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Overview
There are few things that create as much drama in a public agency as the procurement of complex, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software. And while we will attempt to give the matter a somewhat tongue-in-cheek treatment, complex software acquisition is serious business. The procurement process can be long, difficult and expensive. And, if not done properly, can result in a poor decision, no decision, litigation and/or the end of some otherwise solid careers. For the major players - the project manager, the procurement officer, the procurement manager - the build-up and wind-down of a complex software project can result in a script for a very stressful year.
The ‘script’ aside, let’s start with a simple truth about the most difficult part of the process: the evaluation. The ‘truth’ is that because the technology is often complicated; and its features difficult to understand, the benefits to your agency may be difficult to quantify making the process of evaluation as tangled and loaded with consequence as a Shakespearean tragedy.
By complex software, I mean sophisticated systems which may require significant amounts of training, implementation assistance and on-going support. It could be, for example, a new Interactive Voice Response system to be used by patients to schedule doctors’ appointments or a new Business Process Management System which can transform the day-to-day jobs of hundreds of your staff. For the most part the application itself is usually one which will change the way your organization does business.
These systems are frequently expensive, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes millions when you add in the implementation costs, training, costs of interfacing with existing applications, annual support fees and annual license fees.
In addition to the complexity of the software and implementation, the procurement process itself must be ‘fair and open’ and transparent. This makes it more difficult than in the private sector. There is a whole family of new issues arising out of public policy, legislation, the courts and the public’s scrutiny of the agency’s every activity.
When acquiring complex software, your agency is often at a disadvantage. The vendors, all major players often with offices throughout the world, may have more resources than you do, they certainly know their products better than you can or will, they usually have highly motivated and dedicated staff and their lawyers know more about related legal issues than yours.
How to prepare for your part in this drama? The first step is often looking at what other agencies have done, but what makes this process even more challenging is the lack of published material dealing with software acquisition by public agencies. There are surely lots of books and articles about RFPs and there are numerous articles dealing with the ‘how to’ of software evaluation. But there is no body of literature or best practices on procuring complex software in a public agency.
This guide is an attempt to fill that void and is intended to help you in planning your next RFP for complex software. It is a ‘how to’ article describing tasks and documents, difficulties likely to arise, problems and approaches for dealing with them. It’s intended to be a script of sorts, providing you with directions to help you achieve your goals and warnings for the common pitfalls which can seriously impair your performance.
This article is my attempt to convey some of my experiences (and those of my colleagues) over the last twenty years in helping public agencies procure complex software. There are other approaches and many variations on the best practices described in this paper. In writing this article, I have tried to provide lots of details on how each task is completed. As we all know, in any undertaking – be it a play or a procurement – the devil is in the details.
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