Your ecosystem has expertise. Are you getting its full value?

Most IT organisations have a sizeable ecosystem of vendors, suppliers, managed service providers and specialist partners. Each relationship has a purpose, but in my experience we don’t always give enough thought to what kind of relationship we need or what would make it work well.

Some are straightforward transactions. We need a product or service, agree the price and expect delivery. Others have more potential, where a longer relationship, future work, specialist knowledge or access to different capabilities can create additional value for both sides.

Then there are relationships where the quality of the partnership makes a considerable difference to how the business experiences IT. An MSP running your service desk is a good example.

The ticket is closed, the problem is still there

I’ve often seen the MSP blamed when the service desk isn’t working well, yet looking more closely reveals a much wider problem.

The people answering the calls have little context about what the company does, who its customers are or how the issue affects someone’s work. They haven’t been given useful scripts or a reliable knowledge base, and some of the instructions they receive make little sense in practice. A user calls for help, only to be told to go away and create a ticket themselves.

Once the ticket exists, the clock starts. There is a target for responding and another for resolving it, but the service desk may lack the access, knowledge or authority to fix the problem. Sometimes another team owns the next step.

Under pressure to meet the numbers, the ticket gets closed because it doesn’t belong to them. Nobody takes responsibility for helping it reach the right team, and the user starts again.

Eventually, the ticket gets lost, the user gives up or finds a way to live with the problem. Their judgement is usually that IT has failed them, regardless of which organisation was supposed to do what.

Six months later, everyone is reviewing the service and blaming someone else. The MSP points to the instructions, the internal teams point to the contract and the business wonders why getting good help is so difficult.

The relationship shows up in the outcome

Operational targets are relatively easy to set, and I’ve seen how the pressure to meet them can encourage behaviour that does very little for the person needing help. Quality is harder to understand if we only look at the numbers each provider reports.

A response within two hours tells us something, but it doesn’t explain whether the user received useful help or whether anyone took responsibility for getting the issue resolved.

The same gap can appear elsewhere in the ecosystem. Each organisation concentrates on its scope, while the consequences of the gaps between them come back to the CIO.

Meanwhile, we may be missing contributions that were never explored. A partner could already have a capability we are planning to build, experience of a challenge we are facing or an idea that would improve the outcome. We only discover that value if we give them enough context and an opportunity to contribute.

There is more available when people have a stake in the ambition

I’ve also seen what happens when external teams understand the business, contribute to the direction and feel part of the team delivering it.

When partners help shape the strategy, they understand why the outcome matters. When they contribute to the planning, their commitments are more informed. When something goes wrong, there is a stronger basis for an honest conversation about how to resolve it together.

Those relationships take time and attention. People need to get to know each other, establish trust and learn how to communicate through disagreements and setbacks, just as they do within an internal team.

It also needs to work for both organisations. Expecting a partner to keep going beyond its scope without discussing capacity, cost or mutual value can damage the relationship we are trying to build.

The opportunity for the CIO is to understand where a straightforward transaction is enough and where a deeper partnership could materially improve what the ecosystem delivers.

Putting this into practice:

1. Map the ecosystem and the relationships you need. Identify who contributes, what you depend on them for and where the relationship has potential beyond the current transaction. Be deliberate about which relationships need greater investment and what additional value you want to explore.

2. Define shared outcomes and mutual value. Discuss what success means for the business and for each partner. Bring relevant partners into strategy and planning early enough to influence the direction, challenge assumptions and offer capabilities you may not have considered.

3. Look at how the ecosystem works from beginning to end. Identify where external organisations contribute to your processes and where responsibilities cross boundaries. Bring the relevant internal teams and partners together to clarify ownership, dependencies and handovers, so the business doesn’t have to navigate the gaps.

4. Give partners the context and support they need. Make sure they understand the business, the people they serve and the consequences of the work they do. Check whether they have the knowledge, access, authority and practical instructions needed to fulfil your expectations. Assess your contribution alongside theirs.

5. Align the contract and measures with the outcome. Review whether commercial incentives encourage the behaviours you want. Include quality and the experience of the people using the service alongside operational targets, and involve commercial colleagues where the agreement needs to change.

6. Review the relationship at different levels. Use strategic discussions to check shared direction and long-term value, tactical discussions to assess progress and improvement, and operational discussions to address service performance. Ask the teams responsible to explain trends, compare results with relevant benchmarks and identify what needs attention.

7. Build relationships across the ecosystem. Get to know the people and create opportunities for partners to work with each other as well as with your internal teams. Agree ways of working, make room for shared learning and establish how you will raise concerns, challenge expectations and resolve problems together.

8. Keep accountability clear while removing the blame. When something goes wrong, examine the complete chain of events, including your own organisation’s contribution. Agree who will act and follow through together. Keep reviewing whether the partnership is delivering the value both sides expected, and address changes honestly.

Before the next supplier review, I would ask whether the people around the table understand the same business outcome, feel able to raise the real problems and know how their contribution connects with everyone else’s.

Their answers may reveal more about the health of the ecosystem than the performance report alone.

I work alongside CIOs and their teams through part-time coaching and advisory, helping assess ecosystem relationships, uncover opportunities for greater value and bring internal and external teams together around shared outcomes. That can include working through a difficult partner relationship, clarifying responsibilities across providers or establishing a more collaborative approach to strategy and delivery.