CHAPTER 8: IN-DEPTH INVESTIGATION

Once you have your shortlist, you are ready to start looking at each of the choices in much more detail. This will normally include activities such as demonstrations, more detailed questioning, taking references and financial checks.

(During these activities, remember the strictures of the Bribery Act, as detailed in Chapter 6.)

This chapter covers:

• common activities for your in-depth investigation
• example pitch meeting notes template
• possible additional activities.

Common activities for your in-depth investigation

The selection team should discuss and agree what activities are needed in order to make a final choice. The type and level of detail should relate to the importance and cost of the system or service being selected.

This section details some of the activities the team should consider.

Pitch meetings

The pitch meeting, whilst not mandatory, is a standard in almost every selection. It is an opportunity for the supplier to take you through their proposal in more detail. They will normally involve some kind of presentation and, for system selections, pitch meetings are often combined with demonstrations (see next section). It’s up to you whether you want to dictate a formal agenda for them to follow, or if you want to leave it up to them how they manage the session.

Remember to ask each supplier if they need you to provide a projector, an Internet connection or any other equipment. You could consider providing them with use of a laptop, to which they could upload their presentation from a memory stick. This avoids time being wasted setting up, avoids security issues involved in giving an Internet connection to an unknown machine, and provides a more equal comparison between any demonstrations, as all suppliers will be using the same equipment.

Pitch meetings are a chance for you to invite people outside the core selection team along if you wish (maybe those involved in requirements gathering). This can provide some additional input to your decision making and help with getting buy-in to the project. However, make sure that the numbers don’t get too large (it’s a pitch, not a seminar!) and remember that someone has to be at all the pitch meetings if they are going to make any comments that could affect the selection, otherwise they can’t be fully objective.

It’s hard to say how long a pitch meeting should be. The minimum is probably 90 minutes, but they can be a half-day, especially if they involve some kind of demonstration.

Make sure you book the team for a half-hour longer than the pitch, so that you can get immediate feedback after the session. If you’re having two or three pitches in a day, then you could have one general feedback session at the end of the day.

Also, if you have more than one pitch in a day, leave half an hour between sessions to give time for one supplier to pack up and leave, and for the next to arrive and get ready.

An example pitch meeting notes template is provided in the next section. This can be used by each attendee to make notes and this makes it easier when you debrief afterwards.

Demonstrations

These are usually for systems, but can be for an aspect of a service, such as an ordering portal. As mentioned above, these are often combined with pitch meetings. Depending on the size of the system, there may be a need for several sessions; in that case, if the split can be made along functional lines, the teams attending each type can be tailored to fit the topic. This makes better use of people’s time.

Again, you can dictate what you want to see, or leave it up to the supplier to decide how best to cover the material. If the former, it can be useful to ask to see end-to-end business processes, as this can give you a better picture and context of how the system would work for you, rather than just seeing each function in isolation.

Detailed questioning

If you still have a lot of questions that you need answers to (or more in-depth answers), then you could:

• have a session devoted to ‘questions and answers’
• send a list of questions to each supplier and ask for written answers.

These can be the same for each supplier or tailored, depending on the situation. The advantage of the former is that you can drill down to the right level of detail fairly quickly; written answers tend to go back and forth a lot until you get what you need, which can be time-consuming. However, the advantage of the written answer is that it’s durable and can be referred to later if a supplier seems to be reneging on anything.

One way to combine these is to have a session with the supplier, write up your understanding of their answers and get the supplier to clearly confirm that these are correct.

Workshops

This is a step up from having a question and answer session. For more complicated selections, a workshop is a more two-way information exchange, which will give the supplier a much better understanding of your needs, as well as giving you more information about options they can offer.

Financial checks

This is a mandatory element in almost all selections. The only occasion when you may decide it’s unnecessary is if you are buying a product or service that will be quickly fulfilled (and preferably you will only be paying for on receipt), or is only needed for a short time, and you won’t need any ongoing service or support from the supplier.

It’s likely that your organisation will have standards in place for financial checks, possibly using a credit company who will provide an assessment of the supplier’s stability. You can ask the supplier for their last three years’ accounts – this gives a good picture of the company’s health. You can also do some checks via the Companies House website.

