Have you ever experienced the frustration of your management team deciding to change a System Integration (SI) partner right in the middle of an implementation?  I’ve seen this happen at least 5 times in multi-million dollar deals in the past 20 or so years.  The costs (direct financial cost, time cost, people-emotion cost, to name a few) to the company for which the implementation is being done are enormous.  I’ve concluded that often the root cause is a lack of good partnership between the company receiving the services (client) and the firm delivering the services (SI).  So, what can you as a client do to ensure the SI you pick at the start of your project is the one you finish the project with? 

A typical IT project involving an SI goes through several phases.  These might include: 

• Request for Quote/Proposal Stage 
• Negotiating and Contracting 
• Project Execution 
• Hand off/transition to steady state 

A few key actions at each stage should leave you smiling and with enough funds left over for a grand go-live celebration with your SI. 

Stage 1 – Request for Quote/Proposal Stage 

It’s easy at this stage to feel that you are going to be paying for experts who have been–there–done-that and so they should know most of what there is to know. However, keep in mind that even though they may be domain experts or technology experts, they do not know your specific business nuances, your systems, your data, your processes, or your people.   The proposal stage is the time to make sure they have enough information and details to come up with a realistic solution, an implementation approach, and a bid.  A few recommendations to get the best proposal possible: 

1) Do your homework and compile all the relevant information you can about your project goals, systems, processes, and people data. Provide the SI with information in a format and at a level of detail that makes it easy for them to digest.
2) Spend time with them going through your thoughts and ideas but let the potential SI Partner (the EXPERTS) present to you their thoughts that are likely going to be based on their experience with several similar initiatives.
3) Budget enough time so they can get the clarifications and additional input that they may need from you.  This is critical.  Sometimes companies push an SI to turn around a proposal in a few days and all this does is get you a substandard proposal.  Don’t forget that everyone is working through multiple priorities and respecting this is key to a long-term relationship.

Stage 2 – Negotiating and Contracting 

1) Drive a bargain.  You’ve got to make sure the estimate is within your budget, and you are getting the best value for your money.  However, be reasonable.
2) Don’t always go for the lowest bid. I’ve done that on home remodeling and have REPENTED!  Look for expertise, the quality of the proposal (is likely a reflection of the quality of work), cultural fit, confidence, stability, and other factors important to you when making your choice.
3) Don’t force a fixed price on the SI unless you have really given them enough information to provide a fixed bid. The hidden unknowns in your project are what will cause a relationship to sour the minute things go awry and change orders come up.
4) Keep a buffer for overruns.  A good rule of thumb is 20-25% of the total bid price. If the proposed price point is too close or above your budget, work with SI to compromise on the scope of what they need to deliver so it is a win-win for all. This may mean taking on some of the scope yourself or reducing the scope to what can be done within the approved budget.
5) If you are working towards a fixed price deal, make sure the milestones and associated deliverables proposed by the SI are realistic, tangible, and measurable so you remove the ambiguity of determining completeness of a milestone during the implementation.
6) Make sure the SI has accounted for adequate analysis and design time.  You are the best judge of the complexity of your project.  Do not compromise on the analysis and design stages.

Stage 3 –Project Execution 

1) Project execution is the most important and the most challenging part of the journey.  True partnership is required during this time.
2) Keep in mind, you have likely selected an SI whose done what you need done several times over.  Do not assume they know everything and therefore simply leave them to their ways but do respect their knowledge and experience.
3) Create a mirror team of your SI’s team at your end.  Not necessarily person for person, but you need to have representation from all the right stakeholders, constituencies, business functions, technology areas, etc. that the project impacts.
4) Budget enough time from your side to participate in the project. This is not the SIs project. It is yours and you need to be totally vested.  Making sure you have preset expectations with the right IT team members and business team members around commitment to the project.  It is important to have their leadership buy into this commitment with a correlated compromise to their daily work expectations.
5) Identify a core set of team members from your organization that should be trained or experienced in the technology being implemented so they can take over the operational aspects of managing the application in as efficient a manner as possible.

Stage 4 – Hand off/Transition to steady state 

If you have gotten this far without your fingers burnt, congratulations!  You probably have a great relationship and a smooth hand-off and transition to a steady state is likely going to be a natural extension of your successful partnership.  

If things have not been that smooth, perhaps consider some of the strategies above and look for opportunities to adjust for your next project. 

Think we left something out? Add your suggestions in the comments.