Thanks for reading & let’s continue to be good network citizens.

One main way of protecting your organization is by applying patches. An article on Dark Reading proposes 4 Steps for Trimming Patch Management Time. Those steps summarized here are:

1. Level the patching field. Time-saver: Develop a patch priority list based on business criticality: Your business continuity/disaster recovery plan is a good starting place for establishing a hierarchy of patch deployments that will see the most critical exposures patched first, with lower risk or lower exposure vulnerabilities patched on a less fast-paced (and, ironically, less time-consuming) schedule.

2. Know which systems impose their own patch schedule. Time-saver: Maintain a list of critical systems’ regular maintenance and planned downtime schedules, and plan patch deployment accordingly, dealing with other more readily available systems in the meantime. Review and update system maintenance schedules (and their effect on other schedules) on a regular basis.

3. Know who needs to know and who signs off. Time-saver: Create and maintain a comprehensive patch deployment approval and sign-off path along with your systems inventory, including emergency and off-hour contact information for all personnel on the list.

4. Take time to test patches before going operational. Time-saver: Establish comprehensive patch test platforms, including platforms for new technologies and configurations ahead of time, and make their maintenance, readiness, and upgrades an ongoing part of your operations overhead and budget. Build a day of patch-test time into your patch deployment schedule.

What steps do you take to effectively manage patches for your organization? I think Dark Reading hit the nail on the head with this list. I urge you to go read the article in its entirety. Add your comments below.

Thanks for reading & let’s continue to be good network citizens!

How about leaving some tips or feedback here for other ITKE readers. Let us know what works and what didn’t in your organizations to improve service levels and/or reduce costs.

Thanks for reading & let’s continue to be good network citizens.

Maybe you forgot the steps before the RFP. You can go back and review:

The first post in this series covered two questions: Where are you? and Where do you want to go?

The second article in the series described the calendar of events or how many shopping days do we have?

This third article in the series covered the actual RFP (request for proposal) anatomy and contents.

This final posting will discuss the vendor selection process – planning for the wedding (or engagement).

Let’s get talking about vendor selection and awarding the contract!

Some important tips to remember when negotiating with a vendor during the proposal process.

• Get it in writing!
  • Anything the vendor verbalizes during the proposal process should be in writing in the contract. Ask for example copies of contracts in the RFP.
  • Vendors have short memories after the contract is signed unless you can show it in writing and both parties have agreed to the terms.
• Ask the vendors to use your response template format.
  • You can compare proposals much easier.
• Watch the minimum revenue commitment requirement(s)
  • Is it based across all services or per service?
  • Is it annualized or other period?
  • Ensure business downturn clause is included – think about the worst case
• Negotiate rate stabilization across commitment term
  • Technology upgrades should be cost neutral
• Make service contracts co-terminus (if multiple services and/or service terms are needed)
  • How often do you want to write new contracts

A lot has been written about Service Level Agreements (SLA’s). I am going to weigh in on some considerations that should be addressed during the vendor selection process.

• What items should be covered under SLA’s
  • Installation
    • North America vs ROW (rest of world)
  • Performance
    • Latency
    • Packet loss
  • Availability
    • Is it the vendor’s network or does it include CPE (customer premise equipment)? This one can get you if you don’t understand where the SLA endpoints are and what impacts performance and availability statistics)
  • Support
    • Are the support lines only available 8-5 Pacific time or do they have coverage for the timezones where you need it?
    • What is the recovery time objective (RTO)?
    • What is the recovery performance objective (RPO)?
    • What is customer’s responsibility vs vendor’s responsibility?
  • Billing
    • Do you spend a lot of time managing the billing end of things? Are one-time charges appearing much later after work is completed? Are disconnected services still being charged?

