Choosing the right vendor, tech solution provider is an essential necessity that lines up with an organization’s future roadmap strategy, ease of working as well as revenue generation. Frequently the ease of choice gets burdened with details and documentation provided by the sales team making it difficult to select the vendor for the organization. To keep a straight focus on choosing the right vendor and use case, there needs to be a guideline for evaluating the vendors and their products directly.
When making a buying decision, these following pointers can be considered to ensure that the vendor valuation is done in a comprehensive an unbiased way, considering the use case for the organizations as well.
Right Team for Vendor Evaluation:
With the right evaluation and buyer’s team, the most inclusive perspective can be added in all the steps of the purchasing process. This will also reduce the chance of missing an essential criterion, for example, in the initial process of buying a particular technology, the IT team needs to be involved in order to incorporate implementation preparation of the technology solution post purchase. Hence, minute attention needs to be given on the use cases for the technology solution and the requirements needs to align with the business objectives and goals.
It is recommended that before starting the vendor evaluation process, organization set up their business case to have a solution in hand.
Select the Right Criterion for Vendor Evaluation:
When a team is accessing certain technology vendor’s, the following criterion should be kept in mind which is ease the selection process.
- Technical Evaluation – Various factors like ease of technology setup, delivery and system integration should be considered.
- Functional Evaluation – The technology category which is going to cater as the solution for the organization should be evaluated thoroughly by the vendor.
- Support Services – Evaluation teams should also take note of factors like training, implementation and pre- and post-purchase support in the beginning and throughout the ownership of the product cycle.
- Pricing – The vendor evaluation team should make note of the cost and pricing of the product solutions along with contract terms, licensing, renewals etc.
- Vendor – Factor like vendor stability, product reference and vendor value culture should be aligned with the organization purchasing the technology solution.
Apart from the mentioned points, evaluation teams can customize their requirements into the mentioned categories aligned towards the interests of the organizations. Along with these, weights can be given to the requirements in each category depending on the customizations most needed. With the priorities set, it is recommended to review and revise the category wise requirement before selecting a particular vendor.
Create a Scorecard based on Vendor Offering:
When a team starts evaluation the list of vendors, they should carefully look through the potential fits alongside a list of criterions, have product demonstrations and request for all forms of documentations, training materials and guides for the technology product.
They should have a requirement list, and frequently asked questions prepared and share it with the vendor to customize the future product with the organizations needs. By rating the vendor offerings, they can easily evaluate the various products.
Final Evaluation before Purchase:
With the team going through the vendor lists and making the final evaluations, additions and deletions are make on various products and its vendors. This leads to final set of products shortlisted which will end up being the purchased product. Only after the product of a specific vendor has met all the criterions in the evaluation list of fulfilled, then only should a team go forward with the final purchase.
Conclusion:
With WHAO vendor assessment report, have an unbiased third-party evaluation, which will help in thorough assessment of vendor specific technology product and help decision makers take the final purchase leap.
“With WHAO Vendor Assessment Report, vendors can make a confident choice on certain technology or product and deploy it throughout the organization at ease”-Neelam Singh Practice Director at Quadrant Knowledge Solutions
Author : Sanjana Jain Marketing Specialist at Quadrant Knowledge Solution , Shinjini Sarkar Senior Content Specialist at Quadrant Knowledge Solutions
