Selecting ten vendors out of the 140+ vendors in the (German) market is not a task for beginners. The tendency is to go for the big names, but this does not necessarily get you the best solution for your requirements. Many of the lesser known suppliers have excellent products and may match your needs better than a product purchased on the basis “the product has so much functionality, we will find what we need in their somewhere” (this is a quote from a recent prospect). Firstly, this may not be the case and secondly, disposing of unwanted functionality can be an expensive business.

These are the steps you need to take:

1. Define your infrastructure requirements
2. Name the required interfaces to groupware, ERP or other essential software
3. Decide if you wish to be a small customer of a large vendor or an important customer of a smaller vendor or if this is a factor at all
4. Name the major modules you require such as sales, marketing and support and the most important processes required
5. Work with an experienced consultant or use online services to make a list of 20 vendors
6. Reduce the number to 10 and off goes your RFP

Use the responses to the RFP to form your opinion about the product and the quality of the reaction to your request. Qualified vendors or partners will suggest that they need to know more about your application before sending you a reply. This is in fact correct and a sign of competence, but you cannot spend time with up to 20 suppliers. The RFP, as explained in a previous post, must allow suppliers to show their strengths and not just be a list of check boxes.

On the basis of the reactions you may want to invite around 5 suppliers to a presentation. It is better to have these people demonstrate one or two processed in detail than to give a general tour of their product. Any skilled sales person can make a good impression if he just shows the chocolate side of his product. Invite users to attend the presentations.

This process will enable you to select a maximum of 3 suppliers to run a preliminary workshop with you, the aim of which is to give you deeper knowledge of the product and the implementation partner and for the partner to be able to estimate the project costs and effort.

Hans Thomann, owner and Director of the largest dealer in Europe for musical instruments and just about everything a performer needs says

For me, investment must always have a purpose. We must serve our customers faster or offer more service and help to our customers

This is my free translation of the original German text in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 20th March 2010 and just about sums up what CRM is all about. Unfortunately, many projects are started with only a rough concept of the business aims. Too often, the concentration is on internal communication, which is an means to an end, but not an end in itself.