Sasaki Design Software Acquisition
Phase One: Initiation
The objective of the Initiation phase is to clearly define the business need, define and develop a solution to address the need, create a business case to justify the solution, and begin to define the initiative in a project charter.
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Below you can read through a small profile we developed on Sasaki to learn about who we were working with and you can see the business need document we wrote to use through out the project.
Company Profile
Business Need
Phase Two: Planning
In the Planning phase of the technology acquisition, we determine how we will research, evaluate, and negotiate with vendors, how we will implement and operate your solution, who will be responsible for each activity, when these activities occur in order to meet the project time objectives and where the activities will take place. It is important to note that during this time, we had to navigate the issue of Corona Virus.
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View our planning matrixes below!
Phase Three: Research
The objective of the research phase is to determine which vendor is best suited to address the business need. There are many research methods that can be used to become more educated about vendors and their technology. We focused on methods that were cost and time effective.
Here is the list of vendors we collected by the end of the research phase. Salesforce is the current software we are trying to replace, but it is important to consider it may be the best software for the job.
Phase Four: Evaluation
At this stage of the technology acquisition process, we have thoroughly researched the vendors and their technologies. Now it’s time to evaluate vendors objectively and make a decision.
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We used the aforementioned evaluation criteria and a Scenario Planning diagram to help us determine where each software falls on our spectrum.
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Through this phase we decided that the best option will be Monday.com
Phase Five: Negotiations
During the negotiation phase we worked on documents that gave us an idea of our position and what kind of leverage we have to create a better deal for our client. We did this two ways: first we compare our current situation to all the lowest costs across all three platforms in each category. Second, we compared the costs of each software to each other by category and annual costs.
Phase Six: Implementation
After having thoroughly researched, evaluated, and selected the vendor that was the closest match to the business needs, we negotiated an agreement that benefits both companies. Now it’s time to implement its solution within the business.
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Our job was to design a plan to implement the system, which included creating accounts, setting up dashboards, running project simulations to see what it will look like on their end, and making sure we have all the features set up to their liking. Then we will train the employees on the basics and finally deploy the system so that is fully used by the team.
Phase Seven: Operations
Once the system has been successfully implemented, it is time to operate the system. The operations phase consists of all on-going activities required to keep the system running smoothly for the lifetime of the solution.
Adam Knowles: Team Member
knowlesa@wit.edu
Sky Eno: Team Leader
enos@wit.edu
