IT acquisition and purchasing decisions are often conducted in an atmosphere of unmet expectations, internal political agendas, vendor promises, and brand name hype. Decisions are driven by executive mandate, rule-of-thumb, or insufficient analyses based on rudimentary spreadsheet comparisons.
This is a sure recipe for failure, as demonstrated by the horror stories published continually in trade magazines and the press. We'll describe a best-practice approach to the assessment, evaluation, and selection of software—and show you how you can reduce the time and cost involved in objectively choosing the right solution.
There are three main phases within Technology Evaluation Centers' (TEC's) software assessment, evaluation, and selection methodology:
Phase 1: Defining Business and Technical Requirements
Phase 2: Software Evaluation and Analysis
Phase 3: Negotiation and Final Selection
Overview
Phase 1
TEC's methodology establishes the foundation for the ultimate success of the selection project. Successful evaluation and analysis of a system—and negotiation with a vendor—are irrelevant if the initial definition of business and technical requirements are incomplete or inaccurate. In many software selection projects, there is not enough emphasis on the importance of this phase, which causes many failures, and can even result in disaster for companies during and after implementation.
TEC's decision support system facilitates fast and accurate compilation of business processes, and maps them to the features and functions of a software solution. By closely following the steps outlined within this phase, an organization can produce a complete and understandable specification of all the needs that are to be addressed by the new solution, and is able to keep the assembled data in one easily accessible repository.
Phase 2
The evaluation and analysis of vendor solutions should proceed from finding the right vendors through to selecting a shortlist of two or three finalists. The sheer mass of data collected during this phase can be overwhelming for any organization, and the manipulation of the data even more daunting.
There may be as many as 20 or 30 qualified vendors, and each may have a list of thousands of criteria, all of which have to be evaluated one against the other. Using traditional methods can lead to serious errors—and may lead to choosing the wrong vendor solution. We'll show you how TEC's decision support system alleviates this process and seriously reduces the time required to reach a more informed and accurate choice of the right vendors to include in the shortlist.
Phase 3
The final phase covers the steps within the negotiation and the final selection process with the short-listed vendors. This includes live vendor demonstrations at the client site, where each solution can be rated by the business and selection team to verify ease-of-use, coverage of critical business processes, and functionality.
During this phase, we suggest that your selection team seek out client references from each vendor to verify their implementation, service, support, and training experiences. We'll explain how TEC's decision support system facilitates and shortens this process by loading vendor information into TEC's comparison tool to produce reports and graphs, which will support your selection team's final recommendations.
This is a sure recipe for failure, as demonstrated by the horror stories published continually in trade magazines and the press. We'll describe a best-practice approach to the assessment, evaluation, and selection of software—and show you how you can reduce the time and cost involved in objectively choosing the right solution.
There are three main phases within Technology Evaluation Centers' (TEC's) software assessment, evaluation, and selection methodology:
Phase 1: Defining Business and Technical Requirements
Phase 2: Software Evaluation and Analysis
Phase 3: Negotiation and Final Selection
Overview
Phase 1
TEC's methodology establishes the foundation for the ultimate success of the selection project. Successful evaluation and analysis of a system—and negotiation with a vendor—are irrelevant if the initial definition of business and technical requirements are incomplete or inaccurate. In many software selection projects, there is not enough emphasis on the importance of this phase, which causes many failures, and can even result in disaster for companies during and after implementation.
TEC's decision support system facilitates fast and accurate compilation of business processes, and maps them to the features and functions of a software solution. By closely following the steps outlined within this phase, an organization can produce a complete and understandable specification of all the needs that are to be addressed by the new solution, and is able to keep the assembled data in one easily accessible repository.
Phase 2
The evaluation and analysis of vendor solutions should proceed from finding the right vendors through to selecting a shortlist of two or three finalists. The sheer mass of data collected during this phase can be overwhelming for any organization, and the manipulation of the data even more daunting.
There may be as many as 20 or 30 qualified vendors, and each may have a list of thousands of criteria, all of which have to be evaluated one against the other. Using traditional methods can lead to serious errors—and may lead to choosing the wrong vendor solution. We'll show you how TEC's decision support system alleviates this process and seriously reduces the time required to reach a more informed and accurate choice of the right vendors to include in the shortlist.
Phase 3
The final phase covers the steps within the negotiation and the final selection process with the short-listed vendors. This includes live vendor demonstrations at the client site, where each solution can be rated by the business and selection team to verify ease-of-use, coverage of critical business processes, and functionality.
During this phase, we suggest that your selection team seek out client references from each vendor to verify their implementation, service, support, and training experiences. We'll explain how TEC's decision support system facilitates and shortens this process by loading vendor information into TEC's comparison tool to produce reports and graphs, which will support your selection team's final recommendations.
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