Why Your Vendors Need Someone Independent in the Room

I have sat in hundreds of meetings with technology vendors. And I have learned something that every CEO should know: vendors optimise for their business model, not yours. This is not a criticism. It is simply how the incentives work. A vendor recommends the solution that generates revenue for them, hits their sales targets, or maximises billable hours. Your business needs something different entirely.

That is why you need an independent expert — someone who works for you, not for the vendor.

The Vendor Incentive Problem

When your business invests in cloud technology, vendors are already at the table. Systems integrators, infrastructure companies, managed service providers — they all have a commercial interest in the outcome. And their playbook is predictable:

Recommend technology that requires their ongoing involvement
Propose approaches that make it difficult to switch to a competitor
Prioritise speed of delivery over long-term cost and maintainability
Present what is commercially convenient for them as best practice for you

I am not saying they are being dishonest. But their financial incentives do not align with what is best for your business three years from now. And that misalignment costs real money.

What an Independent Expert Does

An independent expert serves a specific purpose: they review the technology decisions being made on your behalf and separate genuine business needs from vendor-convenient choices.

When a vendor presents a proposed solution, you need someone in the room who can ask the challenging questions:

What business problem does this actually solve?
What are the alternatives, and why are we ruling them out?
Who benefits most from this choice — the vendor or our business?
What happens when this vendor's contract ends?
Can another vendor support this approach, or are we locked in?
Does this create dependencies we will regret in two years?

These are not adversarial questions. They are clarifying questions. They separate what you actually need from what someone is trying to sell you. The best vendors welcome this scrutiny — it validates their recommendations.

Your Standards Are Your Shield

Without a clear set of decision standards, every vendor conversation becomes a debate based on opinion. One vendor says one thing, another says something different, and nobody in your business knows who is right.

The solution is straightforward: establish a clear hierarchy of what matters most to your business, before vendors enter the room. A sensible priority order looks like this:

Security first. Nothing gets approved that creates a security risk, no matter how convenient or cost-effective it appears.
Data protection and compliance. Does the proposal respect your legal obligations — data residency, GDPR, industry regulations?
Reliability. Will the solution be dependable enough for your operations?
Cost effectiveness. Only after the above are satisfied do you optimise for cost.

When a vendor proposes a solution, you measure it against these priorities in order:

Does it meet our security requirements?
Does it respect our data protection commitments?
Will it deliver the reliability we need?
Then, and only then, is it cost-effective?

This approach removes emotion and vendor influence from technology decisions. You are no longer debating opinions in a meeting room. You are measuring proposals against your standards — standards that exist to protect your business.

The Real Costs of Not Having Oversight

When vendors drive your technology decisions unchecked, the costs do not appear on their invoices. They appear later, as hidden costs and costly shortcuts:

Over-complicated solutions that cost far more to run than necessary
Technology choices that lock you into a single vendor, removing your negotiating power
Decisions that make future changes painful or impossibly expensive
Security approaches that satisfy the vendor's convenience but increase your exposure
Data handling that does not meet your compliance requirements

I have seen organisations spend hundreds of thousands of pounds unwinding vendor-driven decisions that were never challenged at the time. The independent review that could have prevented this would have cost a fraction of that.

The pattern is always the same: a vendor proposes something, nobody in the room has the expertise or the independence to question it, and two years later the business is paying for that silence.

How to Establish Independent Oversight

If you do not have independent oversight of your technology decisions, you need to build this function. It does not have to be a large team. It does need to be genuinely independent. Here are practical options:

Bring in an external adviser to establish your decision standards and review process before major technology investments.
Appoint a trusted internal leader to an independent review role — someone whose performance is not measured by vendor relationships.
Create a technology review process that includes at least one voice with no commercial stake in the outcome.
Document your decision standards before engaging vendors, so the rules exist before the sales conversations begin.

The key requirement is simple: someone whose livelihood does not depend on the vendor relationship. Someone who can say "this does not meet our standards" without worrying about the commercial consequences.

The Vendor Relationship Still Works

This is not about removing vendors from the conversation. Vendors bring expertise, delivery capability, and specialist knowledge that your business needs. Good vendors are valuable partners.

But a partnership needs both sides to be represented fairly. Right now, the vendor has experts at the table and your business often does not. An independent expert levels that playing field.

When I work as an independent adviser, I am not fighting with vendors. I am making clear what the business actually needs, holding everyone to the same standards, and ensuring every significant decision is made with your interests front and centre. The best vendors appreciate this — it means clearer requirements, fewer misunderstandings, and stronger outcomes for everyone.

Do It Before You Need It

Here is the timing problem most businesses face: they establish independent oversight after vendor-driven decisions have already caused damage. By then, you are paying to fix problems that should have been prevented.

Set up your independent review before your major technology investments. Define your standards before vendors present their proposals. Put the oversight in place while you still have options — not after the contracts are signed and the decisions are locked in.

Prevention is always cheaper than correction. The time to put an independent expert in the room is before the important decisions are made, not after you are living with the consequences.

What This Means for Your Business

If you recognise any of this — vendors at the table with nobody truly independent reviewing their proposals — here is where to start:

Define your decision standards. What matters most to your business? Security? Cost control? Flexibility? Write it down and put it in priority order. This becomes the yardstick every proposal is measured against.
Create an independent review process. How will new technology proposals be assessed? Who decides? How will vendor recommendations be challenged and verified?
Assign accountability. Who is responsible for ensuring technology decisions genuinely serve your business? This person must be independent from the vendor relationships.
Document your decisions. When you choose one approach over another, write down why. This record protects you when vendors change, when staff move on, and when someone asks "why did we do it this way?"

Vendors will always optimise for their interests. That is not a flaw in your vendors — it is simply reality. The question is whether your business has someone in the room whose only job is to protect your interests.

Your technology strategy is too important to let vendor incentives drive it unchallenged. Put an independent expert in the room. Set your standards. And make sure every significant decision is made on your terms, not theirs.