Argthtjtr

Is there any harm with telling suppliers what tech we use and why?

Would your competitors be interested to learn what tech you use and why? If so, then you shouldn't be giving this information to any supplier (who may also be a supplier to your competition).

Some suppliers seek to curry favor with their clients by passing along industry information they have gleaned.

I am a developer and i dont have the last say in what we'll buy.

Then it's not clear why you are conversing with suppliers anyway. It might be best to leave it to those who are in a position to make such decisions, and who have been properly trained to deal with suppliers.

I worked for a software company in a highly-competitive arena. We learned what our competition was planning through many channels. Talking with vendors was one way. One of our competitors in particular was extremely careless with their conversations and we learned some significant details about an important upcoming project. That knowledge allowed us to quickly plan a competing product and marketing message that could counter their new product.

While the other answers are good, I think that responses close the door too soon, especially if you or your company may reach out to the supplier or sales rep in a different company.

How you could respond is:

Thanks for your time and help! At this time, we are going in another direction.

This kind of reply:

• Does not divulge any information.


• Doesn't leave much of a door to ask for more info


• Doesn't burn any bridges

Imagine the following:

Apple decides to release iphone 20 but instead of using iOs 17 they want to bridge a gap in the market and use android 17 instead.

You get an email from a supplier of your iOs department (let's pretend that apple decides the split the company from hardware and software) and they tell you they want to book a meeting about the implementation of iOS 17 on iphone 20 to which you reply that there is no need as you are using android 17 instead as per management decision.

What impact does it make to the market share value?

Could this be considered insider trading? Would this most likely be a breach of sensitive information?

I will give you a real example now.

I was working as a project manager for a CRM system on a previous job. The company providing the CRM failed every single goal we had given them. After 15 months of work spent with a massive team for this migration, the board decided against the migration.

I, among others, was called into a meeting room and signed a NDA. We continued to meet with the other company who had onsite employees, we continued to work as if nothing happened for another 2 months while the company was preparing a legal case against the supplier.

Moral of the story: don't share without knowing that you must share. Check with your superior.

they don't really need this detailed info, but it feels contrived to be secretive.

They don't need it, so you shouldn't supply it.

Even if they do 'need' it, it probably isn't your place to reveal this.

Don't feel bad, your suppliers will (should) know this, and won't (should not) be offended if they find out (or figure it out).

This is how the game is played.

As an example: if you know someone in a different softball league (who your team will never play) you don't discuss your secret signs with them... just because.

Is there any harm with telling suppliers what tech we use and why?

A possible harm is that it could have an effect on the support your company gets. Not very ethical... but I've seen it happen.

Here's an unrelated example, that demonstrates how leaking information can be detrimental to a company in a way that wasn't expected:

I worked at a company owned by a guy who we will call Jim.

Jim's company mostly installed this one phone from this one supplier in Texas.

This supplier sold phone systems across the US to other companies like Jim's company. Jim was one of their bigger customers (selling a few hundred phones per month).

One day the president of the supplier flew in for a meeting with Jim. At the meeting he told Jim what the new phones were like, and showed pictures to see if he liked them. Jim asked for a couple of the new phone and the supplier's president said, "We don't have any yet. We are retooling our production lines from the old phones to the new ones."

This told Jim that there was a limited supply of gray phones and the new white ones wouldn't be available until the lines were retooled (months).

As soon as the supplier's president was out the door Jim called his procurement person and said, "Order 10,000 phones from [company]. If they say you can't have 10,000 order as many as they will let you order and let me know. I'll call back and ask why we can't have more."

Soon after that (a month?) the supplier didn't have any phones for the rest of his US customers... and it was almost a year before the new phone arrived.

Leaking information, even if you are authorized, can have terrible consequences for a business.

Jim's company offered the old gray phones several years after this event, along with the new white ones!

Does that help you think about things differently?

Unintended/unexpected consequences are a real thing.

As a rule of thumb, whenever you decline something in business with someone external, go with a friendly "no". Don´t explain yourself when you don´t have to. It can gain you nothing. (This also goes for declining potential job candidates)

In your case, you´d just say:

Hi, you mailed me to schedule a phone call. Thank you very much for the offer, but in this case we´ll have to decline. Unfortunately, we already made a decision against your product at this time.

If you provide further Information, you will appear less sure of your decision. Also, you are opening yourself up to further discussion like: Oh, vendor B, yes we know their product, but have you considered our product hast feature X ... which will at best lead you to waste both your time and at worst you will give away even more information (but we don´t use feature X, we go with XYZ-Framework instead ...)

If the salesperson chases you up and want´s to know why and what you´ll use instead, you can just tell them:

I´m sorry, but this decision was not in my hands this time. Thank you for you service, and I´ll come back to you if we ever need your product again.

If the fact that you use that tech is public knowledge, like something that is listed in a job description, I see no harm in it. But, if you're talking about tech that is not public knowledge, you really shouldn't say it. A simple "I thank you for the contact, but we don't have further interest in your product" should be good enough.

While I understand the motivation of the other answers, I feel like posting a Devil's Advocate answer explaining why it can be useful to give the declined vendor more information about why you went in a different direction.

This can motivate them to improve their product so that it's better than the competitor's, and maybe in the future you'll find their product more attractive. If you don't give them any details, they might be able to figure out what they need to improve through their own competitive analysis, but there's more guesswork involved. They might make improvements that aren't as useful to you.

If you're not the person who makes that decision, you may not be the right person to communicate it to the vendor. Fortunately, this is over email, so you can simply check first with the person who made the decision:

Bob from ABC corp is emailing me to schedule a phone call. Can I tell him we're switching to XYZ?

The answer may be "Yes please go ahead" or it may be "Wait, I need to talk to someone first".

As mentioned in other answers, maybe you shouldn't spill the beans if there is some competitive secrecy involved, or any kind of delicate relationship to be preserved. On the other hand, maybe the decision-maker simply didn't get around to telling the vendor. The only way to know is to ask.