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Conference ilbbak::us_sales_service

Title:	US_SALES_SERVICE
Notice:	Please register in note 2; DVNs in note 31
Moderator:	MCIS3::JDAIGNEAULT

Created:	Thu May 16 1991
Last Modified:	Tue Sep 03 1996
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	226
Total number of notes:	1486

172.0. "Corporate Computing Article on an SI Vendor Selection" by MIANO::MIANO (America deserves Bill Clinton) Sun Dec 06 1992 00:42

F.Y.I.

The latest issue of "Corporate Computing" (December 1992) has an
interesting article on the selection of an SI vendor for a project at
Ortho Biotech (We lost out).  It is interesting to see some of the
factors that go into the selction of such a system, but for me the
article raises more questions than answers.

From the article some of the things I saw that were interesting were:

o For example, Digital and AGS propsed basically the same solution but
Digital's price was $10.5M and AGS's was $19.5.  Is it possible we are
not charging enough  (The winner [BSG] was $19.3M.).

o The evaluation scores for the vendors were

DEC 502, IBM 443, AGS 445, and BSG 543

For a 7% different in score the customer was willing to pay 84% more for
the system.  (Or in the case of IBM they were willing to pay 120% more
for a 20% improvement in score.)

o The winning solution was Unix-based.  Apparently this played a major
factor in the selection.

o The customer did not like IBM's solution because they "...didn't like
IBMs distributed database approach, and...[were]...wary of SOMS document
manager, which is still in beta testing."  Meanwhile they selected the
one proposal that uses custom coding rather than off-the-self packages.
(You figure).

T.R Title User Personal
Name Date Lines

172.1 The lure of custom code WHO301::BOWERS Dave Bowers @WHO Mon Dec 07 1992 09:25 9

T.R	Title	User	Personal Name	Date	Lines
172.1	The lure of custom code	WHO301::BOWERS	Dave Bowers @WHO	`Mon Dec 07 1992 09:25`	9
	Custom code has a certain allure for many customers. The need for custom code implies that "We're special!". There is also an assumption that a custom system weil be a better fit to the business' needs. In reality, developing custom code allows you to avoid the unpleasant realization that your archaic, Byzantine business systems have little relation to standard good practice, as embodied in the off-the-shelf package. \dave

Custom code has a certain allure for many customers.  The need for custom code
implies that "We're special!".  There is also an assumption that a custom
system weil be a better fit to the business' needs.

In reality, developing custom code allows you to avoid the unpleasant 
realization that your archaic, Byzantine business systems have little 
relation to standard good practice, as embodied in the off-the-shelf package.

\dave