Much of the space in this column has covered how legal and IT departments can protect themselves from questionable technology vendors' practices. Yet some legal departments do things that drive technology vendors crazy.

First, let's ask the obvious question: Why should companies care if they irritate technology vendors? Vendors do many, many things to irritate prospective and current customers, and perhaps more importantly, customers are writing the checks. Having helped many companies acquire and deploy technology, we have had the opportunity to watch the relationships between technology vendors and their customers firsthand. We have seen that the quality of the relationship can profoundly affect the value the company receives from its vendor. Yet companies often start their relationship by doing things that drive the vendors insane:

1. Vague needs requiring detailed responses. One company recently released a request for proposal (RFP) for an e-discovery system “to help in the management of electronic information.” The RFP called for an enterprise-wide system with full pricing. Responding vendors had no idea

  1. What type of e-discovery functionality they were really looking for
  2. What features they sought
  3. How many users the system needed to support

“We pretty much just threw a dart at a board in creating our bid,” one vendor relayed. “If we bid what they wanted, great. Otherwise, we just went onto the next prospect.” This was too bad; had the company known better and described its requirements, it would have received better bids.