Selecting a suitable vendor software product

In this doodle I will go through the steps for identifying a suitable vendor product for achieving your business objectives now and in future.

If you have decided to continue reading this doodle then your current system is at one of the below state:

• There exist a wide gap between your business process and current system capabilities.
• Current system is based on an old technology and unable to meet all business objectives.
• New business processes are introduced which can't be met through the current system.
• There doesn't exist any system and business processes are performed manually now.

Below steps will guide you through the evaluation process for identifying a vendor product that will align with your business processes.

1) List the business objectives which should be met by the vendor product.

2) Is the listed business objectives belong to one or multiple functionalities? If the answer is multiple, then group the business objectives based on the functionalities.

3) Identify the stakeholders responsible for defining and achieving the business objectives.

4) Create business process document for each business objective. This document should have detailed description about all business processes to achieve the business objectives.

5) Involve the stakeholders and business subject matter experts and prioritize the business objectives.

6) Understand how these business objectives are achieved today?

• Understand why the existing software or product doesn't help to achieve these objectives.
• If new objectives are created, understand the purpose of these new ones.
• Understand from users which current system capabilities they want in new system also.
• Understand those current system functionalities which didn't meet their business objectives.

7) Identify the vendors whose products provide the required functionalities that will meet your business objectives.

8) Request for product demonstrations from shortlisted product vendors. 

9) Evaluate the vendor product functionalities in the demonstration sessions.

• Evaluate how the vendor product will meet your business objectives. 
• Identify if choosing this product will prompt any change to your existing business processes. 
• Evaluate system integration capabilities of the product. Check if integration and infrastructure specifications will meet your organisation strategies.
• Evaluate the data transformation and conversion methodologies.
• Understand the vendor product's maintenance and support models.
• Identify the product purchase, implementation and on-going maintenance costs.
• Ask about the product road map from the vendor.
• How system maintenance and down times are managed by the vendor?
• What are the different support options vendor provide after implementations?

10) Identify if the vendor product can be a possible best fit based on the above evaluations.

11) In product evaluation, compare business requirements to vendor product capabilities and identify the product limitations, identify those business process that can be improvised by implementing product's standard functionalities. This evaluation process is called as Fit-Gap analysis.

Fit-Gap analysis is a critical activity for identifying those business objectives that can and can't be accomplished through the vendor product. This analysis should answer the below questions:

• How much does the product capabilities align to your business processes?
• Knowing the gaps you get a high level cost estimate and time for the implementation.
• You can have list of business requirements for which solution has to be identified.
• You can know the business process that can be improvised by implementing product functionalities.
• How much end user training will be required?

Output of this Fit-Gap analysis should be a high level business requirements for implementation.

12) Invite the stakeholders and discuss about the outcome of vendor evaluation and product Fit-Gap analysis. Purpose of this discussion should be to decide if this vendor product will be best solution to achieve all the business objectives and return on investment can be foreseen.

The above mentioned steps will guide you for planning the product evaluation and selection. I am recommending readers of this doodle to leave any additional steps that you followed and helped you to choose the right product for your business.