Quality of Vendor Senior Management
This includes, the names, profiles, tenure of the senior executive management overall and specific to the location. Ask any investment analyst, and he will peg the quality of management among the top evaluation factors, and the same applies on the tool/vendor evaluation.
The board members.
Board members are similar to shareholding pattern, but it also includes the non-shareholder directors, which does make a difference. If you have the illustrious names on the board, one has an additional comfort in terms of robustness of strategy and level of integrity with the company. Reputed executives are conscious of their brand-image and ensure that they are linked to the company having a level of reliability and performance.
Experience of Management
- What are the experience levels of key senior management personnel driving the company strategy?
This factor deals with the experience of the senior management staff specific to the domain/tool on which you want to engage the vendor. This assessment is not limited to the management team of the company, but one to two levels down as well. We need to know that how many senior executives of the company have spent their careers in Data Warehousing, if we are planning to purchase Data Warehouse tools.
As you can understand, a tool is only one part of the engagement. The implementation expertise/services play a key role and depth of experience in making it happen makes a difference. Would you like to buy an inventory management system from a company where not a single senior executive has spent his life in managing this domain?
- What is the experience level of key senior and middle management staff, who will be linked to the project?
A company can have a list illustrated names in its ‘global team’ of experts, but when it comes to your project, their role may be limited to making 'pre-sales consulting’ and ‘project kick-off presentations’ leaving the lesser-experienced to manage the project. Ideally customers should firm-up the construct of the team with the Vendor, and if not the names, one should get an agreement on the broad experience profiles for the people to work on the project.
- What have been the credentials of the key staff linked to this project, in terms of successful implementations?
It is not only the relevant experience, but also a successful track record which counts. I still am of the opinion (which may change in the future) that robust processes and knowledge management cannot replace the capabilities of men behind the machine.
Vendor Skill Inventory
- What is the relevant skill inventory overall and within the given location?
This indicates the stakes of the vendor to your location, and also tells on the predictability of quality of man-power. If a company places a very good resource on your project, but he/she is the only star in otherwise team of fresh young faces, you have a risk. People move, bigger & more important projects come-up for the vendor and so on. A healthy skill inventory makes the engagement more risk-averse.
- What is the level of pressure in terms of the key resources?
This is an extension of the above-said point. Even if there is a healthy skill inventory, one has to understand the availability and deploy ability.
PLEASE REFER VENDOR EVALUATION MATRIX to enable an effective Vendor Evaluation.
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