When customers think about what it means to have a trusted technology partner, they usually think about software, support, or service response times. Supply chain, the effort behind the scenes to make sure a product is built and ready to ship, doesn’t tend to come up. But I’d argue that what happens before a product ever ships is one of the most revealing tests of a company’s values.
At Imagine Communications, supply chain isn’t a back-office function. It’s a service with three distinct customers: the internal business, the broadcasters, digital streamers, and media companies who depend on our technology to run their operations, and the supplier partners who help us deliver on both. My job, and my team’s job, is to make sure we’re meeting the expectations of all three. Every product that ships from us carries a promise. Our job in supply chain is to make sure we can keep it.
Keeping the bar where our customers expect it
The current DRAM memory shortage has tested that principle in real time. In case you haven’t heard about it, AI superscalers have upended the DRAM memory market by strategically securing a large amount of memory chip production — thus causing DRAM memory prices to radically increase and availability of memory to be squeezed.
Like every company in our space, we’ve had to go outside our standard supply channels to secure components and keep inventory levels healthy. And when you are put in this position, you open the door to suppliers who may not meet your standards. People who show up with product that looks right on paper but hasn’t been validated the way it needs to be.
Our answer has been to keep the bar exactly where it needs to be. Every alternate source goes through third-party testing. No exceptions. If a component doesn’t pass, we go back to market and find more, even if that means a longer lead time. Even if it means a difficult conversation about a ship date.
Customers don’t always love that conversation in the moment. But our customers run 24/7 operations. What they need from us is technology that works when it matters, not technology that shipped on time. A broadcaster who waits a few extra weeks for the right part is in a much better position than one who takes the call that their system is down.
That’s not just a supply chain philosophy. That’s an Imagine philosophy.
No surprises, no excuses
Bad news, delivered early, is solvable. Bad news that shows up at the last minute is a crisis. So we push hard on visibility — internally, cross-functionally, and up the chain. Our sales and operations team and I talk almost daily. We share the same data. Sales leadership knows exactly where inventory stands, what we’re securing, and what the realistic timelines are. That way, when they’re in a conversation with a global customer, they’re not guessing. They’re working from facts.
Accountability works the same way. When something comes up, we don’t wait for someone else to own it. We get in a room, whiteboard it, and figure it out. I have a phrase for this mindset: Is it done yet? Don’t sit on something. Have the conversation, even if you don’t have all the answers yet. Whether that means adjusting allocations, finding a creative interim solution, or escalating a decision that needs to go higher, the answer might not always be what people want to hear. But it’s always an answer.
Relationships as a competitive advantage
One thing that doesn’t get talked about enough in supply chain is that partnerships with suppliers matter just as much as the products themselves.
Our two primary suppliers, a global OEM hardware provider and a contract manufacturer, have both been with us for a long time. Those relationships didn’t happen by accident. We work from the same win-win mindset we try to bring to our customer relationships. We use contracts as guardrails, but we build on trust.
When one of our supply chain managers visited our contract manufacturer to walk the manufacturing floor, that wasn’t a formality. It was an investment in a relationship that pays off when the market gets tight and we need a partner who will go the extra mile with us.
Sometimes established partnerships are no longer the right fit. We had a long-running relationship with a third-party manufacturing integration provider. Over time, the partnership was becoming more expensive, and the quality was suffering. By bringing hardware integration in-house rather than relying on the third-party intermediary, we gained the flexibility our customers require while improving our quality and delivery performance.
It was a hard conversation, but this was a partnership that was no longer in the best interests of our business. By streamlining our process and leveraging our strong employee know-how, we were able to deliver a better end result for our customers.
The culture behind the supply chain
None of this works without the right internal environment. We operate very differently now than we did even a few years ago. Our leadership sets the expectation that transparency across functions is non-negotiable, and that gives me the space to have hard conversations and the confidence that when I raise an issue, it will be taken seriously.
What I’ve learned is that supply chain trust and customer trust are the same thing, just measured at different points in the journey. Every commitment a customer makes to Imagine starts with a bet that we’ll deliver. Our job is to make sure that bet pays off, every time, at every stage, with no surprises.
That’s the standard our customers expect. And it’s the one we hold ourselves to.
Imagine Executive Blog Series
Want to see where it all started? CEO Steve Reynolds outlines how Imagine changed its internal culture — strengthening responsiveness, accountability, and delivery discipline to rebuild customer trust.
