System Selections

What is this?

A System Selection engagement takes an organization through a structured exercise to identify and help select the best fit vendor, solution and technology to meet its business needs. Often our clients look to independent resources to:

• Provide insights and experience with systems and selection processes;
• Guide the process with a proven methodology; and
• Facilitate the buy, build or outsource decision for the new system

How we do this

At Mark Longo, we utilize a proven methodology to determine the client’s needs, identify and research the appropriate candidate vendors, establish a clear selection criteria and score card, manage vendor presentations (both written and oral), and facilitate the vendor selection decision. In many cases, our clients have asked us to also project manage the implementation to ensure all their needs have been met.

Objectives / Symptoms & Questions

Below are some of the objectives or questions that a system selection exercise can help you answer.

• What are our requirements? Do these requirements meet future needs?
• What are the selection criteria?
• Has the solution been designed to support the processes or will we need to change the way we do business in order to use the new system?
• What other vendors / technologies exist?
• Is there a viable vendor and technology?
• Have we allocated enough budget for selection, purchase, and implementation?
• What is our competition doing?
• Do we need to alter internal operations to support this new technology? If so, how?

Benefits / Outcomes

The benefits of engaging Mark Longo to conduct a structured selection process include:

• Minimizing the overall timeframe for solution selection
• Limiting the number of vendors/packages for the selection team to evaluate
• Reducing the amount of time invested by the client in the selection process
• Minimizing the amount of ‘unsolicited’ vendor calls and interactions
• Providing an unbiased evaluation of vendors/packages
• Optimizing the match between the clients’ requirements and candidate vendors/packages
• Facilitating senior management buy-in
• Allowing the clients’ employees to focus on core business activities

Insights

System selections can be challenging when a structured process isn’t followed. Often Senior Management calls on peer groups to see what new system they have just implemented, without considering the unique traits of their own business. A system should not dictate how an organization’s processes should run. Instead, the business processes should define what type of system or technology is needed to support corporate activities. Otherwise, organizations stand to lose their competitive advantage and be governed by the system’s processes rather than the other way around. Technology should be the enabler: we embrace this philosophy at Mark Longo. Our structured selection process ensures that the solution selected or customized is the right one for our client.

What our clients say

“The [Mark Longo] team was effective at managing the challenges and obstacles encountered in the engagement. The team worked to understand our business and requirements; and together with the Dspfactory team, they put together a comprehensive Request for Proposal that was instrumental in weeding out unsuitable solutions and short-listing appropriate ones. Their logical approach, outlining critical steps and stakeholders to be considered in the final solution helped to gain the buy-in and consensus necessary to move the project forward; and their facilitation and interpersonal skills helped to make this a successful project.”

Robert Tong, CEO and President, Dspfactory