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|In: Organizational Effectiveness|Last Updated:

Back during my teenage years in the 60s, I vaguely remember threatening to “take my business elsewhere” to merchants who looked askance at my fringed vest and bellbottoms. (In retrospect they had a point, but luckily all photographs of that period have been blissfully mislaid.)

It scares me to think of the IS managers who must have missed having similar experiences. Take as an example Microsoft’s elimination of concurrent licensing for small businesses. According to fellow InfoWorld columnist Ed Foster, customers are up in arms about this. They’re bothered that Microsoft can so easily force them to spend more, just to stay legal.

When technical matters leave you confused, try to find parallels in other industries. So let’s imagine General Motors decided to make leasing illegal. Would you (a) complain about their unfair business practices; (b) take your lumps and buy one of their cars when you’d really wanted to lease; or (c) shake your head at their stupidity and take your business to Ford?

Microsoft may have a monopoly position in the minds of many IS managers, but they don’t have a monopoly in the marketplace. WordPerfect and WordPro have just as much feature-bloat as MS-Word, and I’m confident Novell and IBM/Lotus would be more than happy to take your money.

Face facts: most IS Managers buy Microsoft products because that’s an easy way to make a safe decision in what has become a commodity marketplace. You have alternatives.

Take the emotion out of selecting your basic PC software, and list your selection criteria. Features? They all have lots of features. Ease of use? They’re all Windows programs – like it or not, Windows imposes a certain sameness to the user interface. Speed? They’re Windows programs – speed is a thing of the past.

Right now, most IS Managers have made “product has a long-term future” their only criterion for selecting a word processor, spreadsheet and database – the basic three applications. By doing so they’ve created a self-fulfilling prophesy guaranteed to transfer money from their company coffers to Microsoft.

Take the emotion out of selecting your basic PC software: where’s the risk in taking your business elsewhere? Novell may not find a buyer for WordPerfect and it may vanish from the landscape? Could happen. Then you’d have to convert to something else at a HUGE EXPENSE!

How big? That depends on how you do cost accounting. My guess: the difference between what you’d spend anyway on a version upgrade and the cost of a “competitive upgrade” (what you really pay when you change products) just won’t be that great.

Given the dull sameness of all Windows software, you won’t have a lot of end-user retraining to worry about. At most you’ll have to give your end-users a one-hour orientation.

How about your ability to exchange documents with customers and suppliers? MS-Word has become the de facto standard word processing format, after all.

True enough. Here again you have alternatives, though. You can send “Rich Text Format” files (extension of .rtf) instead – all word processors can read them. You can send Adobe Acrobat files instead, if you like – the Acrobat reader is widely available.

Or, start using HTML as your standard document storage format. You lose some formatting ability you rarely use in the first place. You gain plenty:

You can exchange documents with the rest of the known universe – everyone can view them using any Web browser.

You can manage all company documents using inexpensive “Intranet” technology. It won’t be hard to let users publish their own documents on your internal Web servers as easily as you may use shared directories now.

You’ll be able to choose from dozens of HTML-authoring tools, letting you buy in a highly competitive marketplace – always good for the corporate checkbook.

Microsoft certainly hasn’t acted in the best interests of its customers. It doesn’t have to – it may choose to as a marketing tactic, but it has no obligation to do so.

Don’t like it? Take your business elsewhere. That’s the nature of a capitalist economy, and the requirement for maintaining one.

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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

“Oh, &$@%#, not another &%^ing RFP!”
Requests for Proposal (RFPs) and runners have two shared characteristics. First, you see a lot of both of them. Second, nobody ever seems to actually enjoy either one. (To the runners I just offended: how come I never see you smiling?)
Clearly, we’ve become a nation of masochists.
But how else than an RFP to evaluate vendors and products? Form Follows Function. Your method of evaluation depends on the circumstances.
You generally face one of these three situations: (1) you fully understand your requirements and the market, and you need equivalent information from all suppliers; (2) you understand your business, have a general understanding that technology can improve it, and want open-ended suggestions on how different products can help improve or transform your organization; or (3) you need to choose a product from a well-defined category and need something that’s good enough. These situations call for different approaches.
When You Know Your Requirements
Here’s when you should write an RFP. Quite a few books (including my own Telecommunications for Every Business, Bonus Books, Chicago, 1992) provide detailed guidance. Three principles are worth mentioning here.
First, specify your design goals, not the means by which vendors should address them. For example, if you need a fault-tolerant database server, don’t say you need a system with redundant power supplies, backplanes, CPUs, and network interface cards. If you do you’ll get what you asked for (in this case, a system that frequently fails from software bugs). Instead, ask how the vendor ensures fault tolerance. Then you’ll learn one of the vendors provides mirrored servers with shared RAID storage for a lower overall cost and higher reliability.
Second, don’t withhold information. If you’re a Windows/95 shop, for example, don’t pretend to be open to other solutions. Just say so in your RFP. You’ll save both your vendors and yourself a lot of work.
And finally, if any vendor offers to “help you write your RFP” just laugh gently, compliment them on their sense of humor, and go onto the next vendor (who will make the same offer). Don’t take offense – they’re just doing their job. Don’t take them up on the offer, either.
Looking for Help
Sometimes, you don’t know all the questions. You know you want to phase out your nationwide SNA network, for example, but have an open mind regarding the best replacement strategy.
You can hire a consultant to help you write an RFP, I suppose … or, you can hold extensive conversations with a variety of vendors to learn what each has to offer. By doing so you’ll get a broader look at the market, and you’ll also get a wonderful education into the strengths (from each vendor) and weaknesses (from their competitors) of each approach currently selling.
In this example, you may find yourself talking to two frame relay vendors, a Transparent LAN Service provider, AT&T and Novell regarding their Netware Connect Services, and an independent systems integrator. You’ll benefit from an unstructured dialog in which each vendor can assess your situation in depth and describe a scenario of how their approach will work for your company.
When Good Enough Will Do
Let’s imagine you’ve been asked to select a new standard Ethernet network interface card (NIC). You could write an RFP or hold extensive conversations with sales reps, but why? Read a few reviews, ask a few basic questions, insist on a few evaluation units (to make sure they work and to learn about any installation glitches) and pick one. Flip a coin if you have to. It’s a low impact decision.
Oh yeah, just one more thing: very few of us make decisions based on logic. Salespeople know we make emotional decisions, then construct logical arguments to justify them. Don’t fall into this trap: recognize your emotional preference up front, figure out how much weight you should give it, and keep it from dominating your process.

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