Technology procurement is a mission-critical task for a contact center. If you score the right enabling technology with the right vendor partner, your center can be on the path to greater agent productivity, improved customer experience, and heightened insights into operational performance. Make the wrong choice, and you risk a painful implementation, suboptimal performance, and a lengthy tenure with problematic support.
When delivering my technology seminars, I regularly encounter folks who’ve been tasked with writing a Request For Proposal (RFP). Some haven’t been through the RFP process in a while (if ever). Others have been assigned to technologies for which they have little direct or recent experience. They don’t have time to build a document from scratch. And even if they did, a common refrain is: “We don’t know what we don’t know.”
The risks of that “wrong choice” have never been greater given all the options for cloud and premise solutions. Added complexity comes from a changing market with mergers and acquisitions and a multitude of partners or Value-Added Resellers that offer diverse platform choices. Throw in the reluctance to engage in traditional “arms length” competitive bidding processes, and it can get really ugly. But you have to stay in the driver’s seat and not let vendors gain the upper hand in your critical decision-making.
We routinely provide expert guidance in the end-to-end vendor selection process. Our tools and facilitation reflect best practices, state-of-the-art technology, and learnings from many (recent) evaluation processes. We can address the full spectrum of contact center technology delivered via premise- or cloud-based solutions.
How does it work?
We help clients define the scope of the effort and evaluate sourcing options for their situations. We also discuss the desired level of functionality (e.g., basic, full-loaded) and requirements for integration with existing technology. Through discussions with contact center leaders and IT, we flesh out requirements and priorities using guided lists. We draft the RFP based on our comprehensive template for their review and comment. We also prequalify vendors/VARs that would be good fits for their situation. The latter helps them navigate a complex market quickly and focus their efforts on viable candidates.
When it comes to evaluating proposals and pricing, we surface key differentiators and develop financial comparisons on an apples-to-apples basis. We provide our observations and commentary while guiding clients through the final steps of due diligence, including demonstrations, deep dive discussions, and negotiation of price and terms.
It’s hard to do a job well when you don’t do it all the time. With our input, you’ll reap the benefit of a seasoned veteran’s technology expertise backed by countless RFP evaluations. You won’t have to worry about getting burned by what you don’t know. You’ll know it!