APRIL 2020CIOAPPLICATIONSEUROPE.COM8IN MYOPINIONartner defines "IT services" as the "application of business and technical expertise to enable organizations ... access to information and business processes." This makes sense to me as a purchaser of IT services over the past 20 years. The challenge is that many suppliers of business software are focused only the technical expertise. In this article, we'll examine the consequences of this narrow focus and what a purchaser of IT service can do to avoid problems.We needed a technology-enabled solutionAt my company, we are in the process of improving a business process that if we meet our target to improve will save a substantial amount of time and money. In the process of working with a variety of business software suppliers, it is clear that they are not listening carefully enough to our needs.After our business case was approved, we identified 25 potential suppliers and asked them to participate in our RFI process. We invited them to provide solutions based on our needs identified in the RFI. We attempted to avoid being too directive in our approach, instead hoping that the market would respond with interesting solutions. Trial by firePrior to the RFI, we were clear with each supplier that we would not purchase solely off demonstrations of their solution. Rather, we would conduct a 30 day trial of their solution by a group our employees, configured for our environment. We paid for the time it took for the supplier to configure their IT service so we would have a meaningful trial of our employees using their solution.GJeff CannJEFF CANN, CHIEF STRATEGIST AND CIO, ENCORE ELECTRICLessons Learned in 30 day trails of IT Services
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