Rush to Judgment

Computerworld - The days when nobody got fired for buying IBM are long gone. But these days, selecting IT products is becoming ever more complex as vendors and their offerings proliferate. Buyers are responding to the difficulty in two ways: by limiting choices to a short list of preferred suppliers, and by finding ways to fast-track the product selection process.

But shortening what was once a painstaking (and often painful) evaluation process introduces risks that must be carefully managed, acknowledge fast-trackers.

Since 2000, The Boeing Co. in Chicago has whacked its list of preferred IT suppliers in half, to 40 companies. Greg Farmer, director of IT procurement at the $52 billion company, says that has helped Boeing deal with the complexity of the supplier landscape, but the complexity of the stuff it buys has not decreased.

"In the past, we'd go out and do a request for information, learn about the companies, read about them, and after this exhaustive study we'd say, 'OK, now we'll go to these five suppliers with a request for proposals,'" Farmer says. "More and more now, we look at the Gartner Magic Quadrant and say, 'Who are the top players?' and then send the requests for proposals out to them."

It isn't just the complexity of vendors and products that's driving Boeing's buying practices. "There is so much pressure at Boeing to reduce costs and be lean and efficient," Farmer says. "We don't have the time, energy or resources to duplicate what [firms like Gartner] have already done."

Another trend, he says, is to see products through the eyes of the business rather than the lens of technology. Indeed, his 60-person IT buying team is not populated with technologists and does not report to the CIO. They are business people with IT buying experience, and they report to a vice president for supplier management.

Different Strokes

When MIT recently looked to buy business intelligence software, CIO Jerry Grochow resisted advice to do a very detailed analysis of the many potential vendors and their BI offerings. Instead, he just picked Hyperion Solutions Corp. "We had some people around MIT who had used Hyperion elsewhere, and they were very satisfied with it. And it was clearly one of the market leaders," he says.

MIT limited its risk by bringing in the BI product for a "quick prototype," Grochow says. "Rather than spending $20,000 on analysis of the feature sets of alternatives, I said, 'Let's bring one in and spend $20,000 to do something with it.' We learned more by doing that."