3 Pre-Transition Musts Before You Cut Your Web Vendor Loose

Every business, at some point, will outgrow its web services provider, be it an independent consultant, a small boutique, or an interactive agency.

No matter how amicable (or not) the need to transition from a website support provider may be, here are some important considerations before your initiate any transition:

1. Inventory Your Existing (or Missing) Website Documentation

Before you make any move, I strongly recommend you plan ahead and identify what existing technical or web-related documentation is or isn't presently in your possession.

Take careful inventory by scouring through email exchanges, project ticketing systems, and past meeting notes to identify, whenever possible, at least the most recent 90-days of documentation at minimum.

About documentation

Documentation in the context of websites applies to all kinds of things such as:

• Strategic goals, plans, and objectives for your online presence
• Step-by-step usage or maintenance instructions for a feature
• Diagrams detailing the flow or logic of a website or user process
• Email communications, or ticketing system updates, on specific tasks in-progress, completed, or not yet begun
• Lists of plugins, widgets, and/or third-party tools and services that are presently deployed to administer (and/or have been integrated with) your site (along with associated usernames and passwords for all such accounts)

Depending on the size, complexity and scale of your website, the list above may be quite lengthy but overall, the goal is to identify what's already been catalogued and in your possession well before you break the news to the vendor.

Ideally, you want to be in a position of informed knowledge instead of disorganization, the latter often results in over dependence on the vendor for the status or whereabouts of important information vital to the day-to-day performance of your company's online presence.

2. Establish A Formal End Date Without Overlapping Vendors

In my years of managing websites on behalf of employers and clients, I've seen instances where businesses authorize a new web vendor access to their company website(s) without yet having established a clean break from their soon-to-be-former-vendor.

Most of the time, there are detailed web services contracts in place outlining the procedures for ending a web vendor relationship. But once in a while, I'll bump into a  rare occasion where a web services contract omits this level of important detail.

Other times, the business in question — in its eagerness to initiate the transition and/or move forward with their new provider — will move forward and task the new vendor with a task but the outgoing vendor has yet to complete X or Y previously-approved work.

As a result, then both web vendors end up with joint access, potentially overlapping work or overwriting efforts. 

In such cases, who will be held responsible when the advanced search function or secure ecommerce features break, as an example, because one vendor did not realize or was not aware of the other vendor’s access or work-in-progress? This type of sticky vendor-overlap situation creates the unfortunate scenario for endless finger-pointing and blame gaming.

Avoid it entirely by ensuring clean end and start dates are in place for each vendor (a well-written web services contract should explicitly spell out such details).

3. Avoid Work-In-Progress Scenarios When Possible

I realize this isn’t always possible to do in cases where a transition from a specific web vendor is acrimonious. But whenever possible, do try to ensure that any previously-assigned tasks to the former vendor are or have been completed before any transition begins.

Why?

Well, for several reasons, including:

1. The new web vendor cannot guarantee someone else’s work or work-in-progress;
2. New web vendors may not agree with the previous vendor’s design or technical approach, thereby potentially impacting both project scope and budget;
3. In the cases where obtaining documentation is just not possible for whatever the reason(s), then the new vendor will have to price out the cost for their effort to review the previous vendor’s work and assess where the previous vendor left off and this will inevitably cost a business more in terms of time, resources, and budget.

This work-in-progress advice is applicable when the soon-to-be-gone web vendor's technical competencies have not been in question. If the reason for the pending split is not related to technical incompetency, then this advice becomes more applicable.

While the counsel shared throughout this article only scrapes the surface of this important and expansive topic, I hope these pre-transition tips help your business or company avoid painful and costly pitfalls commonly associated with web vendor transitions.

Photo credit: Mayra Ruiz-McPherson

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