Part 5 Performance Monitoring & Accountability

The Question: How Do You Know They're Keeping Their Promises?

You\'ve done the work. You\'ve evaluated the vendor carefully, negotiated a contract, and deployed their system into production. Your team is using it. Your community is depending on it.

Now comes a question that doesn't feel urgent but absolutely is: How do you know the vendor is actually keeping their promises?

It's easy to assume they will. The contract says they should. The first few months feel smooth. But vendor relationships are living things. Performance degrades. Attention shifts. Priority slips. And you need a system to catch it early, before problems become crises.

Why This Matters: Vendor Degradation Is Slow and Gradual

The danger of vendor relationships is that they rarely fail suddenly. Instead, they degrade gradually:

• Support responses get slower5 business hours becomes 10 becomes 48
• Bug fixes become less frequentwhat took 2 weeks now takes 6
• New features slow to a trickle, then stop entirely
• Uptime slips: 99.9% becomes 99.5%, then 98.8%
• Your escalations get passed around rather than resolved

If you're not watching, you won\'t notice until you're deep in a problem that should have been caught months ago.

The antidote is accountabilitynot in a punitive sense, but in a transparent, measurable sense. You track whether the vendor is meeting their promises. You make that data visible. And you act on it when things start to slip.

What to Monitor: A Practical System

Here's what actually matters. Not just SLAs on paper, but the metrics and practices that tell you if your vendor relationship is healthy:

1. SLA Compliance Tracking (Monthly)

Your contract probably includes SLAs. Uptime targets. Response time commitments. Bug fix windows. The problem is that SLAs are only useful if you actually track them.

Create a simple monthly report:

This takes 30 minutes monthly. It creates a paper trail. And it makes visible what\'s working and what\'s not.

2. Feature and Performance Metrics

SLAs tell you if the vendor is maintaining what they have. These metrics tell you if they're actually improving:

• New Features: What significant features shipped this quarter? (Expect at least 2-3 per quarter if development is healthy)
• Bug Velocity: How many bugs reported vs. how many resolved? Ratio should be 1:1 or better
• Uptime Trend: Is uptime stable, improving, or declining? Plot it month-to-month
• Data Accuracy: If applicable, are reports accurate? Are sync processes reliable? Any data loss incidents?
• Performance: Are API response times stable? Dashboard load times reasonable? Or slowly degrading?

Track these in a simple spreadsheet. Update quarterly. Look for trends.

3. Annual Vendor Review (4 Critical Questions)

Once a year, sit down with your vendor relationship manager and ask these four questions directly:

1. "Are you still invested in our success?" Listen for specificity about your needs, not generic answers. Do they know your challenges?
2. "If we were choosing a vendor today, would you still win?" This is honest. It forces both sides to think about alternatives. A healthy vendor should say yes confidently
3. "What are we missing? What should we be using better?" A good vendor points out gaps and untapped potential
4. "What do you need from us to deliver better?" Maybe they need better data. More feedback. Clearer requirements. This conversation matters

Document the answers. This isn\'t a gotchait\'s a reality check for both sides.

4. Escalation Triggers (Specific Thresholds)

You need rules of engagement. When do you escalate? When do you demand action? Here are thresholds that matter:

When you escalate, escalate high. Go from support contact to account manager. From account manager to VP of customer success. Make it clear: this threshold has been crossed, and it matters.

5. Exit Decision Framework (Know Your Breaking Points)

You need to know in advance: under what conditions would we leave this vendor? Knowing this clarifies your thinking and sets boundaries:

• Three SLA misses in six months without improvement plan = trigger vendor review
• Unplanned downtime totaling 5+ hours in one month = formal escalation required
• Critical production bugs unresolved for 30+ days = red flag for vendor capability or commitment
• Two escalations resolved unsatisfactorily = contract review meeting required
• Lack of roadmap communication or strategic alignment for two consecutive quarters = reconsider relationship
• Vendor acquired by hostile party or undergoes major team turnover = risk re-evaluation required

These aren\'t threats. They\'re guardrails. They tell you when to take action before a relationship becomes untenable.

Red Flags That Matter

Watch for these warning signs. They're often subtle, but they predict problems:

Accountability Through a Mission Lens

Remember: you're doing this for your community. Vendor accountability isn\'t bureaucratic busywork. It's how you ensure that the tools your community depends on actually work as promised.

When you track SLAs, you're making sure your users have consistent, reliable service. When you review escalations, you're ensuring that problems get fixednot ignored. When you have that annual conversation, you're confirming that your vendor still cares about your mission.

Accountability is community care. It's how you keep the promises you made to the people who depend on you.

Series Conclusion: Your Complete Framework

You now have a complete framework for vendor relationships:

Together, these five dimensions protect you from bad vendor relationships and help you build good ones.

They take time, yes. The monthly SLA tracking takes 30 minutes. The annual review takes 2-3 hours. The escalation management might take a few hours a quarter.

But consider what it costs if you don\'t do this: a vendor relationship that slowly degrades, a system your community can\'t rely on, a team spending energy firefighting preventable problems, and eventually the expensive, disruptive process of switching vendors.

The framework prevents that. Use it.

Next Steps

Here's what to do Monday morning:

1. Review your current vendor contracts. What SLAs are promised? Create a tracking template
2. Schedule your first monthly SLA review for next month. Make it a 30-minute calendar block
3. Set a calendar reminder for your annual vendor review (pick a date 1 year out)
4. Write down your exit decision framework. When would you leave this vendor? Be specific
5. Share this framework with your team. Make accountability a team responsibility, not just yours