Software Vendor Management

Are we paying a Fair Price?

You are paying for a system integrator or software consultancy or ERP consultant to help you build or manage a software initiative, how do you know if you are paying a fair price? Vendor Assessment is an ongoing responsibility throughout a software contract, it is also a key part of the responsibility of an RFP.

The first time this banking client used ScopeMaster, they were able to make direct savings of $150k.  It is now used on all outsourced projects!

Benchmarks

Vendor management

Tracking the cost per unit of functionality is an excellent way to check that you are paying a fair price.  ScopeMaster automates the sizing.

Fairer Negotiations

$150k

Saved

ScopeMaster performed a detailed requirements analysis and size estimate that enabled fairer negotiation on a new project.

And a draft design too.

More than Just Estimates

De-risking the delivery.

The procurement team at one of our banking customers evidenced a 50% cost reduction on a single software procurement project because they were able to size the project with ScopeMaster in COSMIC function points, apply fair price benchmarking, and challenge the software vendors accordingly.

ScopeMaster paid for itself 20 times over on just this one project. That company has gone on to standardise using ScopeMaster on ALL their projects now.

If software vendor management is a challenge that you are looking to solve, talk to us today.

Vendor Management in Practice

Two key dimensions that help you improve your software vendor management are keen awareness of functional scope and functional size.  When determining what is a fair price for software delivery knowing the functional size is probably the single most useful metric.  There are many ways to estimate software (we know of 13), but with an estimated size in COSMIC function points, you can immediately assess a reasonable range for a fair price for the development and delivery of software from a software developer or system integrator.   The first way that knowing the size drives better vendor management is by agreeing a fair cost per CFP.  What is fair will vary by industry, circumstances and even the nature of the software.  Typical rates range from $350 to $5000 per CFP.   Other ways that ScopeMaster can add value in Vendor management include:

  • Opportunity for contracts based on cost per CFP
  • Tracking progress towards a total amount of size delivered (productivity).
  • Tracking quality of software delivered, assessed in defects per CFP.
  • CFP provides an ungameable standard to compare vendor productivity.
  • ScopeMaster also ensures higher standard of initial requirements, with fewer unknowns leading to better contracts.