Do check signers have significant pain?
- Understand pain points of CIO/VP Customer Service
- Significant pain must exist for senior management to sign a check
- Giva White Papers will help you "listen" for pain statements
- Tell vendors your pain. Otherwise, they will ignore you
Are funds approved and set aside?
- Check in with CIO or VP Customer Service
- Don't invest time until given iron clad assurance that funds are available
- Determine what you are already paying for application maintenance
- Find a cloud based replacement product for less money than annual maintenance
Learn latest IT service desk or customer service best practices.
- Prepare to ask vendors tough questions with confidence
- Prod and poke at vendors...you lead the questioning
- Acquire best practices fluency: first call resolution, service level agreement compliance, root cause analysis, customer satisfaction surveys, KPIs/metrics, dashboards, etc.
- Subscribe to Giva Blog & review Giva White Papers. Join "Linked In" groups, industry associations and user groups
What are problems with current call tracking system?
- Hire consultants/technical experts, if necessary
- Call vendor CEO; list of issues ready to send.
- Proposal to fix? Cost, timeline, guarantees
- Is fixing less expensive vs. buying a new application
What are feature needs/requirements?
- Obtain feedback from all stakeholders; prioritize the list
- Use Giva's Needs Assessment Tool as a starting point
- Check signers like a rigorous quantitative analysis
- Share requirements openly with short list of vendors
Ask vendors tough questions early and often.
- Early on share complex "must have" & "deal killer" requirements to eliminate vendors
- Ask for an estimated price quote. Is it in your budget ball park?
- Ask for customer case studies and references
- Poke and prod, listen carefully, get it all in writing
What is the total cost of ownership (TCO) of all vendors?
- Calculate TCO of all vendors for applies-to-apples comparison
- Acquisition costs only 30% of TCO over 5 years according to Gartner Group
- Ongoing lifetime costs vary significantly between vendors
- Compare cloud vs. on premise hosted software licenses
What are important license agreement terms?
- What happens if stop paying annual maintenance?
- Arbitration clause - inexpensive means of recourse
- SLAs for product support & reports to measure SLA compliance
- Termination clauses
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