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In This Issue . . . ( Click ò for Individual Page Access )
What’s Going On? The STC Fellowship At Work Who Is Fernando Gana? Welcome New Members STC Profile
Making Business Sense Weighing IP Phone System Proposals on a TCO Scale Legal and Regulatory Update
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By KEN DOLSKY DIRECTOR, PROFESSIONAL SERVICES INFOTECH
This is the second of a two-part feature on evaluating vendor responses to an RFP for an IP telephone system in terms of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The discussion is based on the results of a recent InfoTech research study on TCO in relation to vendor pricing practices. Part One, in the April issue, described one RFP and summarized vendor responses. This concluding article will discuss the complexities involved in evaluating the actual responses to the RFP.
During the summer of 2004, InfoTech, a division of Access Intelligence, LLC, sent an RFP to major providers of IP Telephony products and services. The responses were analyzed in a presentation at VoiceCon 2005 which compared the service offerings of the respondents and demonstrated the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) associated with product, implementation and four years of maintenance service. During the course of the analysis it became obvious that developing a true apples-to-apples comparison of the responses in terms of charges and features would be a time consuming and challenging task due to significant differences in respondent solutions and offers. The purpose of |
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this article is to identify the areas in which these differences occurred, provide approaches to writing RFP’s that will reduce these differences and suggest a process that will level the playing field when comparing disparate offers. The best way to compare offers is to develop a feature/cost spreadsheet in which each respondent’s offer is captured from both a financial and functional standpoint. Most product and service elements will be included in some bundled price but some will be true options, which can be purchased separately or obtained on a time and materials basis. The |
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costs associated with these elements should be included in the spreadsheet and added to each respondent’s bottom line charges over multiple years. From a functional standpoint, not all features are the same and the hidden costs to obtain fully comparable functionality should be entered into the spreadsheet. Product Issues In the RFP process some vendors quoted turnkey systems for such elements as PBX/network adminis-tration or contact center applications packages. Others quoted prices for the applications but left it to the cus-tomer to purchase the PCs or servers. |
