Software Selection

The largest factor that drives our projects to success and separates us from other firms is the hands-on, process-driven approach that each of our consultants deliver to these projects. We will intimately learn your business and work with a wide range of your employees to identify the most valuable improvement opportunities.

Differing from our competition, we avoid the assumption that each client’s needs are identical and instead build customer-specific process and technical requirements, as opposed to a copy & paste approach of utilizing identical functional requirements across multiple projects.

It is critical to remain mindful of long-term requirements, ever-changing customer expectations, and fluidity in the industry. WCG is not just focused on the best immediate, short-term solution. Our approach identifies the benefits in system flexibility that provide the most sustainable solution to account for possible shifts in business model, technology, and requirements.

Selection Approach

Needs Assessment/Business Process Review

The effort and work invested at this phase of the project builds the foundation for all future project stages. Here we will assess all business systems and specify current insufficiencies – both in technology and process.

The first step of this assessment will be to collectively create an exhaustive list of processes needing analysis and all systems in use, then conduct on-site meetings with the power users to fully understand the organization’s daily processes and observe the systems in real-time operation. WCG will then take this information to build a process-by-process analysis that will list out specific process and system insufficiencies.

The above insufficiencies will then be paired with possible improvement opportunities given the solutions that exist in the market today. WCG will help identify whether these improvements can come from updating current configuration, streamlining internal processes, whether a system upgrade would address the issue, whether a system replacement would be needed, or finally, if another peripheral technology upgrade could deliver the desired improvement.

Custom RFP Development

The RFP developed with WCG’s support and leadership will be a customized document representing your organization’s specific requirements paired with the desired business improvement options we expect from the potential software vendors.

WCG will develop your business requirements in a “To-Be” business process format as opposed to just simply presenting the current state. This will avoid the software vendors from simply replicating your current configuration. Instead, this approach will allow them to present a demo with screen shots, reports, and queries that maximizes system functionality while meeting your specific business requirements, inclusive of the potential process improvements that we have identified together.

This detailed, forward-looking approach allows the selection of a stronger group of short-listed vendors, ensuring that the strengths of these vendors match up with the true needs of the organization, while also serving as pre-discovery documentation that will help advance the early stages of implementation for the selected vendor.

Proposal Evaluation

Proposal evaluations must be based upon fair, unbiased, and pre-established criteria. WCG will lead a workshop to assist the evaluation team in the development of this criteria and will monitor its application throughout the process. These evaluations pair both qualitative and quantitative ratings, along with cost proposal normalization, to help apply objectivity to a rather subjective process.

The result of this workshop will provide a list of client-specific requirements that are pre-weighted based on the organizations priorities. These pre-weighted requirements will be used to drive the vendor demonstrations as well as the vendor scoring worksheets for the core selection team. This list will also be paired with other general process and technical requirements to further aid in providing vendor separation.

Reference Interviews

WCG will schedule and lead multiple reference calls with previous clients of each short-listed vendor. These interviews will be structured and consistent allowing the client to draw valuable comparison and insight into the proposed vendor’s performance and abilities.

Customized Product Demonstrations

Based upon the detailed response to the requirements section of the Proposal, WCG will develop demonstration scripts that will lead the vendor to demonstrate the application in a comprehensive manner that will provide the client a clear vision of the vendor’s capabilities. WCG will monitor and document each demonstration session and will meet with the evaluation team at the end of each day to gather input and comments. Each vendor’s demonstration performance will be evaluated and compared, then applied to the evaluation model to greatly assist in the selection of a vendor finalist.

Conduct Confirmation and Preparation for Best and Final Offer

The Confirmation process is designed to allow the vendor finalist and the client to review and confirm the following:

Review Modification, Interface, Security and other Technical requirements
Review all optional components
Refine Implementation expectations
Confirm Implementation Approach & Staffing
Conduct Optional Site Visits (Reference Sites and Vendor Headquarters)

The confirmation process will result in a ‘Best and Final Offer’ document from the proposed vendor that updates the work effort and the total fixed cost. The adjusted cost work sheets will be incorporated into the Statement of Work and the contract documents.

Statement of Work Development

The WCG Selection Lead, along with client purchasing officials, will work with the chosen vendor to develop a comprehensive SOW that details the work effort, the committed named resources for the project, the agreed-to deliverables, and payment milestones tied to these deliverables. The SOW will include a high-level project calendar that will eventually lead to a more-detailed, task-driven project schedule. WCG will work diligently with the vendor to develop a SOW that will protect the interests of the client and mitigate risk from the onset.

Contract Negotiation and Execution

Similar to the development of the SOW, WCG will guide and monitor the contract negotiation process to confirm that the interests of the client are protected. WCG will apply its 35+ years of software project negotiation experience to make sure fair and reasonable terms are put in place.

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