How to identify a short-list of best-fit OSS suppliers for you

In yesterday’s post, we talked about how to estimate OSS pricing. One of the key pillars of the approach was to first identify a short-list of vendors / integrators best-suited to implementing your specific OSS, then working closely with them to construct a pricing model.

Finding the right vendor / integrator can be a complex challenge. There are dozens, if not hundreds of OSS / BSS solutions to choose from and there are rarely like-for-like comparators. There are some generic comparison tools such as Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, but there’s no way that they can cater for the nuanced requirements of each OSS operator.

Okay, so you don’t want to hear about problems. You want solutions. Well today’s post provides a description of the approach we’ve used and refined across the many product / vendor selection processes we’ve conducted with OSS operators.

We start with a short-listing exercise. You won’t want to deal with dozens of possible suppliers. You’ll want to quickly and efficiently identify a small number of candidates that have capabilities that best match your needs. Then you can invest a majority of your precious vendor selection time in the short-list. But how do you know the up-to-date capabilities of each supplier? We’ll get to that shortly.

For the short-listing process, I use a requirement gathering and evaluation template. You can find a PDF version of the template here. Note that the content within it is out-dated and I now tend to use a more benefit-centric classification rather than feature-centric classification, but the template itself is still applicable.

STEP ONE – Requirement Gathering
The first step is to prepare a list of requirements (as per page 3 of the PDF):
.
The left-most three columns in the diagram above (in white) are filled out by the operator, which classifies a list of requirements and how important they are (ie mandatory, etc). The depth of requirements (column 2) is up to you and can range from specific technical details to high-level objectives. They could even take the form of user-stories or intended benefits.

STEP TWO – Issue your requirement template to a list of possible vendors
Once you’ve identified the list of requirements, you want to identify a list of possible vendors/integrators that might be able to deliver on those requirements. The PAOSS vendor/product list might help you to identify possible candidates. We then send the requirement matrix to the vendors. Note that we also send an introduction pack that provides the context of the solution the OSS operator needs.

STEP THREE – Vendor Self-analysis
The right-most three columns in the diagram above (in aqua) are designed to be filled out by the vendor/integrator. The suppliers are best suited to fill out these columns because they best understand their own current offerings and capabilities.
Note that the status column is a pick-list of compliance level, where FC = Fully Compliant. See page 2 of the template for other definitions. Given that it is a self-assessment, you may choose to change the Status (vendor self-rankings) if you know better and/or ask more questions to validate the assessments.
The “Module” column identifies which of the vendor’s many products would be required to deliver on the requirement. This column becomes important later on as it will indicate which product modules are most important for the overall solution you want. It may allow you to de-prioritise some modules (and requirements) if price becomes an issue.

STEP FOUR – Compare Responses
Once all the suppliers have returned their matrix of responses, you can compare them at a high-level based on the summary matrix (on page 1 of the template)

For each of the main categories, you’ll be able to quickly see which vendors are the most FC (Fully Compliant) or NC (Non-Compliant) on the mandatory requirements.

Of course you’ll need to analyse more deeply than just the Summary Matrix, but across all the vendor selection processes we’ve been involved with, there has always been a clear identification of the suppliers of best fit.

Hopefully the process above is fairly clear. If not, contact us and we’d be happy to guide you through the process.