Importance of matching vision when selecting a vendor / customer

Most companies today have a vision or mission statement. Most CEOs & Directors in their annual reports, often lay out plans and the vision that they have for their companies, but do most organizations ever read these while evaluating a vendor / brand partner?

In my experience, most of the procurement related conversations have either revolved around the product or the price, but rarely is the vision, goals & ambitions of the associated entity discussed, and this is extremely myopic in my view. If the organization in question has a goal to double revenue over the next 2 years, is it not necessary to see that the partner has the ambition and resources to support the goal? Is it not important, that the partner in question has a R&D pipeline / capability to innovate with/for the brand to support their ambitions?

In my personal opinion this is just as crucial as checking for vendor quality and cost consciousness. During our journey at SYS, we have been fortunate to witness triple digit growth on our top line year after year, however, for the first time we witnessed suppliers that did not have the same appetite for growth despite running profitable businesses with positive cashflows. Despite the scramble to onboard additional vendors to increase capacity, operations suffered due to supply shortages.

Learning from this, we plan to engage with our suppliers and customers annually and discuss their vision and plans for the upcoming year with complete transparency and include that in our evaluation matrix as well, with a goal to only work with organizations that have the same hunger for growth that we do.