Buxton's CEO, Charles Wetzel, recently contributed a blog post to BNET's/Owner's Only blog. He was asked to discuss how a vendor change affected the company, and what he put in place to overcome the transition.

Below is an excerpt from his blog post:

For 15 years, consumer-analytics firm Buxton relied on one vendor to parse data and display it for national clients including Lowe's and Weight Watchers. But when that vendor decided to limit data access, Buxton CEO Charles Wetzel says, it took nine months of late nights -- and production hours equivalent to a cost of $325,000 -- to migrate each retail account to a new system. Determined never to repeat that nightmare, Wetzel and his team ranked vendors' importance, then assigned an executive to meet as often as monthly with key suppliers to "ensure that we're always on the same page."

The blog post in its entirety is here: http://www.bnet.com/blog/smb/our-over-reliance-on-one-vendor-was-our-downfall/4166