Background Noise

You're Doing It Wrong: The Corporate RFP

As I write this, I'm taking a break from working on a response to a "Request for Proposal", commonly referred to as an RFP or sometimes an RFI. 150 pages of light reading, with probing questions like:

"What quality control processes have you implemented in order to mitigate the frequency and severity of errors in future releases of your software?"

Look, I've been on the other side of the table and I totally get it. This is going to be a very big project for the company in question, with a lot of internal stakeholders, and is not a decision to be made lightly. Making the wrong decision here would seriously compromise their ability to grow their business online. The first reaction when faced with an undertaking like this, is the get out the old fine-tooth comb and start combing.

Unfortunately, most of our prospective customers anchor this process with the corporate albatross of decision making: the RFP. Which is fine...if it was 1982.

The RFP was a necessary evil back in the dark ages, when corporations would only open the kimono when forced to do so through a bidding process. In fact, most RFP's were done as away to force vendors to blindly bid against each other as a way to get the best price. Somehow, the RFP has evolved into a magic document that too many companies think will actually help them make these business critical decisions.

Let's get real about this process for a minute:

- On the corporate side, hundreds of man-hours are spent preparing the RFP.

- Vendors are almost always just going through a copy-and-paste exercise when responding. And they will never - I repeat - never give out their best pricing in an RFP.

- The result is hundreds of pages of information that has to be processed by multiple people in order to be remotely useful.

I've seen this process in action as an eCommerce executive, and many times over in my current role. Not once have I ever seen anyone make an educated decision to select a vendor based on how they responded to an RFP. Even when RFP's are involved, the decisions are ultimately made by smart people who take the time to talk to each of vendors in detail, research the company and it's products, and more than often they rely on their most valuable asset: their gut.

I wish I had the reach to convince every corporate IT and Project Management office to just stop perpetuating this dinosaur of a process, but obviously I don't. The irony of it all, is that almost every company that drags us through this forced march is telling us that they have two major objectives in mind: increasing their time-to-market and return-on-investment. In both cases, they're starting out behind in the count.

Hello, it's me...

In the immortal words of Jim Anchower:

Hola, amigos. I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but I got a lot on my plate these days!

If you're one of the 2 people that read my blog when I first started it, you remember that I made some vague references to some upcoming changes in my professional life. Well, that has seriously come to pass, and I've been drinking from the fire hose for the last month or so, and haven't had a moment to catch my breath and devote some time to my blog.

Shortly before the end of last year, I came to the realization that I would be leaving my position as Director of E-Commerce at Finish Line. I was in that role for 7-years, and very proud of what I accomplished over that period. Unfortunately, like any other relationship, perceptions and expectations can change over time, and it was time for me to move on to a new challenge.

After much deliberation, and some really great opportunities in front of me, I decided to take a position as a Solutions Strategist with ATG. I had been a client of theirs for quite some time, serving on their Customer Advisory Board for a couple of years, so I was very excited when the opportunity presented itself. In my new role, I'm going to working in a consultative role with prospects and existing customer, helping to align the technology with the real-world demands of their online business.

As some of the members of my new employer like to joke with me, I've crossed over the "Dark Side" now. As funny as that sounds, I'm jacked about sitting on a different side of the table than what I'm accustomed to, and it's just the challenge that I've looking for!

Omniture's Integration Play

I haven't posted in a while, which I can blame on being in the middle of the holiday season as well as a nasty case of procrastination. I do have a few topics of interest that I want to get to, so hopefully I can get back into the rhythm of things.

I followed a press clipping yesterday to a demo of Ominture's new Genesis product, and I have to say that I'm impressed at first blush. While Omniture has always been one of the premier online analytics firms, I've held the opinion that their reporting interface seemed somewhat awkward when trying to measure traditional E-Commerce KPI's.

Granted, I've only seen the online demo and Data Sheet so far, but this looks like a step in the right direction for Omniture. It certainly addresses one of the biggest pain-points that we have to deal with on a regular basis, which is how to take analytical data from multiple sources and capture it in a way that enables you to make actionable decisions about your site. There's an adage in this business that suggests that if you have a $100K annual budget for site analytics, you should spend $10K on software and $90K on someone to manage it for you. A bit of an exaggeration obviously, but I think it illustrates the point that it's very difficult to properly manage the sea of qualitative and quantitative data  that exists for any E-Commerce business.

Here's the angle with Genesis that may enable them to stand out from their competition:

They acknowledge the fact that most of their customers use a handful of marketing applications from other vendors (email, affiliate programs, site search, SEO, etc..), and most of the common applications are already integrated into a simple drag-and-drop interface. They have basically created a common reporting platform to manage all of the disparate data that marketers have to sift through in order to make decisions on their marketing campaigns and site usability.

This is obviously Version 1.0, and everything looks great in a Flash demo, but I am certainly looking forward to getting a closer look at the Shop.org First Look event.