Selecting the Best Software and Implementation Partners for Your IT Project

Pick the right partners using this methodology

One of the biggest decisions that you will face as an IT leader will be, which software to install to deliver the most impactful return on investment for your business. Coupled with the software decision, of course, will be picking the right implementation partner to lead the roll out.

You will most certainly spend a lot of time researching your options, networking with peers in other companies, sitting through countless demos and sales pitches and then checking vendor references. In other words, you will be studying continuously and you will be trying to reduce the risk of making the wrong decision.

Here are just a few of the software packages/tools that I have had the “pleasure” of evaluating and implementing over the last thirty years: ASK Manman, SAP, Oracle, Epicor, Visibility, Thru-Put, Netsuite, Navision, Salesforce, Seibel, Zoho, I-One, Pro-E/PDM. Jira, Solidworks, Hyperion and Shopify.

Looking back, I cannot say that all of these were the right choices at the time, but I can say, once I developed a consistent software evaluation process, I experienced a much higher success rate! In this article, I will share the process that worked for me in many different companies and situations.

Before you bring on others to help you evaluate the software and the implementation partners, I recommend that you do the following:

1) Research the different software packages and partners online, at conferences and by talking to peers at other companies. Note: this may take you several months before engaging others in the process.

2) Narrow down your selection to no more than three software packages and three partners. You may wish to see more than three demos, but don’t start your formal evaluation process with more than three vendors.

3) Start your evaluation process with the narrowed down list.

The true evaluation process will start by you choosing a selection team consisting of the key stakeholders or their representatives. These team members will be your biggest supporters in the end and they will also feel empowered by the direct involvement. It will give the participants a chance to fully understand the pros and cons of the various possible solutions and allow them to buy into the final decision.

The number of participants will range from just a few, to as many as fifteen or so depending on the type of software you are evaluating. An ERP project will require the largest team, while a solution specific to one organization will require a much smaller team.

You will need people engaged who truly understand their function’s business requirements and the current state of systems and processes. They are likely to become the super users of the software application that will ultimately be implemented.

Your role as the IT leader will be to explain what role you expect these participants to play e.g. attend demos for all software packages, evaluate the different products, conduct reference checks and ultimately participate in the final selection process. This will be no easy task for the selection team participants, as this will be time consuming and may fall outside of their comfort zone if they have not gone through this type of evaluation process before.

After explaining the participants roles, I recommend that you go over the entire process that I am going to share next. Moreover, you should lay out a projected timeline to complete the process. Your timeline will be dependent on how many different software packages and how many implementation partners you plan to evaluate.

Here is an example of the worst case timeline of the proposed steps for a process like this with three software applications and three implementation partners.

As you can see, this can take quite a while to fully play out. Going with fewer demos and/or reducing your choices to two of each, will certainly compress your timeline. That being said, the payback in taking your time and including the right stakeholders will surely lead you to the best result.

Allow me to elaborate on the actual evaluation/selection process that I use with the selection team. For the software vendor selection, I use the following criteria. I start by asking the selection team to help me weight each of the criteria, assigning higher weightings to those criteria that the team think are the most critical. The total weighting cannot exceed 100%.

1) Functionality Fit (long term)

2) Cost/Benefit to purchase and implement (amount of resources /ease of implementation)

3) Time to implement and reap the benefits

4) Annual cost to maintain/support

5) Vendor experience/references

6) Implementation methodology

7) Fit with technical architecture

8) Vendor stability/long term player

9) Global training and support services

Each vendor will be scored the same by assigning the following points to each criteria:

9 = High fit/impact

5 = Medium fit/impact

1 = Low fit/impact

When assigning points, you are striving for the consensus of the group. If you are unable to gain a consensus, you can always meet in the middle e.g. 5 people vote for high impact and 5 vote for medium impact, you suggest assigning 7 points to gain agreement.

Software Selection Evaluation Tool

For the selection of an implementation partner, I use the following criteria. Once again, I consult with the selection team on the weighting of the criteria and the total cannot exceed 100%.

1)   Level of industry experience

2)   Cost (including travel)

3)   Contract/milestone billing

4)   References at like customers

5)   Availability of local resources

6)   Vendor experience/references

7)   Implementation methods/schedule

8)   Knowledge transfer/training skills

9)   Software vendor alliance partner

10) Post implementation support

Each partner will be scored the same by assigning the following points to each criteria:

9 = High fit/impact

5 = Medium fit/impact

1 = Low fit/impact

Implementation Partner Selection Tool

Following this approach will surely help you gain acceptance of the final decisions from the majority of your key stakeholders since everyone will have skin in the game and a vested interest in supporting the decisions.

You can download both of these models from my website, just click here to get a copy.

If you have any questions, please reach out to me at garryswheeler@gmail.com