Procurement - Concept
Vendor lock-in
Being so dependent on one supplier or product that switching becomes difficult or expensive
What's it for?
Makes the difficulty and cost of leaving a supplier visible before an organisation becomes too dependent on it.
For example…
A reporting tool only exports in a proprietary format, so switching vendors would mean rebuilding every dashboard from scratch.
A company has vendor lock-in when moving away from a cloud provider would require rewriting applications built heavily around that provider's proprietary services
Think of it like…
Custom kitchen cabinets that only fit one wall—beautiful, but the next owner may need a sledgehammer