Peer to Peer Magazine

38 the vendor, since internally, you have already established your business needs and that they have a product that may be valuable. Furthermore, at this point, most of the products that made it through the RFI review can meet your requirements; the question is how well they can meet them. For example, it is one thing to say they can create a workflow, but important to find out if it takes ten steps and customizations to do so. Allow time in your plans for multiple demos. For example, upper management may ask to see a demo, or peripheral stakeholders may be interested in how it could serve their needs. Perhaps one or more people missed the first meeting, or have follow-up questions after seeing a competitor's product. Preparing attendees is also an important precursor to an effective demo. Based on your previous requirements-gathering and prioritization, distributing a scoring matrix prior to the demo helps attendees stay focused on the firm's needs, and effectively assess and rank the various products by paying attention to the way the product works and by asking relevant questions. The weighted requirements matrix is a qualitative way to compare vendors and products, serves as a discussion guide for both internal meetings and follow-up meetings with vendors, and informs and justifies the ultimate decision. The value here is talking through the outliers or the differences in scores. Exploring why two stakeholders had vastly different scores may be the critical deciding factor. In nearly all cases, it is important to schedule one or more technical demos to supplement the initial product demos. While the business stakeholders must determine the value of product features and functions, IT teams must ensure that a product also fits in with your existing technologies. Server requirements, integration requirements, and a host of other challenges can derail or delay a product implementation. And few products today can be implemented without a detailed security audit. Be prepared, too, for business stakeholders and decision-makers to ask for a sandbox, proof of concept, or bake-off between products. Pilots, free trials, and hands-on experience are often important in testing whether the product really delivers what you need and works effectively in your environment. While there are some situations where it is truly impossible to do deep-dive testing, be wary of vendors who will not work with you to show you exactly how the product will work in your environment. RFP (Request for Proposal) The last piece of the process is the formal RFP, which at this stage is largely centered on product pricing, licensing and related pre-contract factors. There shouldn't have to be significant communication on whether or not a product can do what you need, since that was determined through the prior steps. The RFP enables you to compare two or three near-equivalent products to aid in the final decision making and negotiations. Even if you believe you have decided on a product, you will want to have a back-up plan if your top contender has a showstopper in their RFP or if the runner-up has an extraordinarily attractive proposal. Conclusion A few years ago, I had the opportunity to work with a senior manager of a highly effective and critical team to look for a new product for their day to day work. We started with over a dozen possibilities, narrowed it down to nine after the RFIs, and finally had two options after the demonstrations and pilots. Neither of the finalists were the most well-known in the market, and after the RFPs came in, we chose one of these lesser known products that gave us the features, functions and flexibility that team needed. In this example, undertaking a step-by-step, thorough and structured approach proved that the market-leaders were not as suited to our needs as the company with a smaller marketing budget. Following the crowd, relying on a basic product review, or going with established vendor relationships are clearly faster paths to decision-making, but the upfront time doing a formal vendor and product analysis may lead to a more perfect and innovative match. ILTA Caitlin J. Peters has been with Ropes & Gray LLP since 2007, earning a Master's Degree in Library and Information Science from Simmons University in 2010. Caitlin is a Senior Project Manager who manages a variety of strategic, cross functional, and complex projects and has a passion for fostering an environment of teamwork, high performance and great morale to ensure success. Prior to joining the Project Services team in the Finance Department, she spent six years working in Knowledge Management in the Information Services department. While the business stakeholders must determine the value of product features and functions, IT teams must ensure that a product also fits in with your existing technologies.

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