CHAPTER 9: FINAL SELECTION

The final stage of the selection process – at last! You will have gathered a mass of information about each supplier and the team will hopefully have clear opinions as to their preferences. Once the team have agreed on a preferred option, you may decide to have a pilot or scoping exercise before moving into final negotiation and contracts. Finally, once the selection is concluded, you will need to write up the results and reasoning.

This chapter covers:

• making the final selection
• whether to have a final activity – or not
• contract negotiation
• example evaluation report template.

Making the final selection

It’s best to do this in a decision meeting with the whole selection team, preferably in person rather than virtually. If there’s any dissention, it’s easier to work through it face to face than by a battery of e-mails, an online discussion or in a teleconference.

There are many different ways to run this meeting. If you feel that there is general consensus over the preferred solution, then you can start with a vote and, assuming there is agreement, everyone can provide their reasoning to go into the final report.

If you think that some discussion will be required, then it’s probably better to go through each activity in turn, possibly scoring the options for each one. At the end, if there is still no clear leader, you could get everyone to state their reasoning for their preferences individually.

If you end up with a complete stalemate, then the team will need to agree what further activities are needed in order to make a decision. One option may be to allow the remaining suppliers (hopefully down to two at this point) to do some kind of proof of concept (as described in the next section).

Whether to have a final activity – or not

Once you have your preferred option, you may choose to go straight to contract negotiation. However, for some selections, perhaps due to cost, criticality or the length of the contract, you may want to have a final activity to make completely sure that this choice will work for you. This doesn’t have to slow the process too much, as you can still be negotiating the contract as a parallel stream.

The main advantage to this final activity is that you have a chance to see what the supplier is like in a far more realistic situation. You will probably need to pay the supplier for this work, but it is good risk mitigation to spend a small amount to make absolutely sure before signing up to an expensive and lengthy contract.

This activity can take a number of forms, some common examples are:

• Proof of concept (this can also be called feasibility). This was mentioned in Chapter 8, as a possibility if you are having problems with the final decision. 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).
• Scoping study (for a system selection). This is a short piece of work, with the outcome being a detailed specification of how the system will be configured/amended to meet all your requirements. Depending on the activities you’ve already done, you may need to have more workshops/meetings with the supplier to provide additional information.

Or you can come up with your own type of activity, to fit your particular needs.

Once the activity is complete, the team will need to assess the results – are they as expected? Are you still happy going forward with this choice? If not, you may need to fall back on your second choice and repeat the exercise.

Contract negotiation

It is not possible to go into the details of contract negotiation in this book as the topic is a book in its own right (and there are lots available). However, here are a few guidelines:

• Involve your legal advisor (if you have one). You should have been keeping them advised of progress from the early stages of the selection, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to them.
• Make sure you check that the contract correctly details all the products/services you expect to get. This is particularly true if the supplier has offered you some specific concessions during the selection process, as these are unlikely to be in their ‘standard’ contract.
• Specifically check the termination clauses – do they tie you in for longer than you want? Can you get out early if you need to?
• Are there restrictions on how much they can increase the ongoing costs after the initial period? (It’s usual to restrict increases to a known index, such as the Retail Price Index.)
• If the supplier is writing you a bespoke application, is the intellectual property clause correct?

It’s likely that comments and requests will be passed between the two sides a number of times before the contract can be finally agreed and signed.

Example evaluation report template

Having followed due diligence guidelines in your selection, it’s very likely that you will need to write up the results for your records. This section contains an example template, which you can adapt as necessary to fully record your process and reasoning.

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

Example: Evaluation report

1. Introduction

Provide brief details of the selection, its background, drivers and objectives. Then detail the process you’ve followed for selection, such as:

The first activity for selection was to obtain initial solution information, to enable the team to scope the cost and timescales of [implementing a system/engaging new supplier] more accurately, to check the likely level of fit to requirements and to determine a shortlist.

This activity (documented in [Selection Name] Summary of responses v1.0’) resulted in a shortlist of three [systems/service suppliers:

The next activity was to conduct a more in-depth investigation into the three [systems/service suppliers] in order to select a preferred [system/service supplier]. This report documents this activity.

2. Objectives of the evaluation

There are two main objectives:

3. Process used

Amend this text as required to fit the process you followed.

As part of the Stage One shortlisting activity, each supplier provided a response to the ‘Request for Information’ document and also had a 90-minute pitch meeting, including an overview product demonstration.

To obtain more in-depth information, the following activities were performed for each solution:

Details of each activity are included in Appendix A, with the results in Appendix B.

After all activities were complete, the selection team used the outcomes to make their recommendation.

4. Recommendation details

Provide a summary of the final decision, with your reasoning. The risks/issues statement is optional; but if you have spotted anything during the selection, it’s worth noting it here.

The final decision by the team was to proceed with [name].

You may want to add some more information about the chosen solution.

The main reasons for choosing this solution are:

The risks/issues with [name] (which will be carried forward into the next stage) are:

You can also do a paragraph on what the next steps will be. The following is an example.

The next phase will be a full specification study. This will mainly involve a series of workshops with all users to allow [name] to draw up a detailed specification. This is being run as a separate contract; the main contract will be negotiated alongside. At the end of this stage both sides will agree whether it is deemed a success (and [name] will confirm their quote); if it is successful, the main contract will be signed at that point and the full implementation project will commence.

Appendix A: Details of activities

You can have a table here with details of each activity:

Appendix B: Detailed feedback

Provide a headed paragraph or two on each activity. These can be written up by a nominated attendee, or could be the minutes from a debrief meeting.