Rules of Engagement

Computerworld - Mimi Moran's IT client services group handles all the moves, adds and changes for hardware and software at the Framingham, Mass., offices of Genzyme Corp., a biotech company. All 51 people in the group have badges that allow access to Genzyme buildings, offices, cafeteria, closets and cubicles. They all use passwords to roam through the corporate intranet and most systems. But 30 of them aren't Genzyme employees at all. They're contractors from Siemens Business Services Ltd. in Berkshire, England.

Moran, director of IT client services, makes virtually no distinction between her Genzyme and Siemens employees. "If you deny them access to your business and your systems and then ask them to handle the technology, how are they going to do it?" she asks. "We don't make a distinction. It's a trust thing."

Some would say Moran is asking for trouble. "A manager who says vendors are part of the team has drunk the Kool-Aid," says Phil Bode, director of training at International Computer Negotiations Inc., an IT procurement consulting firm in Winter Park, Fla.

Bode says vendor services people are also information gatherers who learn everything they can about customer operations and report it back to their vendor employer.

"Vendors are in business to make money and to grow sales," says Larry Graham, vice president of IT vendor management at San Mateo, Calif.-based Inovant, a transaction-processing subsidiary of Visa International Inc. "On average, they will do whatever is ethically reasonable to help them do that."

"If vendors are on the premises, and they hang around and drop in on meetings and talk to people, they'll know far more than they should know about future projects, and that gives them an advantage in negotiations" for future contracts, agrees Dave Weidenfeld, managing counsel for McDonald's Corp. in Oak Brook, Ill.

What goes on in your company is your company's business, Graham adds, and the more inside information a vendor gains, the less control you have over the relationship and the more the vendor can use that information to procure additional work or freeze out competitors. "Too much information becomes like a loose cannon," Graham says. "Where will it go and how will it be used? You don't know."

Are the vendors in your ranks trusted allies or corporate spies? Do you trust in their good intentions, share information and access privileges and work as a team, or keep them at arm's length, batten down the hatches and accept the productivity trade-off? "There is a risk that if you bring people in, they're going to learn things," says Weidenfeld. "You trade that for increased productivity or more effective project work."