So you’ve selected the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite as the core HR and/or Talent Management cloud solution for your company, now what? The next step will impact the overall success of your project, and that is the selection of your internal implementation team and an implementation partner. In the SAP SuccessFactors ecosystem, there are many implementation partners to choose from. In this blog post (which is an excerpt from my book, Implementing SAP SuccessFactors – A Client centered approach) I review the key criteria and approach for selecting an implementation partner.
Selection Criteria
There are several areas in which a vendor should be evaluated and rated. Your procurement team may have other criteria they want to include. For example, they might prefer to have Financials - included as a separate category (instead of it being part of the stability category as I have listed below).
- Cost
- Experience
- Full Service Capabilities
- Stability
- Number of years implementing SAP SuccessFactors
- Financial strength
- Consultant and leadership turnover rate
- Partnership
- Culture and Fit
- Post Go Live Support Services
- References
To make the partner selection a structured process, I highly recommend using a decision matrix. When creating your own decision matrix, you want to specify the selection criteria, rating scale, which vendors will be evaluated, and the members of the internal evaluation team. In this example, all the selection criteria are equally weighted. The individual scores of the evaluation team members sit behind that summary.
Each member of the selection team will have a detailed area to indicate their overall ratings and pros and cons for each partner under consideration. The individual team member ratings are then summarized and included in the overall score.
While a simple decision matrix will work for some organizations, others may want to place a higher importance on one or more of the selection criteria. This can be accomplished by using a weighted decision matrix. This makes the evaluation process more complicated, but more accurate. For example, if References are more important than Cost, then a higher weight will be assigned to the References criterion.
A weighted matrix adds a “Weights” column. The total rating for each criterion now becomes the average rating from the selection team multiplied by the weight. The References, Culture and Fit, Partnership and Full Service Capabilities columns are weighted the highest and will have a greater impact on the overall ratings.
Conclusion
Using a structured process with the correct evaluation criteria to evaluate and select the right implementation partner will significantly increase the possibility of a successful project. To get the detailed description for each of the listed selection criteria or for more implementation tips and guidelines on how to successfully implement SAP SuccessFactors, refer to my book.This post was originally published on the 3D Results Blog.