uptime, service level agreements and adequate disaster recovery systems, and not checking on vendor performance, your reputation can take a beating, even if it isn’t your fault.

With the right approach to vendor management, you can have responsive vendors and built-in recourse. At Maple Street, we contract well. That means we make sure you have the right vendor with the ability to perform, and a contract negotiated to include required uptime and service level agreements. We hold vendors accountable with measurement and monitoring so you get what you pay for. Plus, we add built-in remedies to make vendors perform in a timely fashion.

Only Maple Street has the Vendor Advantage System® that includes measurement of and improvement in vendor performance.

Don’t be left out in the cold. To learn more about using vendor management to improve performance, save money and keep your customers or members from being overheated, call 800-513-6839.

Background for this article was provided by Credit Union Times covering how one big tech company’s servers left credit unions stranded.