Relationships with Vendors & Contractors - Critical to your Operations!

Getting to know people at companies that you deal with is extremely important, from the contact and salespeople at electric, HVAC, security, and telecom (this one is very important) companies, all the way to your local law enforcement. Let's not leave out all those specific individuals that visit and work in your facility: electricians, HVAC, security techs & guards, and telco technicians.

I emphasize telecom salesman and technicians, because in my experience they have been the hardest to deal with. How many times has your provisioning staff ordered a circuit for a customer, only to have it delivered days or weeks from the date it was promised. Also, most people do not realize that a company like AT&T have contracted out technicians that are not employed directly with their company, but will send them out to install circuits. Yes, they even have an AT&T ID badge. These technicians will follow AT&T's guidelines as far as installing circuits, so if you don't talk and work with the tech who is in your facility at the time verifying in detail the specifics of your order or on what your data center's policies and guidelines for installation & cabling are, you may end up with an installation that is sloppy, equipment located in the wrong place, or a circuit that is NOT fully tested.

Your infrastructure maintenance vendors are another case where good relations are in order. You do not want to be put-off or waiting if one of your CRAC, PDM, or UPS units go on the fritz. The same goes with emergency services vendors (broken pipes or leaks, spot or temp cooler delivery, etc.) Don't use a vendor just because they are the biggest, best, or have a good reputation. Choose your vendors because you know that they will be there for you, consider you a valuable account, and understand that you are to be treated with priority because your company is 24x7x365 with critical uptime demands.

Concerning municipalities, you need to have a good relationship with several people at your local police and fire departments, and yes, even though this person can be a pain and has the power to shut your facility down, a relationship with the local fire marshall. You might be out of compliance on a very minor point in your facility on something very expensive to correct and requires downtime. In this case, it is good to have the fire marshall on your side and be in his good graces.

An article just came out this Sunday (11/22/09) concerning the response times of the Atlanta police department. I currently am in charge of our company's Central Station for monitoring burg and fire alarms. Our operators are trained to respond to "on-screen" signals in no more than 2 minutes tops. However, from that point it is in the hands of a 911 operator or dispatcher for the police or fire departments, and then on to the officer or fire department themselves. The article touches on calls that do not get a response for hours. I can verify that this is the case not just in Atlanta, but in other municipalities as well. Right now the local newspaper (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) and TV station (WSB-TV) are investigating this issue.

Generally, there are three categories of signals that law enforcement reponds to: life threatening, property threatening, and supervisory. If you or your security equipment are not sending or calling a life threatening situation (fire, panic, duress) or video verification to back up the call or signal, then without proper connections with the PD, you may be waiting a while, at least in the city of Atlanta, GA, USA.

If you are not getting the level of service you require from any vendor that you are dealing with currently there are 3 things you can do:

1) ESCALATE! Don't settle for the normal response. Keep contacting your vendor until they get the message that you need a response now.

2) CULTIVATE A WORKING RELATIONSHIP with those key people with vendors that will assure your expectations and set your company as a priority account..

3) If all else fails, FIND OTHER VENDORS for your needs. Start making calls and gathering bids for your business now, even if you are under contract with current vendors. A good legal representative will be able to determine if you can break any current vendor agreements based on negligence or any other defaults.

4) In any new SLAs or maintenance agreements with vendors, make sure that your company's expections for response and protocol are outlined in detail.

I do not claim to be the expert, just relaying my experience. Please feel free to reply and share your expertise and thoughts....

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I was asked indirectly why I brought up relationship with the PD. There are a number of good reasons, but one comes to mind immediately. If you operate a large data center directly downtown in a major metropolitan city and you are going to perform any generator testing, you will need to find out what local city noise ordinances are in place and how you can comply with them. In my case, there were noise complaints, and a relationship with the Atlanta PD helped to keep those complaints under control, as long as we were running generators within a certain time period Monday thru Friday.

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