The most
common pitfalls generally have to do with taking short cuts
on the up-front work, as well as generally not having
planned for the whole process.
Pitfall 1:
Taking
short cuts when defining and prioritizing requirements
Risk:
- Lack of
clarity and definition permeates entire process.
Inadequately distilling a business vision into a specific
and tangible set of objectives and requirements is probably
the most common place where the technology selection process
breaks down.
It's easy to
understand why business leaders often take shortcuts here.
The need for a new system probably means that there are some
business pains with the current process. These leaders, are
often eager to bring in an ally and implement a solution as
soon as possible. Talking to vendors early in the process
can be helpful to understand the landscape, but one needs to
be careful not to depend on the solution providers to define the requirements.
If you do so, you may find, that what you need just happens
to be what they are selling.
Pitfall 2:
Not providing
enough clarity for vendor proposals
Risk:
- No ability
to compare one proposal to another.
If you don't provide enough clarity
and structure for how the system vendors should reply to
your
Request for Proposal (RFP), you will soon find that it is
virtually impossible to make comparisons between vendors or
match their systems capabilities to your requirements. Even
if you've done 90% of the upfront work, your decision still
may end up
being largely a guess. Often, because of an inability to
relate system capabilities back to requirements, the
decision ends up being driven by more extraneous variables
(such as a systems reputation, the sales rep's personality,
or a broad impression about a few of the system's features).
It's not
uncommon for organizations to approach vendor selection one step
at a time and not to under take a holistic approach planning
for each step of the process in advance. Specifically you
should have a plan for how you will analyze the various
proposals before you send out an RFP, and not just wait
until you receive the completed responses.
The LaDove Associates
Technology
Selection Methodology focuses on doing the upfront work strategically
and thoroughly. By planning for, and anticipating for the
various stages of the process, the backend steps will flow
more smoothly. Ultimately your process will achieve superior results..
Prerequisite:
Define
Business Objectives and Plan
Objective:
Successful
organizations plan and manage their businesses with a
holistic
approach to people,
process, and technology. Achieving a set of strategic
objectives may involve a combination of changes to all three
variables in concert.
Less
successful organizations select technology primarily to
streamline current workflow, but may fail to adequately assess
the value of their business processes, or the structure of
their organizations. These organizations most likely find
find themselves in a perpetual state of crisis.
Managing to a
plan that addresses the people, process, and
technological components of a business will ultimately lead
to an effective and mature organization. Your technology
decisions are more likely to be enduring, and your return on
investment will be greater.
(View
Building a Business Case on the
Presentation page of this site)
Step 1:
Gather and
Prioritize Requirements
Objectives:
- Articulate
a clearly defined list of requirements and desired
functionality. Prioritize and assign a stakeholder
for each requirement.
- Enable
vendors to provide an actionable proposal.
- Provide a
consistent format for vendor response.
- Create a
document that will support negotiation and
implementation.
The time spent upfront assigning stakeholders, and defining
and prioritizing requirements, will save significant time and effort
later. Yes, this can be hard work, but taking shortcuts here
will definitely cost you later.
Step 2:
Selecting
the Long List
Objectives:
- Capture a
comprehensive selection of vendors who's cumulative
offerings span the full range of the areas you are
working to support.
- Avoid late
additions as they will likely delay your selection.
- Include a
fairly broad number of vendors, as some will opt out
themselves, and you want to make sure you still have
enough left to make a comparison.
We often
hear people talk about the short list, but oddly we don't hear much about the long list.
Presumably, technology buyers start many selection
processes with the vendors they know of and call this
the short list. We define the long list as
throwing a bit wider net. You'll give all of these
vendors the opportunity to propose a solution, but if it
their offering doesn't seem to be in the ball park,
you'll save everyone time, effort, and expense and not
proceed further.
This step
involves scouring the Internet, finding vendors at
conferences, tradeshows, and in magazines. Referrals or
benchmarking can also be a good source of developing
your long list. Presumably you already have any idea of
some of the players in the space.
Step 3:
Writing the Request for Proposal (RFP)
Objectives:
- Provide
information specific enough so that vendor can:
determine if they want to participate; truly propose
a solution for your needs; and know how to respond
so that you can make comparisons.
- Provide
specific guidelines (or format) for vendor
proposals.
One section
that is often missing from RFPs is a section that lays out
how you want the vendor to respond. If you don't specify a
consistent format for all vendors, you will definitely
receive a variety of interpretations that will be difficult
to compare. If you want to
make apples-to-apples comparisons of the prospective systems
you need to capture and disseminate your requirements in a
way that will capture consistent information. You might even go so far as to provide a
template for a certain sets of information.
