Assume that you have been asked to procure a new integrated software application
ID: 350856 • Letter: A
Question
Assume that you have been asked to procure a new integrated software application for patient records management for your local hospital. Describe the process you would follow to shortlist suppliers for this purpose.
For this Assignment, address/answer the following:
How would you determine the requirements? For example: How would you determine what capabilities the package must have?
What criteria would you use to select the suppliers?
What are two different approaches that you can use to make your decision? Compare these approaches, identifying their strengths and weaknesses. Which one would you choose and why?
How would you narrow down the list of suppliers to the top three candidates?
What other criteria would you include in the scope of supply?
Explanation / Answer
Determining the requirement
This process needs to identify the problem that the hospital is facing and the solution that the software will provide. For this, I will need to identify the problems. In order to do that, I will speak to the stakeholder who will be directly involved. This should include
The details that need to be gathered here is what kind of problems do they face now with the current system. And what is their expectation of the software. After collecting these details, I will list down the requirements in the order of priority (High, Medium, and Low)
Criteria to choose suppliers
The software vendor selection process will need to satisfy most of the requirement. However, in addition to that, it must also be judged on the following criteria:
Approaches for decision making
There are various ways to approach the decision making process. Two of the approaches are
I will choose the rational approach. The reason is that it is most likely the first time a new software is being integrated. It is important to make a rational decision at this point and take into consideration the behavioral factors in the future iteration.
Narrow down list of suppliers
In order to narrow down the list of suppliers, I would provide different weightage to the requirements. For example, a high priority requirement will have more weight than a medium or low priority requirement. Next, I will list the complete feature sets of the products, the selection criteria (from above) and score each of the suppliers against them. Finally shortlist the top three suppliers with the highest scores prepare the shortlist.
Scope of supply
The supply here mainly focuses on delivery of the software. However the following needs to be included in the scope of supply