Opening context
GroceryCo is one of Europe’s largest grocery and food service organizations, operating across retail, wholesale, and franchise environments spanning multiple markets. At the time of the assessment, a significant portion of IT operations was delivered through the organization’s largest ever technology partnership — a managed services engagement representing tens of millions in annual spend across multiple service towers.
The vendor produced regular reporting. SLAs were being met. QBR decks arrived prepared. What was missing was a view of how the service was actually landing for the people depending on it every day — a view that no internal team produced and no vendor-supplied metric could show.
The situation
Every large managed services contract carries the same structural problem. The vendor controls the metrics. The vendor prepares the review. The customer arrives at the table with data the vendor has already seen, already framed, and already accounted for.
GroceryCo had tried to manage this through escalation, direct feedback, and internal advocacy. None of it moved the conversation in a lasting way. The vendor’s numbers told one story. The operational reality told another. Without an independent record, there was no way to force the gap into the open.
“We’ve tried these partnerships before, and it’s the lack of data that kills you. You can make surveys tell you very different things depending on how you run them. We needed something the vendor couldn’t debate.”
— Director of Retail & Commercial IT, GroceryCo
What the independent record showed
The assessment covered the full range of managed services — service desk, deskside support, infrastructure, and end user computing — segmented across roles and locations. Two patterns emerged that the vendor’s own reporting had not surfaced.
First-time resolution quality was significantly lower than vendor metrics suggested. The vendor tracked call volumes and closure times. What the independent record captured was whether the call had actually resolved the problem — a distinction that does not appear in SLA dashboards but matters directly to the people doing the work.
The second finding was more specific. Deskside satisfaction had dropped following a service transition. The vendor’s reporting reflected the transition as a routine operational change. The independent record showed a sustained dip in the population affected — not a blip, but a pattern that had persisted without appearing in the numbers the vendor was watching.
Across everyone with visibility into the managed services relationship, the picture was consistent. As one IT leader put it:
“It’s our only data that they don’t control.”
What changed
The results were presented at the quarterly business review. The vendor had seen the SLA reports. They had not seen this.
The record was independent, structured, and sourced from the people using the service — the only source in the room that no single party had prepared, shaped, or could credibly dispute. The vendor did not push back.
Actions followed within weeks. Training was increased at first-line support. Deskside resources were repositioned. The steering committee that had been stalled on escalation for months convened with a shared picture and a clear agenda.
The organization did not need penalty clauses. The independent record was sufficient.
“I’ve been doing this 28 years, and I’ve never seen clearer metrics. It stopped them in their tracks. There was no debate.”
— Director of Retail & Commercial IT, GroceryCo
The outcome
A second assessment is now underway. For the first time, GroceryCo will be able to compare vendor performance against the same independent baseline — round after round, sourced from the same ungameable population — and take that comparison into the next review with evidence that has already proved it cannot be disputed.
The partnership is intact. The terms of the conversation have changed.
