Here are a couple of disclaimers before we proceed, due to a number of queries we received prior to this conference. First, the vendors we included in the first round were those vendors requested by both our offline selection clients and online readership. With those vendors we have long established an ongoing line of communications and, prior to including them in eBestMatch, we also published a research note on them on our site (we encourage you to check it out on our Web site under 'Business Applications' section). We do realize that there are a number of other worthy vendors that can and should also be included; off the top of my head I could think of at least 20 more vendors that will be added over time. Therefore, please regard this model as an ongoing work-in-progress. This conference may be its official launch, but the idea is to repeat it periodically, as new vendors are added and/or existing vendors' ratings reviewed.
Second, the idea of eBestMatch is not to give evaluations or produce magic quadrants, which are set in stone. It is rather envisioned to show you the flexibility of our software in conducting selections, where one can conduct a number of simulations by tailoring criteria, varying weights and/or factor ratings. There was the intent to give some very generic, high-level idea of vendors' standings though. Through our own research activities, client interviews and surveys, our ERP selection engagements, interactions with our counterparts and vendors, we have rated vendors at a high level across the critical ERP selection criteria. You will appreciate the fact that it is very difficult to do anything more detailed with only 270 criteria (at least in the ERP space), and more than that would cause our Web software version to be very slow or almost non-operational. A proper selection exercise, using our desktop version of the software, would involve significantly higher number of criteria (amounting to several thousand), with a sharp vertical industry focus, and that would be rated strictly in a quantitative way, as opposed to the more open-ended, descriptive rating scale that we had to use for this purpose.
Having clarified this, I'm going to begin with an Overview of problems and solutions relating to technology selection, starting first with the problem:
According to our research, over 80% of enterprise technology evaluations run over time and budget, and once completed, over 50% of the implementations fail to meet functional and total cost expectations. There are three main reasons that project teams run into trouble, in our view:
Teams don't have an effective way to identify the critical vendor and product criteria necessary to successfully initiate the evaluation process.
They have no ability to prioritize the different criteria, once identified, relative to one another. As a result, final priorities are often more the result of internal political agendas than true needs and requirements.
And finally, project teams have no ability to gather objective, validated, updated data on the vendor alternatives. As you may well know, vendors have a tendency to exaggerate product, service, and corporate capabilities if it enables them to move to the next phase of the deal.
Second, the idea of eBestMatch is not to give evaluations or produce magic quadrants, which are set in stone. It is rather envisioned to show you the flexibility of our software in conducting selections, where one can conduct a number of simulations by tailoring criteria, varying weights and/or factor ratings. There was the intent to give some very generic, high-level idea of vendors' standings though. Through our own research activities, client interviews and surveys, our ERP selection engagements, interactions with our counterparts and vendors, we have rated vendors at a high level across the critical ERP selection criteria. You will appreciate the fact that it is very difficult to do anything more detailed with only 270 criteria (at least in the ERP space), and more than that would cause our Web software version to be very slow or almost non-operational. A proper selection exercise, using our desktop version of the software, would involve significantly higher number of criteria (amounting to several thousand), with a sharp vertical industry focus, and that would be rated strictly in a quantitative way, as opposed to the more open-ended, descriptive rating scale that we had to use for this purpose.
Having clarified this, I'm going to begin with an Overview of problems and solutions relating to technology selection, starting first with the problem:
According to our research, over 80% of enterprise technology evaluations run over time and budget, and once completed, over 50% of the implementations fail to meet functional and total cost expectations. There are three main reasons that project teams run into trouble, in our view:
Teams don't have an effective way to identify the critical vendor and product criteria necessary to successfully initiate the evaluation process.
They have no ability to prioritize the different criteria, once identified, relative to one another. As a result, final priorities are often more the result of internal political agendas than true needs and requirements.
And finally, project teams have no ability to gather objective, validated, updated data on the vendor alternatives. As you may well know, vendors have a tendency to exaggerate product, service, and corporate capabilities if it enables them to move to the next phase of the deal.
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