On-line Evaluator Kit

To ensure that the evaluators choose the best package to meet the needs of their site, it is important for them to perform a comprehensive analysis. TSI suggests that your first step as an evaluator should be to determine if funding is available to purchase the software, how much funding is available, and when it will be available. Then, you can proceed with the following steps:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DOCUMENT THE CURRENT PROCESS

STUDY THE CURRENT ENVIRONMENT

DEFINE FUNCTIONS AND REQUIREMENTS

GATHER INFORMATION ABOUT PRODUCTS

BRING PRODUCTS IN FOR TRIAL

REPORT TO MANAGEMENT

ACQUIRE THE PRODUCT

OBTAIN ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

DOCUMENT THE CURRENT PROCESS
Document and evaluate current inefficiencies and redundancies, as well as any unnecessary efforts or expenses by answering the following questions:

• How many individuals are involved in the current process?
• How much communication is involved in this process? (This includes forms, paperwork, meetings, or any other form of communication.)
• What software tools and utilities are currently required?
• What types of problems, errors, and roadblocks are encountered during the current process?
• How much time is lost to current inefficiencies, and how much does this time cost your company?
• What are your current archiving and recovery procedures? How effective are they?
• Which resources are required to handle problems and emergencies?
• What type of support is available from your current vendor?
• How many related concerns or problems have been voiced to your organization?

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STUDY THE CURRENT ENVIRONMENT
Study and document your current hardware and software environment to ensure that any product you choose will be able to function in the environment. Answer the following questions and determine what impact, if any, they will have on your choice:

• How many programmers and end users are at your site?
• How many and what types of NATURAL and 3GL objects are at your site?
• How many databases and files are at your site?
• How many applications and libraries are at your site?
• What are your current emergency procedures?
• How many versions of the product will need to be maintained?
• What related access restrictions exist?
• Who is the CPU manufacturer? What is its model number and serial number?
• What is your current operating system? Which version?
• What is your current teleprocessing system? Which version?
• Which versions of ADABAS, NATURAL, and PREDICT are you currently using?
• Which versions of other SAG-related products are used at your site?
• What JCL standards are enforced at your site?
• Which security products do you use?

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DEFINE FUNCTIONS AND REQUIREMENTS
Review your findings, and define the basic functions that the product will need to perform, as well as any necessary or desirable features that you wish to find in the product. This will serve as your "shopping list."

Before evaluating any of the products on the market, it is important to determine exactly what your site will require from the product. By reviewing the evaluation of your current process, you can determine where the new software could save your company time, money, or effort.

Once the requirements have been defined, it may be helpful to categorize them as "mandatory" and "desirable". Mandatory requirements are those that your site considers critical. Any product that cannot meet the majority of the mandatory requirements should not be considered for further evaluation. Desirable requirements are the unnecessary "extras" that your site would like to find in the product.

Once the requirements have been determined and categorized, your site is ready to begin the evaluation process. Some sites have successfully used a "weighting" process in their evaluation efforts. After examining all of the products that meet the mandatory requirements, the site weights each requirement based on its desirability. Typical weights range from 1 (somewhat desirable) to 10 (extremely desirable).

Once the weight has been determined for each requirement, the site determines a score for each product based on its ability to satisfy each requirement. Again, the scoring ranges from 1 (barely meets the requirement) to 10 (performs the function exactly as desired). This becomes the raw score. The product's raw score is multiplied by the requirement's weight to achieve an adjusted score. This adjustment process ensures that full support of the more important features generates a much higher overall score.

The following table illustrates this scoring and adjustment process:

Change Mgmt. Requirement	Required Weight	Raw Score for Product 1	Adjusted Score for Product 1	Raw Score for Product 2	Adjusted Score for Product 2
A B C	10 4 5	8 7 5	80 28 25	5 9 7	50 36 35
TOTAL	19	20	133	21	121

In the example shown, the site determined that it had only three requirements: A, B, and C. All three requirements are mandatory and any chosen product must support them. The site found only two products that met the requirements, Product 1 and Product 2. Product 1 supported the first mandatory requirement very well, while Product 2 provided only about half the capability they needed in that area. Product 2, however, did provide good support of requirements B and C, while Product 1's support of those requirements was not as good.

If the site had used raw scores, they would have selected Product 2, as its raw score was 21, versus Product 1's raw score of 20. Thus, the selection process would have favored the product that did the poorest job of meeting the most important requirement, and the best job at meeting the less important requirements. This is why it is important to adjust the raw scores with the weighting factor. Adjustment ensures that better support for more important requirements yields a higher overall score than support of many less important requirements. The more requirements a site has, the more important the adjustment becomes.