As well as checking their credit-worthiness, the financial check will give you some additional information. How does your potential contract compare to their overall financial size? Will you be important enough to them for you to be able to command a good service? Or will you be their biggest customer and, if so, can you be sure they are able to service you properly?

References

Again, not a mandatory activity, but one you will use in almost every selection. You should ask each supplier for a reference for an organisation similar in size and complexity as yourselves, and using a similar system or service. They may need to provide more than one reference to enable a full match.

You can either have a phone reference (usually allow an hour) or an on-site reference. The latter is more time-consuming (and may involve you travelling some distance), but can be extremely useful if the reference site is willing to show you how the system/service actually works for them.

Make sure you focus on their relationship with the supplier, as well as on the system/service itself. After all, they are a different organisation with different needs, so even if the system/service works excellently for them, this doesn’t guarantee that it will for you (although it’s still nice to know). Nevertheless, how the supplier works with them, how good their support is, how capable their staff are, and so on, can be a good indication as to how well the relationship would work for you too.

For any references, you should consider using a sub-team; it’s hard to have many people involved in a phone call and it’s pushing the bounds of hospitality to send more than a few to a reference site. Make sure the same people do each reference, to get a fair comparison. Ask them to write up their notes after each reference, whilst the details are fresh. They can do this individually, or one person can write up on the team’s behalf. Once all are completed, they can share their reports with the wider selection team.

Example of pitch meeting notes template

This template is an example for a pitch meeting that includes a demonstration of a system product. You should adapt it to fit whatever you will be including in your meeting.

It’s useful to format each section as a table with enough space in the rows for people to scribble notes into each section. Then you can print copies for all pitch meeting attendees. This saves everyone doing their own and can make it easier to compare notes in the debriefing afterwards.

A template with the sections below can be sensibly fitted onto two A4 pages, so if you have a duplex printer then it fits nicely onto both sides of one sheet of paper.

Text in normal print can be included ‘as is’ (or tailored of course). Text in italics is guidance text and should be replaced with your content.

Example: Pitch meeting notes

Demo – general thoughts

This can be tailored as required, but should include sections such as:

Demo – specific functions

Include a row for each of the key functions of the system.

The people

The following should cover the main aspects, but tailor as required:

Their approach to the project

The following should cover the main aspects, but tailor as required:

Other thoughts

Provide a blank section for people to add any other thoughts.

Overall impression

Provide a blank section for their overall impression of the pitch.

Keep or reject?

This can just be a choice for them to circle, or you can have a box for their notes on justification.

Possible additional activities

There are other less common activities you can do that can be very useful, especially when dealing with large, expensive and/or business-critical selections. They are:

Visiting the supplier’s site

If you are expecting to have a close relationship with the supplier, perhaps because support is a big element, then a visit to the supplier’s site can be worthwhile. You can meet the team that you’ll be dealing with ‘in situ’ and gain an impression of how their office is set up. It can be very reassuring to see the team working in a professional and efficient way – and a big concern if it looks like chaos or there’s no one around!

Proof of concept

This is most commonly used for larger, often technical, projects and is more common once you have a preferred supplier, to check the solution before signing the main contract.

However, if you are having real difficulty in making your final decision, and you need to really see how each solution will work for you, it may be a good choice.

You may need to pay the suppliers for this work, as it’s probably outside what would be seen as normal sale activities.

Examples of what could comprise your proof of concept are:

• a partial development or configuration of a system (perhaps a key function)
• putting in a small part of the solution (e.g. a link to a few offices for checking a wide-area network solution)
• giving a service provider a specific task, related to the overall contract (e.g. getting a caterer to provide a corporate lunch).

Whatever it is, make sure the team is very clear as to what the success criteria are before the activity starts.

Request for Proposal (RFP)

As was mentioned in Chapter 4, you could issue a Request for Proposal once you’ve done your initial sift based on the RFI. This will generally contain far more specific requirements, be more formal (answers against each requirement will likely follow a scoring method), and the resulting proposals should be unambiguous.

Make sure that the suppliers know you are looking for their best offer, as the decision will be based on these proposals.

If you are going down this route, then it’s useful to allow for full workshops with the shortlisted suppliers, after you’ve issued the RFP. That way, the suppliers can make sure they really understand your needs before they provide their final response.