In pretty much any aspect of American society today, speed is the name of the game. No wonder that desire has now infiltrated the technology selection and procurement process. Managing Automation looks at the expedited process of technology selection and provides some pointers to short-cutting the RFP cycle.

Name an aspect of American society today — business, technology, communications, travel, even finding a potential mate — and speed is the name of the game. No wonder that desire has now infiltrated the technology selection and procurement process.

Gone are the days when 100- and even 1,000-page RFPs are highly valued, either by vendors or customers, says Billy Maynard, an analyst in the business applications practice at Gartner, Inc. “Companies are looking for a quicker way to make the decision as to who’s the right partner from a business application vendor standpoint and what’s the right business application for my company,” he explains.

A big reason for expediting the technology selection process is resource utilization, says CJ Anderson-Johnson, senior consultant at International Computer Negotiations, a consulting firm in Winter Park, FL. That’s because quite often, the project management office in IT is the same group involved with technology selections.

“There are only so many resources to go around,” she says, “so the faster you can get through it, the faster you can reassign those resources.”

Not to mention that if the technology in question has the possibility of contributing to competitive advantage, companies want to get it implemented as soon as possible. Here are some pointers, then, to short-cutting the RFP cycle.

Take a “Fatal Flaws” Approach

Gartner has developed an approach that serves as an alternative to the RFP, called “the fatal flaws” approach. Whereas the typical RFP process involves generating a many-pages-long questionnaire, the fatal flaws approach involves identifying just the critical business processes that need to be supported by the software — those processes that are unique to your industry or that define your competitive advantage.

With this approach, companies develop a questionnaire based only on those critical requirements — Maynard suggests limiting the list to 50. You then ask the vendor to model those processes in its software. This creates a self-selecting fast-track to a vendor shortlist. “It cuts to the chase quickly as to which vendor meets your requirements,” Maynard says.

An example of a critical process in industrial manufacturing, for instance, might be product configuration, or in pharmaceuticals, it might be formula management. For those with strong supply chains, it might be the ability to integrate with customers’ partners and suppliers, Maynard says.

Be Demanding

If you choose to use a more traditional RFP approach, there are ways to speed vendor responses, says John Lakey, manager of the Acquity Group, a business and technology consultancy headquartered in Chicago. For instance, set tight timelines for vendor responses, and drop from consideration the ones that don’t meet the deadline.

Be careful, however, if you’re evaluating at the end of a quarter when vendors are trying to close existing deals or if your deal isn’t a big one, Lakey warns. “You may end up with no one to evaluate,” he suggests. It’s also smart to obtain initial pricing during the RFP phase. “This will speed up your selection of two to three vendors for negotiation,” Lakey says.

Downsize the Team

Although you need to involve business owners when the technology is business-or customer-facing, leave them out if that’s not the case, Lakey says. This will eliminate coordination time issues, he points out.

You should also downsize the number of people who sit at the negotiations table to about five, Anderson-Johnson says. The team should include dedicated contract and legal personnel with clearly laid-out objectives and the empowerment to make decisions.

“It’s very common in midsize companies to not have a good handle on the negotiation process,” she says. “And too often, the people negotiating the deals are IT project managers, and they aren’t trained in that area. You need a seasoned negotiator.”

Have Some Standards

Try to develop a standard approach to technology selection and continue to improve and tighten it, Lakey says. This includes templates for your RFPs and scorecards.

If possible, get your legal department to develop standard terms and conditions and then state in the RFP that using your contract as a starting point for negotiations is a non-negotiable term of doing business, Anderson-Johnson says.

“Try to get the … provider to agree to use your contracts and service level agreements and statements of work,” she says. Otherwise, any time you work off the vendor’s standard contract, it’s a learning process. “It takes a lot longer to work from the vendor’s terms to get closer to what you want versus starting with your own terms,” she says.

Know When to Start — and Stop — Negotiating

Lakey suggests starting the negotiation process immediately after you develop your vendor short list. It’s also important to know when to stop negotiating and start buying and implementing.

“Squeezing that last 1% to 3% may not be worth it if you either need the [technology] to do something important or if it leads to the vendor squeezing you later on because the deal turned out to be small,” he says. Get a Head Start

If you can, dedicate a staffer in sourcing or vendor management to continuously pull information on potential suppliers based on your five-year IT project plan. “Instead of researching on-the-fly, it can be done every day so that when you decide to activate a project, the information is there instead of starting the process of digging for it,” Anderson-Johnson says.

It may not be easy to justify that resource, as it doesn’t add to the bottom line, she warns. “But the more information you have on a regular basis, the faster it will go.”

Also, try to force vendors into pricing their products on basically the same terms — by user, by CPU, one rate for support — so it’s easier to evaluate bids, he suggests.

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Article courtesy of Managing Automation. Originally authored by Mary Brandel.