Systems Selection - Product Line

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Systems Selection - Product Line

Technology Consultancy

Overview

We have developed a process for the selection of a business system, making the selection as objective and systematic as possible. We work with your staff to take them through the following stages;
Define your requirements
Identify suppliers
Produce an invitation to tender document
Review suppliers responses
Short list suppliers
Organise supplier presentations
Scoring mechanism to select supplier
Contract negotations
Price negotiations

Define Requirements and Tender Document

The first step in selecting a new business system is to define your requirements.  The most critical point is to capture the objectives that the new system much achieve. Other points that should be detailed are the business context, your overall requirements, the functional requirements, the basis for selection, timescales, and contact details.

We capture your requirements in an invitation to tender document that will be issued to all potential suppliers. In addition to the main body of the tender we will also include a supplier questionnaire that includes details of your
requirements and ensure that suppliers respond in a standard format which makes evaluating their responses a lot easier.

Finally the tender document will include an appendix that details transaction volumes, numbers of users, predicted growth, number of locations and any other information that will assist the potential suppliers to prepare their response.

Identify Suppliers - Long List and Short List

In parallel to defining your requirements is the need to identify potential suppliers. We will use our industry knowledge, industry contacts, software exhibitions, the internet, trade magazines, your suggestions, and software
catalogues to identify a long list.

The initial long list will be analysed and reviewed until it is circa 20 suppliers.  These 20 suppliers will be subject to a telephone survey to determine which are the best 6 or 7 suppliers to be sent your invitation to tender. We will discuss the make up of the short list with you to ensure full agreement on which of the 20 long list suppliers are put through to the short list of 6 or 7 suppliers.

Evaluating Responses

The evaluation of each supplier takes into account;
supplier company
 history and user base
software functionality
customisation required
hardware
software maintenance and support
costs
These areas are weighted based on their importance to you as a company, the weighting for each area is agreed between us.

Each of these areas is broken down into more detail, for example history and user base takes into account the date of first release in the UK, original functionality, main stages in development, future development plans, existing installations, reference sites, and the user group.

In addition to the formal response each short listed supplier will give a presentation of their system to the selection team. This will give the team the opportunity to meet the supplier, ask any questions they may have following the formal response and actually see the software demonstrated.

The preferred supplier is agreed by the selection team based on how everyone has scored each supplier for each area following all the presentations.

Contractual Considerations

In parallel to evaluating the responses to the tender document it is important to hold preliminary contractual discussions with the various suppliers. These discussions are intended to clarify initial costs, ongoing costs both for maintenance and consultancy, what is included in the costs, and what basis the purchase cost can be linked to the supplier's achievement of goals.

Conference Room Pilot

The preferred supplier is expected to take part in a conference room pilot. This is a more detailed demonstration/test of the system during which the software is configured to replicate your company's requirements as closely as possible. The actual conference room pilot will last up to a week depending on the software
system - a full ERP system takes longer to investigate than an asset system for example.

The confererence room pilot allows the company to investigate the software in more detail prior to actually committing to purchasing the software - typically the arrangement is that success criteria are agreed beforehand and if these are achieved the software will be purchased.

After the conference room pilot you will have a much clearer understanding of whether the software meets your requirements and what issues if any need addressing.

This process allows a company to make an informed decision about which software to select, with a good understanding of how closely the software meets the requirements and what if any functional gaps exist.

Next Steps

After selecting the software the next step is to implement the software. Proffitt Consultants can also manage your staff through the software implementation process.