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Case Studies
Enterprise Application Procurement Decreases Overall Costs
Problem
A rapidly-expanding media company utilized entirely home-grown IT systems to track sales and provide customer service. Because this limited its ability to track customer spend patterns, cross-sell products and services, predict its sales pipeline, and provide integrated customer service, company leadership decided to procure and implement a 3rd party Customer Relationship Management system. The media company asked Pace Harmon to provide expert support to procure, design, develop and program manage the implementation of a CRM system for over 700 sales and business users around the globe.
Approach
Pace Harmon was brought in for procurement support after the client had already drafted and released the RFP to prospective service providers. The client recognized that they would need assistance with the assessment of vendor responses and project management of the subsequent implementation in order to maximize the value of the transaction. The team provided the following support:
- The team assisted the client in developing a structured evaluation approach that enabled the client to quantitatively down-select from five vendors to two leading candidates. The quantitative analysis included the development of a requirement scoring methodology, and a complete pricing and TCO model. Pace Harmon subsequently supported the client through negotiations, resulting in a final contract that provided market-leading non-performance protections to the client
- Pace Harmon created a project management / governance structure for the design and build phase of the project. This included the development and management of an integrated end-to-end project plan, the oversight of vendor activities and tracking of milestone achievement status. The team provided a single point of coordination for the client, managed stakeholder and executive-level communications, and developed a project performance dashboard
- Based on large-scale system implementation experience and industry best practices, Pace Harmon identified project-specific risks and developed and implemented mitigation strategies
- Pace Harmon supported the implementation by documenting the client's business requirements and developing rules to guide product customization and configuration
- Following implementation, the team developed a business transition strategy and change management approach to ensure optimal usage of the new application by the affected employees
Outcome
- Pace Harmon assisted the client in achieving a successful, on-time, software selection and implementation that met the requirements of the client organization
- The agreement with the selected vendor provided significant protections to the client. This included securing vendor warranties of support for all system upgrades, despite the numerous customizations implemented within the CRM software - thereby mitigating a common source of expense where the CRM software is so highly customized that future upgrades become prohibitive
- Pace Harmon's financial analysis and experience in software licensing agreements also identified numerous opportunities to amend the pricing structure and drive down the overall lifetime cost of the product to the client
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