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If you go shopping for a new car, and if you don’t know anything about cars, what do you do? Trust the dealer? Talk with a few dealers? Read books and reviews about the cars being considered? Bring a friend who DOES know something about cars to avoid getting ripped off? In this last post about vendor selection, I will discuss a few ideas of where it is possible to get some help with the sales performance management vendor selection process.
Get help from a company experienced with vendor selection efforts
Getting help from an unbiased, experienced third party is the most obvious course of action. This third party will be able to assist you with every step of the process we have discussed so far, from shortlisting the “best” vendors for your requirements, to writing an RFP doing a good job at describing your specific requirements, to helping out with the RFP evaluation and demo evaluation. I’ll just add a note that I’m regularly involved on vendor selection projects with OpenSymmetry.
Pros: A consulting company with a lot of vendor selection experience will be able to guide you through the process and help you in making the best decision for your specific situation. They will bring a lot of value by being able to answer your questions, create or review the vendor selection deliverable, provide additional insight about the various vendors/solutions considered and provide expert advice early on in the process.
Cons: Hiring a consultant / consulting company to help out with vendor selection will cost something; sometimes too much for a small budget implementation. Not all consulting companies are as experienced or as unbiased as they claim they are, so it is important to verify the experience and the company’s reputation. Checking references and ensuring that a company is not getting any “referral fee” from the vendor selected is also important to ensure there is no bias towards a specific vendor.
Get help from an SPM Vendors
Dean Thomas from Merced Systems discussed earlier this month how valuable it is to involve SPM vendors early in the RFP / requirement gathering process to get a good RFP. Indeed, most vendors will usually be helpful in providing information and ideas when creating an RFP.
Pros: Vendors usually want to appear to be “good guys” and be on your side during the selection process. There is much to be said about the importance of developing a good relationship between vendor and client, and helping you here is planting the first seed to what the vendors hope to be a long lasting relationship.
Cons: As I pointed out earlier in a blog comment, getting help from a vendor is a bit of a grey area. When involving one vendor, other vendors should also be involved to be fair, and this can be complicated. Involving vendors may also create a notion that some are favored more than others. Finally, some vendors may also use this opportunity to recommend requirements which may give them an advantage over their competitors. SPM vendors are familiar with their application, but sometimes they lack the knowledge of other solutions which makes it hard to think out of the box… even with the best intention they may give an advantage to their solution.
Get help from the Internet
Just stating the obvious, but there is a LOT of information on the Internet about vendor selection, RFP writing, etc. Good places to start looking for SPM specific information are the vendor’s websites and sales performance management blogs. Looking at vendor selection deliverable for other software solutions more commonly used than SPM could also be valuable; CRM and ERP solutions are other applications which will share common requirements with a sales performance management solution including security, data, etc.
Pros: The information is free…
Cons: The quality and accuracy of the information can be biased. For example, many vendors provide pros and cons of on-premise versus on-demand solutions; usually these studies are heavily biased towards influencing customers to select an on-demand solution which is usually more lucrative for the vendor. Be wary of vendors who require you to share contact and project information before sharing white papers, templates, studies, etc with you. This is only a sales stunt and you may have a hard time to get rid of their sales team.
Get help from me
If you have any questions or if you would like to brainstorm a few ideas, I would be pleased to talk with you and help out… for free. The only catch is that I hope you will share this blog around in exchange for the help, and keep me in mind if you ever need help with “real” work. I promise you won’t be constantly harassed after contacting me :-) You can reach me by e-mail at julien.dionne@opensymmetry.com or by phone at 613-482-2556.
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