Kai Vaughn

Here is an easy process to follow to help you decide.

Steps:

1. Gather all the information for each potential vendor and prepare a summary of the key criteria for each.

2. Bring your project team together to jointly review the information, the summaries, discuss the pros and cons of each of the potential vendor solutions.

3. Then, jointly rank each of the vendors against your key criteria.

Notes

(i) Software functionality. Clearly the most important criteria, so focus on your key functional requirements and where the solution(s) from each vendor, differ from each other.

(ii) Implementation. Even the best software will not work well, with a poor implementation. So you need to be very sure that you either have the skills, experience and resources on board, or can acquire these from the vendor, or other service providers, or by retraining existing employees.

(iii) ROI (return on investment) / TCO (total costs of ownership). Re-check both calculations for 7 year time scale, for each vendor - as each vendor solution may have different benefits as well as different costs.

(iv) Maintenance and support / SLA (Service Level Agreement). Be sure of what you are getting for your annual (or regular) payments, that it is appropriate and represents good value for money.

(v) Software technology. Should be forward looking technology and either match that of your business or heading where you are heading. However, some forward looking technologies may be closer to where you are heading than others. (Solutions or vendors using old technology should have been removed at the RFI stage).

(vi) The vendor. Their business strength, business and product direction, and how well you get on with the vendor are important. Equally, so is a process or arrangement to protect your investment in the software, should the vendor themselves be acquired or taken over by another organisation.

(vii) In this example, we’ve included 6 key criteria for the project as a whole. You may have more criteria and may also wish to use some form of weighting and scoring rather than simple ranking. If so, amend your table accordingly.

With skill backgrounds in Accounting, Payroll, HR, processes, project management and IT, we can rapidly contribute to time-critical projects by providing the expertise, focus and drive needed to meet key deadlines.

Axia Philosophy

Our philosophy is to involve client’s staff as much as possible, whilst providing the in-depth expertise. So client’s costs are minimised and all concerned obtain a complete understanding of the solution.

We believe in providing outstanding quality and excellent value for money.

We continuously aim to be responsive, flexible and provide personal attention to our client’s needs.

For more information about Axia’s services visit: consulting services / system selection and shortlisting service / client case outlines / commendations

The 2 main types of internal IT project proposal for replacing business systems, such as a CRM system are:

• outline proposal for system selection and system replacement in principle – to obtain approval for limited funds to undertake the system selection process
• detailed proposal to implement a replacement system – carried out at the end of the system selection process – to obtain approval for much larger funds to purchase software, hardware, consultancy, training and implement the chosen system

If your organisation has a defined internal project approval process or framework, you will have to closely follow it if you wish to obtain project approval. If there is no defined process, you will have greater choice as to what and how to include in a proposal. But this probably makes it harder, so consider the following points when preparing your IT project proposal:

Ensure you fully understand the business and end user needs for the project. If you have yet to prepare more than a ‘back of the envelope’ spec of requirements, these RFI/RFP Templates can help you to quickly and easily prepare your requirements specification, RFI and RFP. Make sure the business and user needs (requirements) are crystal-clear in the proposal.

Understand what the other key project drivers are eg cost containment, time scale, project quality. Once known, make sure you give this adequate emphasis within the proposal.

Next, consider the proposal recipients ie the executive management / board, what they are looking for, the information they require and what is important to them and the organisation. Then provide the information they require eg if they want details give them, if not don’t. If you are unsure what they want – find out, before preparing the proposal. Picture them going through your proposal with a checklist – does your proposal tick all the boxes?

Software functionality and management information criteria

Software should provide the functionality and management information needed by your organisation. Click the links for the essential criterion for each software.

Accounting software criteria / CRM software criteria / HR software criteria / Payroll software criteria



Software efficiency criteria

Software should be reliable, operationally efficient and easy to use. Visit software efficiency criteria for more details.



Vendor criteria

Good vendors should provide the appropriate maintenance and support, implementation assistance, user training and have a good reputation and expertise. Visit vendor criteria for details.



Value for money

Good software should:

Represent good value for money

Have a reasonable annual cost for maintenance and support, with the annual increase %, no more than inflation

Be low cost or have a total cost less than budgeted