Begin every project with insight into history, including peer experiences with similar projects, vendors, and solutions.

Research Your Problem and Solution Space

Researching your potential vendor and solution market provides numerous benefits.

Research Solution Market

Develop Insight

Develop insight into market structure and maturity, such as:

  • ●
    Number of viable vendors
  • ●
    Maturity of market
  • ●
    Vendor longevity, size, customer base, and stability
Learn Leading Practices

Capture leading practices for the application and business capability included in your scope.

Identify Peer Organizations

Identify and establish contact with peer organizations that use a vendor's software product and services.

Confirm Viable Vendors

Probe vendor background, viability, and plans. Identify emerging vendors and solutions.

Understand Emerging Innovation

Understand emerging innovation occurring in your solution space and related capabilities.

Avoid

Save scarce organizational resources (people, time, CAPEX/OPEX) by:

  • ●
    Not reinventing solutions and knowledge for problems that others have already solved.
  • ●
    Learning from the mistakes of others.

Early research is beneficial to both approaches -- RFP and JITDE™.

Researching at the start of your initiative saves you time and confirms the most viable vendors early in your evaluation process. This is important to:

Research Methods and Techniques

Explore the following map to understand suggested research methods and techniques.

Search Internet

The Internet is a double-edged sword for content.

  • ●
    There's a lot of clutter -- information that may be interesting but irrelevant to what you seek.
  • ●
    Your challenge is to find relevant information in the least amount of time.

Browsers provide basic features to filter search results. For example, Google offers Settings and Tools dropdowns to filter by time and relevancy.

Modern browsers have advanced search engines that allow you to quickly hone in on the information you're seeking.

Advanced Search

Use the advanced search features of browsers. The image details the options available using Google's advanced search features.

Using advanced search homes in on specific information and documents you seek.

  • ●
    Solution proposals
  • ●
    Published RFPs
  • ●
    Pricing and costs lists
  • ●
    Industry study and research reports
  • ●
    Application requirements and needs analysis
  • ●
    Vendor litigation
  • ●
    Solution frameworks
  • ●
    Top vendors by industry and segment
  • ●
    etc.

Specifying file types helps find relevant proposals, RFPS, and other attachments.

Also, searching public sector organizations is a treasure trove for finding thought-leadership content and previously submitted vendor proposals and RFPs. Most public sector information is considered public domain, so there are no confidentiality sensitivities.

Searching for information and documents online isn't a hacking or questionable practice. You're searching for information that individuals, organizations, and others have purposely posted to public sites for public access.

Leverage

Other organizations continually research and publish studies on industries, products, services, markets, and functions/processes. Leverage those sources to save time.

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    Most industries have one or more industry associations.
  • ●
    Academic institutions conduct research and studies mainly in the public domain.
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    Research analysts like Gartner, Forrester, and others charge for most of their research. Check to see if your organization subscribes to one or more research firms.
  • ●
    Public sector organizations, such as federal, state, and local governments, publish large volumes of RFPs, studies, products and services, assessments, methods, techniques, and thought leadership. Most of these artifacts are in the public domain. These organizations also approve and execute thousands of projects annually. Much of the knowledge and intellectual capital created by those initiatives is available on the Internet.
  • ●
    Industry and general media outlets publish news reports on vendors, organizations, new technologies and capabilities, project fiascos, litigation, and other relevant information.

Consider sites such as Wikipedia and others that provide topical content libraries. You can save significant time by finding and leveraging relevant information and knowledge from those sources.

Input from Peers

Others in your organization may have conducted research relevant to your initiative. Use BAH HUM BUG¹ as a guide to gathering existing artifacts that deliver value to your initiative.

Also, connect with peers in external organizations for relevant information and leads.

  1. Business Artifact Hierarchy; Hierarchy Unit of Measure; Business User Group
Connect with Vendors

Vendors are a good source of information on their products and services. They are also a good source for providing industry-level capability and competitor information.

Vendors discuss why their products and services are superior to their competitors.

  • ●
    It's an effective method for understanding weaknesses and shortcomings in other vendor products and services. However, you'll need to confirm this information.
  • ●
    It informs you of the competitors your vendor fears.
  • ●
    It provides insight into the strengths and advantages of your vendor's products and services.

Vendors often refer to their satisfied customers' names and their competitor's disgruntled customers.

Relevant information gathered using the research methods and techniques described provides you with the information required to focus on the most viable vendors.

  • ●
    If you have the luxury of selecting which vendors receive your RFP, research provides the most viable vendors for you to focus your efforts.
  • ●
    Most public sector organizations publish their RFPs to the market, generally allowing any organization to submit a proposal response. Research provides your most viable vendors so that your procurement team can give them a heads-up that an RFP has been published.

I've worked on a series of projects with a large county government. Our team discovered that the National Association of Counties (NACO) -- based in Washington DC -- was a treasure trove of county government and vendor-related information.

  • ●
    Our team, based on information provided by NACO,  identified progressive and leading counties to contact for thought-leading content.

Also, the Association of Minnesota Counties provided additional relevant research, vendor, and study materials.

More on Advanced Search

Google's advanced search features are powerful and flexible. They allow users to fine-tune search criteria and cut through the information clutter.

Find Pages with

All These Words -- Type essential words that need to be on returned pages:

  • ●
    For example, finance, workforce, RFP
  • ●
    A space separates each word

This Exact Word or Phrase:

  • ●
    Put exact words or phrases in quotes, such as "finance RFP"

Any or None of These Words -- Type OR between all of the words you want:

  • ●
    For example, RFP OR finance
  • ●
    Put a minus sign before the words you don't want, for example, -county, -"federal government"

Number Ranges -- Put two periods between the numbers and add a unit of measure:

  • ●
    For example, $100000..$500000, 2015..2020
Narrow Your Results by

Language and Region -- Find pages in the language you selected:

  • ●
  • For example, french, german
  • ●
    Dropdown list -- select one

Find pages published in a particular region, for example, any region, Australia, China

Last Update and Site or Domain -- Find pages updated within the time you specify:

  • ●
    For example, anytime, past 24 hours
  • ●
    Dropdown list -- select one
  • ●
    Search one site like wikipedia.org or limit your results to a top-level domain like .edu, .org, or .gov

Terms Appearing and Safe Search -- Search for terms in the whole page, page title, web address, or links to the page you're seeking:

  • ●
    For example, anywhere on the page, in the title of the page
  • ●
    Dropdown list -- select one
  • ●
    Tell SafeSearch to filter content, for example, show most relevant results, filter explicit results

File Type and Usage Rights -- Find pages in the format you prefer:

  • ●
    For example, any format, Adobe Acrobat PDF (.PDF), Microsoft Excel (.xls)
  • ●
    Dropdown -- select one
  • ●
    Find pages you are free to use yourself, for example, not filtered by license, free to use or share

Specifying the file type saves time when searching for documents published by an organization. For example, if you're looking for RFPs, specifying a PDF or docx cuts through the clutter.

Add an xls search if you're looking for requirements. Many organizations document their requirements using Excel.

Recap of Research Findings

Packaging and formatting findings are dependent on your research goals and topics.

Here's an example format to present vendor research findings for a particular industry or functional software area.

Vendor Name Market Positioning Business Ownership & Background Capabilities Deployment Options
Vendor A
Vendor B
Vendor C
Vendor D

The table above is summarized for brevity purposes. The original version included multiple column breakouts under each heading.

A research findings recap is included in our soon-to-be-available template package.