by Michael Krupa on May 16, 2011
In previous blog posts I gave you some software demo tips for vendors and some software demo tips for customers. This time around I feel compelled to give some tips to Implementation firms on how NOT to bid an implementation project.
- Assume or act like you are smarter than I am. I can’t believe I have to put this on the list.
- Be extremely difficult and inflexible when it comes to scheduling the presentation of your bid.
- Having asked for and received a written description of the project, come to your bid presentation meeting and ask me describe the project again instead of presenting your bid.
- Present a lame bid just because you are sure you will get the project.
- Ask me questions during the presentation and then interrupt me each time I try to answer.
- Fail to actually read and digest the written description of the project and then present a bid for the wrong project.
- Pay no attention to the budget parameters given to you and bid significantly higher than my budget.
- Give me a reference to call but have the reference not be a customer that has actually used your services.
- Re-bid the project three times and still not provide a bid that meets the project parameters.
- Assume you know more than I do about application implementations and technology.
- Assume you know more about my IT infrastructure than I do.
- Assume or act like you are smarter than I am. Yes, I listed this twice. *sigh*
That’s my quick list but I know I just scratched the surface so feel free to leave your own tips in the comments section. Any vendors brave enough to leave any tips for potential clients?
by Michael Krupa on April 20, 2010
Guess what? The rumor on the street is that HR leads the industry in using the Software As A Service (SaaS) delivery model. Surveys say that customers still prefer best-of-breed solutions over integrated solutions so that means more HR applications instead of less. Guess what also is true about many of these SaaS applications? They still use flat files as the main vehicle to shuttle information into and out of the application. In this model the customer is still required to develop an interface to the SaaS vendor. Wait, what? As a customer you still have to do custom development even though you are using a SaaS application.
There are several other more state of the art options such as an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) or SOAP messaging. I don’t know about you but when an employee gets hired into my core HR system, I would love to have the employee information zip over to my SaaS based Learning Management System within a couple seconds instead of sometime that evening when the flat file interface gets run. When I push the button to fill a requisition in my recruiting application, wouldn’t it be great to have the new hire in my core HR system right away. Sorry SaaS Recruiting vendor, sending me XML files via FTP multiple times a day doesn’t count.
All is not lost fortunately. The HR SaaS application vendors are starting to incorporate messaging or ESBs into their offering. The most prominent example of this is Workday purchasing ESB vendor Cape Clear back in February of 2008. Since then Workday has embedded Cape Clear into their application to allow end users to create their own real-time inbound and outbound interfaces.
For those other SaaS vendors who are still stuck in the flat file interface, you better get it together soon. We are wising up and will be requiring state of the art real-time interfaces in our vendor selection criteria.
by Michael Krupa on April 7, 2010
In a previous post I gave out some software demo tips for vendors. Since then I have participated in another round of software demos and this time I have some tips for all you customers out there. Yes, you read that correctly. Customers also needs some tips to get the most out of software demos.
- Create “killer” scenarios ahead of time and send them to the vendor (ahead of time, like way ahead of time so the poor vendor can be prepared). Don’t know what a killer scenario is? Head over to Naomi Bloom’s blog here, here and here to educate yourself.
- Assign an owner for each scenario. When questions arise during the demo about the scenario, the owner should be prepared to answer that question.
- Bring all participants for the demo to the same city, same building and same conference room.
- If you ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY can’t have everyone in the same room (are you sure you really can’t get everyone in the same room?) then make sure you get a conference room with a conference phone with enough microphones so the remote participants can hear the presenter and any questions from the audience.
- Speaking of conference rooms, make sure you get a large enough conference room that everyone has a seat near a microphone.
- If the demo starts at 9am, make sure the vendor shows up at least 15 minutes early and that you, the customer, have the room ready for the demo. By ready I mean, network connectivity for the vendor’s computers are ready, projector is powered on and warmed up. Otherwise the demo is likely start very late.
- If you have remote participants, DON’T PUT THE CONFERENCE PHONE NEXT TO THE FAN ON THE PROJECTOR. I’m sure you can figure out the issue with this one without me having to spell it out for you.
- Make sure you only have 1 version (1 truth) of your scenarios and fit/gap documents. Use version control and backup copies of your documents to ensure you know who updated the documents. Do not let the vendor take ownership of your documents and massage them to meet their needs for the demo or suddenly you will find yourself not on the same page (literally) with the Vendor during the demo.
- Match the content of the demo with the participants. If the demo is to show you the GL interface for Payroll you don’t need the head of HR but you do need your Payroll accounting folks.
- Put away the Blackberry and pay attention to the demo. I know this one is really hard for some of you but you will surprised how much more you get out of the demo when you give it your FULL attention.
Okay, that’s my list off the top of my head. What did I forget?
