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This summer I was sitting on a dive boat off the coast of Cozumel chatting with the dive master and about to dive Palancar caves when two distinct thoughts occurred to me. First, I trust this dive master. He is an expert in his craft, and I know he has successfully and safely led people on this dive before and second, I’m fairly certain I could lead people on this dive myself.
What led to that point where I felt like I was self-sufficient enough to a lead a deep dive that requires somewhat complex navigation? One that can have unpredictable currents and no signs or markers on the surface to indicate a starting point? Experience – the fact that I have done hundreds of dives and in particular have done the Palancar cave dive numerous times in a wide variety of conditions.
If it had been my first time in the water, I might have been able to get down to a reef, swim around, and surface hopefully without doing harm to myself. There is little to no chance, even with a map, that I could have found the right reef, found the caves, utilized my air efficiently, controlled my buoyancy and understood my dive charts well enough to have a safe dive. And ultimately that’s why you pay for a dive master or a guide – experience, knowledge and to minimize risk.
When it comes to selecting a software vendor, this holds true as well. There are numerous methodologies or “maps” that can be found with Google to give you some idea of how to do it yourself. If anyone would like to see the selection methodology that I utilize for my clients, please send me an email and I would be happy to share it with you. However, even with your vendor selection map in hand, quite quickly as you start to do research on the vendors in the space you will realize that there are a large number of companies that appear to have solutions to your business problem. A little farther on in the process, you might realize that there are vast differences in the vendor’s solutions. As an example - they all have some form of reporting but some are partnered with best-in-class third parties, some are integrated, some are very good at pixel-perfect static reports, while other are good at ad-hoc reporting or perhaps executive dashboards. How to interpret the cost to implement and maintain, the improvement or value-gap to current state, the trades offs between solutions, the ease of use and how others have used that particular reporting solution to add economic value to their companies are all questions that beg to be answered. This same analysis should happen across multiple dimensions of functionality and once you find a good match of functionality to prioritized requirements, the process has just begun. To go back to the diving analogy, you have only “found the reef.” So far I have just scratched the surface of the complexity and nuances of successful vendor selection, but at the end of the road your company needs to make a costly decision between multiple complex solutions to meet your complex business needs –sound risky to do without a guide?
If you are thinking about embarking on a vendor selection process that can be fraught with pitfalls, the first question you might want to ask is – “Based on experience can I lead this myself?” Next summer, I would love to be on a boat off the coast of an island that I haven’t been to before (Truk anyone?), chatting with an experienced dive master about a dive I have never done, and feel comfortable in the success and safety of the dive.
Justin Lane is a Sales Performance Management veteran and a colleague of mine at OpenSymmetry. He helps clients develop best in class Compensation Management Program processes and implement the underlying technology to support those processes.
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