Using the adjusted scores, Product 1 is selected. Product 1 provides a high degree of support in a critical area, and a reasonable level of support in less critical areas.

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GATHER INFORMATION ABOUT PRODUCTS
Gather information about comparable products on the market and evaluate their ability to support the basic functions you have defined, as well as any additional features. Also, compare the elements of your current environment to each product's specifications and requirements to ensure that the chosen product will function properly in your environment. This will help you narrow the market down to a few appropriate choices.

When performing the evaluation, remember that cost includes more than just the initial purchase price and ongoing maintenance fees. The real cost includes the costs of installing, configuring, administering, and upgrading the product. It also includes the cost of data or programs lost due to inadequate controls and the cost of production downtime caused by unauthorized changes to production environments. Remember the old adage: "You get what you pay for". A product that meets some of your most basic needs may be less expensive to purchase, but may limit the organization's flexibility as your needs expand over time. In the end, the "less expensive" product to purchase could cost the organization much more than the "higher priced" product.

Information about available products can be obtained from:

• Vendors of products
• Corporate files of vendor literature
• Announcements and advertisements in related magazines
• Other users at user group meetings
• References provided by the vendor

Using these sources, it should be possible to determine what products are available that will suit the needs of your environment.

If you are interested in obtaining more information about a specific TSI product, please contact us for more information. We offer the following materials for most of our products:

• Documentation CD-ROM
• Fact Sheets
• Product Overviews
• Reference and other Manuals
• Flyers
• Reference Lists
• Related issues of TREETIPS (our company newsletter)
• Product Summary Sheets
• Evaluator Kits

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BRING PRODUCTS IN FOR TRIAL
Bring the most promising products in for a trial, and speak to other sites using the products. Then, document your findings, and select the most appropriate product.

Most vendors offer a free trial of their products. If you are seriously considering purchasing a product, you should definitely consider bringing that product in for a trial to determine how well a given product will operate in your environment. If the vendor is willing, have them send technical representatives to your site to help with the installation, setup, and training for their product.

During the trial period, you should evaluate each product individually, paying attention to the critical features and functions, as well as:

• Ease of installation and de-installation (if the product is not purchased)
• Installation requirements, such as disk space used by the product, time required to install the product, and the time required for configuring the product
• Quality of documentation provided by the vendor
• Availability, speed, and quality of the vendor's technical support
• Availability and quality of on-line help
• Overall ease of use of the product
• Performance of the product
• Ability of the product to support your site's needs
• Adaptability of the product to you site's environment
• Ability to contact product developers and their responsiveness to requests for changes in the product

At the end of each trial, document the results of the trial and your impressions of each product.

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REPORT TO MANAGEMENT
Negotiate with the vendors of the most suitable product to obtain the best price and payment terms. Then, prepare a report to management, detailing current problems and inefficiencies. The report should:

• Use as few technical terms as possible, and clearly explain any new terms.
• Provide an executive summary at the beginning, which clearly states the point of your report.
• Include a brief non-technical summary of one or two pages, discussing problems, benefits, and costs.
• Provide a clear explanation of how the new product will improve your environment, documenting any specific problems you have encountered and how the new software can alleviate them.
• Discuss the cost savings the that new product will provide by documenting the cost of problems associated with your current product, including lost staff time, application downtime, lost revenue, wasted CPU cycles, and lost customers.
• Discuss the available products and the results of your evaluation.
• Provide a recommendation for the most suitable product, explaining its advantages and ability to smoothly integrate into your environment.
• Add credibility to your recommendation by providing management with copies of magazine and journal articles that illustrate the benefits of the product; vendor reference lists of other organizations who have benefited from the product; and a means of contacting outside experts who can discuss the benefits of the product.

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ACQUIRE THE PRODUCT
Once you have obtained management approval to license the selected product, arrange the purchase with its vendor. With these steps completed, you can be confident that your best effort has been made to solve the problems cost-effectively.

Vendors like to hear that you prefer their product to the competition. If they know that you prefer their product, they will usually work with you so that you can fit their product into your budget. They may offer options such as:

• Multiple copy discounts
• Multiple product discounts
• Multiple site discounts
• Beta/Reference site discounts
• Monthly payment plans
• Deferred payment options
• Rental of the product
• Leasing of the product
• Unique payment plans

At TSI, we believe in the value of all of our products. We want to do everything we can to make each of our products easier for you to purchase and use. Because of this, we provide very flexible payment options, designed to enable you to fit the product that you need into your budget.

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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Visit our Frequently Asked Questions and Customer Comments sections for additional information on specific products. This information may be useful during your assessment process.