Quality is an ongoing challenge, and the information management of your quality process can consume highly qualified resources if not managed efficiently.

Effective selection processes begin with a Needs analysis that conveys requirements accurately. Next, our Rapid evaluation process keeps your team organized and on track towards choosing the right solution.


Needs analysis

The situation

Selecting the right system is not just a matter of matching the product and services to your needs. The key, then, is to understand your needs and communicate them in a manner that allows vendors to make effective proposals.

The issue

It’s important to understand that your needs extend beyond software or hardware to include services for installation and support. To avoid a lot of back and forth discussion, you must also communicate business context information to help respondents understand the “scale” of your needs. A complete needs statement gives vendors sufficient information to develop a complete proposal. A good needs statement contains:

• Background information about your business and the overall objectives. You might also include information about how the selection process will unfold as a guide to the level of detail you expect in the responses.
  
  
• Functional requirements describing what the product should do, possibly with some performance benchmarks. Where possible, include production metrics indicating what size of system is appropriate (e.g. numbers of users, numbers of records, how many transactions per day or week et cetera).
  
  
• Implementation requirements asking for information on how the vendor can help you set up the system and get it into production. You should convey your needs for staff training and technical assistance, with some indications of timing requirements.
  

How we can help

We provide a framework to help you determine a complete picture of your requirements, and then generate a needs statement quickly and efficiently. We:

• Focus the team’s efforts by providing sample documentation.
  
  
• Facilitate requirements definition workshops and document results.
  
  
• Assist the team prioritizing needs.
  

Technology is flexible and ever changing; the best vendors may not see how they fit in if you can’t communicate your needs properly. If they don’t respond you may never meet the most desirable partners.

Our experience allows us to help you understand what you need to say and how to say it to be heard and understood in today’s active technology marketplace.

Time requirements

This is very hard to quantify in advance as some highly specialized work can double or triple the estimates set out here. Total consultant time required typically ranges from 3 to 25 days, depending on the time required to:

• Develop an understanding of overall purpose.
  
  
• Assemble information to an appropriate level of detail.
  
  
• Organize teams and set up workshops.
  

Rapid evaluation process

The situation

Selecting a vendor for an important computer system involves a complex team evaluation. An established framework and the right skill sets makes this process efficient and effective.

The issue

In traditional evaluations, respondents are required to submit huge amounts of technical, price and business information up front. This requires the purchaser to spend a lot of time documenting detailed specifications, and analyzing all of the responses in full detail. In practice, most respondents were eliminated early based on a few important high level factors, resulting in a significant waste of resources on both sides.

To counter this, our evaluation framework:

• Provides a completely open “front end”; any firm may submit a bid.
  
  
• Narrows the list rapidly up front, then invests “team time” with well qualified respondents.
  

How we can help

We provide a framework and help the team through the process.

• Organize the team, provide role descriptions, design a scoring system and provide demonstration and site visit evaluation guides.
  
  
• Facilitate evaluation meetings and document results.
  
  
• Communicate with the vendors to interpret questions and responses to ensure fairness and accuracy.
  

We help the team work effectively together to build a consensus result. Team dynamics for implementation are forged during the selection process. As the process unfolds, we commit more and more time to evaluating the remaining vendors; more people become involved as the level of detail goes up.



Time requirements

Total consultant time required ranges from 9 to 29 days, depending on the time required to:

• Assemble information and publish a proposal call document (1 - 3 days).
  
  
• Organizing the evaluation team and evaluate the initial responses to arrive at a short list (3 - 7 days).
  
  
• Guide team through decision process by identifying and obtaining additional information, and then perform detailed evaluations, on-site demonstrations, site visits, reference checks and evaluation meetings to decide on a preferred vendor (4 – 15 days).
  
  
• Negotiate agreements (1 – 4 days).
  

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