Draft Zero
What's wrong with the current RFP process?After reviewing a number of product offerings from several vendors I'm struck by the disconnect between the RFP process and the actual buying process. People and organizations talk of selecting "industry leaders" or "best of breed" software and yet the story of the selection process always seems to work out the same way. A company that has a very good knowledge of their own systems and has a very clear idea of their own requirements ends up going down the vendor rabbit hole. They get bogged down in features and functions. Unfortunately, for mature technologies (and most companies only consider technology when it's mature) the features and functions of products are almost identical.
So how should companies and individuals make software selections? It's hard to argue with the whole total cost of ownership (TCO) argument. The lowest lifetime costs for a technology that meets basic requirements is a good way of making a selection. Unfortunately, there are a whole series of things related to "lifetime costs" and sticker price is just one of them. There are issues like maintenance and service, and installation.
When it comes to maintenance, there is the cost of upgrades and ongoing patches. Maintenance fees typically run 15-25% of license costs and involve an unfortunate cycle of events. Companies need to pay their maintenance fees so that they can get patches for bugs. With maintenance comes software upgrades. These upgrades involve more bugs that require more patches. By the time the release is really solid, the software vendor is likely looking at terminating further development in the product. Support will end soon after.
In negotiating the maintenance trap, there are three considerations. The first is to really hammer upfront licensing costs and ensure that service costs are a percentage of negotiated license costs and not a percentage of list costs. The second consideration involves outsourcing maintenance. A number of companies now offer third party maintenance for considerably less than the vendors. If the IT department is going to do a lot of inhouse maintenance on the new purchase anyway, outsourced maintenance may make sense. The third consideration is the "table stakes" of the new technology. What is the base functionality that is really required? What are the features that add little value to the solution. A clear focus on these base level requirements and not the add-ons and doodads that vendors love to throw in may make decisions regarding maintenance much simpler.
The second primary concern is installation. Various bits of enterprise software are different: they use different protocols and are have different architectures. The way in which the new solution works should be amenable to the technical and human infrastructure of the purchasing organization. A botched or prolonged install will drive up TCO drastically. One of the key considerations of installation is the qualifications of the organization company doing the implementation. If the vendor is doing the install, do they have sufficient experience with both the industry and the technology to be successful? Do they have references to prove it? If the install is conducted by a third party, do they have the experience? Another consideration with third party integrators is their financial fitness. Are they going to be around for long enough to finish the job? Will they have the human resources to finish the job?
If these types of concerns-installation and services-are key to reducing TCO, how do they get vetted in an RFP process? At what point so these sorts of issues become more important than the feature/function bake-offs that companies get embroiled in? How do companies make these decisions? I don't know yet…
TiredI feel tired, too damned tired. There are just too many things nibbling around the images. When I stop to think about it I feel the vertigo rushing in, and the light receded into the distance. My unrealized dreams are going with it. Perhaps that's what maturity is: when we stop measuring our life by goals to be achieved. When we use other metrics like the position and direction of the Visa balance, feet of eavestrough requiring repainting, or the diameter in centimeters of our pregnant wives. There's the rub. As home-maintenance and mortgage costs drive out my own dreams, I can imagine new dreams for the new life about to emerge.
Steve McQueen"You don't like him because he's not your father," my mom said as she washed the wine glasses in the sink. I wanted to tell her that I didn't like him because he was dead. You could still see the metal bolts in his neck from where Necro-Revivals has juiced him. But maybe she was right. It's not everyday that your mom leaves your dad for a formerly dead movie star. And he was awfully kind to her, him being a ghoul and all. I guess I expected him to be a lot like Bullitt or Papillon or the Cooler King. But no, he's courteous and kind to my mom while being sad and a little musty smelling at the same time.
Damn it, he's just not my dad! And I refuse to be labelled a necrophobe...
The house
The goblin party was busted up by the SciCons. The yellow and black rugby shirts poured up the stairs and started shooing those huge warty lumps of flesh out the emergency exits. It’s amazing to me that five foot tall women wearing those shirts can get the respect of a 350-pound mound of flesh with only a modicum of sentience.
Finding myself with absolutely nothing to do I followed the goblins through the exit and walked back across the cricket pitch to my boarding house. For some reason I couldn’t remember my room number. I did have a room here didn’t I? Wasn’t I Head of House? I tried 106, my old room. Occupied. Maybe I was in room 211 (I always liked that room). No luck. I went back to the first floor to talk to my House Master. His door was open. He sat me down and poured some tea (Early Grey I think). We were going to have a talk. And judging by his awkwardness, it wasn’t going to be easy.
Protection“130 bucks seems pretty expensive for a book of coupons.” The sullen youth on my stoop just stared at me.
“Do you have Kevlar tires on that thing?” he asked, waving a hand towards my vintage 1986 GMC van.
“Oh, I get it. It’s a coupon book for protection services… I don’t think I’m interested.” He glared at me as I closed the door. He waited a full 45 seconds before hitching his paper-bag over his shoulder and moving on to the next house. I looked at the lock on the door. Perhaps it’s time for that new fully mortised dead bolt.
KittenDamn that scratching and mewling! The door is shut for a reason. That kitten may have big brown eyes and a soft fuzzy coat but it’s just as damned much a zombie as the rest of the bipeds. I don’t care what it says; I know that it wants nothing but to eat my brain. “A scratch behind the ears?” it says. Hardly. That door is staying closed. And I’m staying up here in the top bunk in my sleeping bag.
The Bathroom
We cracked the door open and were met by the smell of mildew—an appropriate smell for a long forgotten bathroom tacked on to the back of the cottage. The stucco motif of the rest of the building had been carried into this small one-room appendage. Given the overpowering humidity, the plaster hadn’t fared well and was spalling onto the floor. Where the walls hadn’t been able to escape the underlying lath in white carbuncles sprouting horse-hair, they had taken a more demure approach, slowly sublimating into a fine white dust which covered ever horizontal feature shallower than 60 degrees.
Surprisingly, the lights worked. They flared to life with the satisfying thunk of antique push-button switches. The naked bulbs illuminated a dusty yet domestic set up of a pedestal sink, a toilet and bidet, and stall shower lined with white ceramic tile. The blue frame of the mirror over the sink gave the entire room a rather Mediterranean feel as if the bathroom belonged in a dilapidated cabana on the shore of Greek island rather than at the back of this particular house.
The water pressure far exceeded our expectations and ran clear. Lead pipes?
