When To Invest In Digital Technology, Part 5

As a follow-up to my previous blogs about investing in digital transformation, I want to provide clear guidelines for choosing the right vendor or product for your company. Making the right choice now ensures long-term success later.

Let’s say you have successfully identified business goals where automation, self-service, or website redesign is a priority. Your budgets are already allocated for new investments and the ongoing maintenance of current technologies. Consequently, the next step is to determine exactly what you need so you can select the right vendor, software, or hardware.

While it sounds easy, many leaders skip the details. They often choose a company they already know or saw in an advertisement without conducting a proper evaluation. Unfortunately, making decisions this way can be costly, frustrate the people using the digital tool, and create unnecessary resistance to change. To avoid these pitfalls, we use a straightforward process to identify and select technology and service providers.

To keep your evaluation objective, you should first determine who will sit on the selection committee and who will act as the final decision-maker. Once you establish the team, meet with key stakeholders to categorize features into “must-haves” and “nice-to-haves.” Specifically, group these requirements by feature to make your research and review more efficient.

Next, identify a minimum of three and a maximum of six providers to review. If your initial list is longer, use a simple high-level scan to narrow it down. From there, follow these critical steps:

• Align with Values: Rate the prospective company against your own organization’s core values.
• Check Reputation: Review the provider’s ratings on platforms like Google, Gartner, or Clutch. Furthermore, examine their self-service capabilities and documentation.
• Execute Deep-Dive Reviews: Conduct hands-on reviews, demonstrations, or even a small pilot evaluation. Note: Since you cannot validate every single feature in a demo, you may need to rely on the vendor’s documentation for certain ratings.
• Standardize Scoring: Ensure each reviewer documents their evaluation on a separate spreadsheet. To keep things fair, provide a rating guide to encourage consistency across the team.
• Analyze Risk: Once reviews are complete, average the scores for each specific requirement rather than just the provider as a whole. This method allows you to identify specific risk areas before you sign a contract.
• Look Forward: Review the product roadmap. If the provider isn’t investing in regular improvements, you should likely choose a different partner.
• Compare Costs: Finally, weigh the different pricing models against your projected ROI.

If you want to use our specific scoring template, you can download it directly from our Google library.

Are you considering switching technology vendors or implementing new software within your organization? Schedule your one-hour digital transformation consultation with me today. I am happy to help you get started on the right path.