Some additional contract terms or clauses to consider to protect your organization:

• Innovation – new technologies/solutions at cheaper prices
• Key personnel – supplier and customer
• Transition & implementation planning
• Term of agreement
• Fixed or variable pricing
• Project schedule & deliverables
• Subcontractor approval
• Out of scope work
• Benchmarking – cost negotiation during agreement lifetime
• Audit
• Termination & migration
• Change of control of the vendor
• If customer company is acquired, can vendor assign contract to new owner

When evaluating the proposals from the suppliers courting your business, rate the results on a quantitative scale. Build this criteria checklist when building the RFP. Be sure your team is familiar and agrees with the criteria. An example evaluation document is shown below.

Evaluation criteria

Summarize the results for each vendor. Can discard bottom candidates unless there is a reason to keep them.
Begin firm and final negotiations with top 1 or 2 candidates. Hopefully incumbent provider (if there is one) will be one of the top candidates, or will they?

Vendor evaluation

We are now at the end of this series and you have finished selecting a vendor and the real work (honeymoon) begins. So what happens once you have made your selection? What things are left to work on?

• Communicate, communicate, communicate! – How else will you know when problems arise or things are going well?
• EGAP: Everything goes according to plan – RIGHT??
• Watch out for Blamestorming
  • The contract is right
  • The proposal was a dream
  • What is reality?

Thanks for reading these posts. Leave some feedback with other tips/tricks and ideas you have for others looking for managed services or negotiating a contract.

Have a great day and let’s continue to be good network citizens!

The second article in the series described the calendar of events or how many shopping days do we have?

This third article in the series will cover the actual RFP (request for proposal) anatomy and contents.

The fourth article will discuss the vendor selection process – planning for the wedding.

Hopefully you are now ready to dive into the RFP itself.

The purpose of a Request for Proposal (RFP) is to provide detailed information for suppliers about requirements discussing an implementation and possible budget limitations. It is focused on addressing a business issue with a solution for the customer organization.

Here are the typical elements of an RFP:

• Cover letter
• Project overview and administrative information
• Technical requirements
• Management requirements
• Supplier qualifications and references
• Supplier’s section
• Contracts and license agreements
• Appendixes

Now, more detail about each element.

The cover letter should have most, if not all of the following:

• Invite the provider to submit a proposal
• Present your company briefly
• Briefly describe existing environment
  • What are your pain points and critical success criteria
• Present the project timeline – goal: on time & on budget
  • Pre-proposal submission meeting: mandatory or voluntary
  • Notice of intent: is vendor interested? Ask them to acknowledge interest.
  • Proposal timeline
    • Submission date
    • Contract award date
• Thank the provider for time and interest
• Close the letter with contact and reference information

The project overview and administrative information should briefly cover:

• Executive summary – high level objectives
• Information about the management of the RFP
  • Where & when to submit proposal
  • If and when a bidders conference will be held
  • Relevant dates for procurement
  • Requirements for preparing proposals
  • How proposals will be evaluated
  • RFP contact names and addresses
  • Other information as needed

Since we are focusing on IT managed services there must be a technical requirements section in the RFP. The technical requirements section will probably take the most time to produce. The clearer this section the better; show your knowledge!

• Summary of the problem
  • What is the business application?
  • What is the technical environment?
• Goals and objectives for the project
  • What are your pain points & how do you expect the vendor to address them?
• Critical success factors
  • Must have / Need to have / Nice to have
• Functional specifications: both existing and projected
• Performance specifications
• Hardware/Software requirements
• Communication requirements
• Reporting requirements

Another section in the RFP will be the management requirements.

• How will the project be implemented & managed?
• Internal staffing requirements
• Site preparation responsibilities
• Delivery & installation schedule
• System acceptance test requirements
• System maintenance requirements
• System training requirements
• Documentation/reporting requirements
• Ongoing care & feeding. “Free puppies are not always free.”

It is important that you know who is trying to get your business. So, the supplier’s qualifications and references section is also important to the outsourcing process. Consider gathering details from the vendor about:

• Brief history of suppliers firm
• Installation & maintenance offerings & capabilities
• Description of the relationship between the supplier and manufacturer & how long has the relationship existed
• Evidence supplier has technical skills, staff & financial resources to perform the contract
• Number of currently installed systems
• Customer references with similar solutions provided by this supplier – get names & numbers

The supplier’s section is where the customer is asking the supplier for additional information.