When a sales
rep tells you that their system "can do that", it's also
important to understand how. By
requiring the vendor to indicate whether a given capability
is achieved via their core product, an add-on module,
a customization, or not at all, you will be in a better
position to understand how good a
match the tool is for your particular needs. For example, in some cases, a high degree of
customization may be less desirable to a solution that
can offer the same functionality with the core product.
Step 4:
Managing Vendor Proposal Process
Objectives:
- Refine
requirements
- Improve
quality and timeliness of proposals
Vendors are
going to want to clarify your requirements, and they will
probably also ask questions that may even alert you to some
requirements that you hadn't thought of. Planning for
this piece of the process will help you further define your
requirements, and help the vendors propose a solution
specifically for you. It's not realistic to think that
you just send out the RFP and wait for the proposal. You'd
might as well factor this step into your timeline.
Step 5: Analyze Proposals
Objectives:
- Assess best
fit for your needs
- Establish
foundation for next steps
The proposal
analysis step is where the LaDove Associates Technology
Selection Methodology really pays off. Because you've
specifically defined and prioritized your requirements, and
asked specific information on how your prospective vendors
proposed solutions, you are in a great position to be able
to succinctly analyze a host of proposals based on how well
they meet your requirements. You'll be able to see how a
system stacks up by the priority of the requirement, by stakeholder, and by function. The proposals will
provide context for this analysis, but you won't be burdened
with trying to figure out how to extract the the vital
system capabilities and cost information from all the
differently structured proposals.
The Technology Selection Grid plots the percentage of
requirements met and the prices for each vendor -- including
add-on modules and customizations. From this one graph, a
purchaser can easily compare one system's functionality and
price to another. In this example Vendor Z looks
like it deserves further investigation, as they offer what
appears to be one of
the more complete solutions for a relatively low price.
For further evaluation, you would then
review the Vendor
Analysis charts. This series of charts shows how a
system's capabilities sorts out by your specific priorities,
stakeholders, and key functional areas. Here you might be
able to observe areas of strength or weakness, or understand
what specific areas would need to be customized for your
purposes.
In summary, because you've done your due
diligence up front, your short list decision is a snap. You are able to analyze
the entire vendor landscape as it relates to your
requirements. Instead of trying to extract the same
information from a stack of proposals, you can review a few
sheets of charts, and make more objective decisions within
minutes.
Step 6:
Select
Short List
Objectives:
- Select a
manageable size number of vendors who you will meet
with for a rigorous evaluation
Leveraging a
strong analysis should make this step very straightforward,
maybe even easy. In fact, defining
a robust set of requirements will create a self selection
process whereby some vendors will opt out if they feel that
they can't reasonably compete on your requirements.
Step 7: Validate Proposals
Objectives:
- Validate
that the systems can do what the vendors say they
can do.
Once you've
selected your short list of vendors you're set to bring them
in and have them show you how their system can do what
they've told you it can. Because you've already assigned
stakeholders for the specific functional requirements,
you've also effectively assigned accountability for who is
going to validate which set of requirements. If you want, you
can breakout the vendor presentations by function in order
to make this process even more time efficient.
Step 8: Select Preferred Vendor
Objectives:
- Select one
vendor to move forward with negotiations with.
By this point
it should be pretty clear to all the key stakeholders which
requirements your selected vendor will be able to meet, and
which ones you will have to sacrifice (unfortunately, but this is
usually the case ...unless time and money are no object, of
course). If you have to make sacrifices, it should
at least be clear to all the key stakeholders which requirements will
be forsaken ...by priority, stakeholder, and function.
Aside from the
obvious benefit of choosing the best system for your needs,
another benefit of this approach is that it will help
improve your probability of success with implementation.
How? ...by helping to avoid one of the implementation
processes biggest pitfalls -- user adoption. By managing
expectations early, being forthright with what (and who's)
requirements will and won't be met, you can help
set realistic expectations which are vital for user adoption
of any new tool.
Step 9: Contract Negotiation
Objectives:
- Define
terms, timelines, and fees.
The rewards of
doing your homework upfront are reaped throughout the
process. Going into negotiations once you have very
specifically defined what you want to accomplish, how the vendors
will do it for you, and specifically what it will cost, the
negotiations will become more a matter of contracting rather
than of defining broad sweeping deliverables, and pricing.
It's not uncommon, in situations where a less thorough
process has been utilized, to identify 'surprises' at this
step (for example, the cost of a customization). Eliminating
most of those potential surprises increases the
likelihood that you will come to a successful
negotiation with the preferred vendor.
Summary:
Diligence at
each step of the process, and a plan for how to link a
technologies capabilities back to the requirements will
support an easier, more successful, on-time, and on-budget
selection and implementation.