• Tell me what you think I have not thought about
• What else should I know or consider?
• Pricing document template
  • Clearly formatted to enable better comparisons between vendors
  • Example spreadsheet for categories (one time vs ongoing, fixed vs variable) such as:
    • Hardware – lease, buy
    • Software – OS, App, Reporting
    • Installation – hourly, fixed cost
    • Maintenance – remember if you want annual maintenance
    • Training – onsite, offsite, electronic
    • Documentation – there may be additional charges for some documentation
    • Project management
    • Other integration fees
    • Licensing fees – annual, one-time

The contracts and license agreements section may request specific details about  the following:

• Purchase agreement
• Maintenance contract
• Warranty details
• Software license agreement
• Non-disclosure agreements

And finally, the appendixes should include materials that do not really fit into other areas of the RFP. Some of these materials might include:

• Workflow diagrams
• Statistical information spreadsheets – to support requirements
• Communication network drawings – if network involved
• List of current equipment/software – for integration
• Company standards
• Tentative project plan with dates & responsible parties – project work breakdown schedule (WBS)
• Etc.

That is a lot of information but it will be a great communication tool between you and potential suppliers. It helps your organization ensure the requirements are documented and understood at the beginning of the process.

Stay tuned – more to come!

Thanks for reading and let’s continue to be good network citizens!

This second article in the series will describe the calendar of events or how many shopping days do we have?

The third article in the series will cover the actual RFP (request for proposal) anatomy and contents.

So, how many shopping days do we have until something has to be in place for our organization? Take your estimated timeframe, double it and then add 50% more is one way I have heard to estimate a project timeline. That means if a project is going to take 30 days, double it to 60 days and then add 50% more for a total of 90 days. This is the amount of time you may need for the following activities:

1. Build the RFP
2. Internal review & approval
3. Vendor pool selection
4. Deliver company RFP to vendor
5. Answer vendor’s questions about requirements
6. Receive vendors’ proposals
7. Review vendor proposals
8. Schedule presentation meetings with vendors
9. Data gathering to respond to vendor questions
10. Vendor finalist(s) selection
11. Negotiation with vendor finalist(s)
12. Proposal acceptance announcement
13. Contract signing/countersigning

This is not a simple or short timeline. Some of the elements may be small or shortened depending on the scope of the services being proposed.

Diving further into this timeline consider the effort for these steps:

Creating the RFP document

• Find out if your organization has a standardized format. People on your team are more familiar with format and content.
• The template has specific legal language to satisfy counsel

Review draft until team understands requirements and desired outcome – what SLA coverage does the team consider important?

Submitting the RFP to vendor pool.  Specify:

• When information is due back
• Might check with a few vendors first to see what is a realistic timeline for response
• What information is expected: pricing first, details later; all information at one time
• How response should be formatted (e.g. printed, bound, electronic, etc.)

This is a great test of responsiveness of the vendor candidates and their ability to work within the channels of their organization. Their response may show symptoms of what support is like after the sale.

Waiting on vendor response & responding to questions

• Specify to vendors who in your organization/team is responsible for responding to any questions or addressing issues encountered

Receipt of vendor responses

• What is your “drop-dead” date for responses?
• Is it by submission date?
• Is it by receipt date?

Reviewing vendor proposals

• Compare vendor responses against evaluation criteria: should be defined by the team before RFP is sent to vendor pool.
• Knock out bottom candidates
• Inform candidates of status
• Schedule proposal reviews with finalist(s)

Negotiation with finalist(s)

Proposal acceptance announcement

Hopefully these tips will help guide you through this sometimes weary, tedious and even exciting process. Stay tuned for part 3 – Anatomy of an RFP.

Thanks for reading! Let’s continue to be good network citizens.