More Bad Questions
Okay, you asked…so here goes.
If you recall last week I was brought in to consult on an ongoing evaluation effort. They had a consultant already on the job – wanted to get my input before they sent their RFP out.
They had done a pretty good job…my only criticism was the sheer number of questions they were asking the vendor.
Here are some additional questions s I took out of the RFP.
What are the major industry associations that you belong to? The vendor will list all of these organizations anyway. But what does this really prove? Anybody can join an organization. Many vendors join the organizations because their core competitors are members. Is it relevant to you if vendors are members or not? I have always felt this was way over emphasized.
What is your mission statement? Ugh. Every mission statement will have some version of this: “We at (fill in organization name) feel that our employees are our most important asset “ Terrific. That has nothing to do with whether their product will help you meet your business objectives.
What is your employee turnover rate? I know what people are going for here—they want to know if you have a revolving door with regard to the employee base. A better way to ask this is to inquire into seniority levels. Something to the effect of asking for the number of employees in various levels of tenure: over twenty years, fifteen to twenty years, ten to fifteen years, etc.
What is your decision-making process when developing new software or making enhancements? Would one decision process skew your opinion over another? Is one visionary within the organization better than a whole team making the decision? Is it worse? What do we (the project team) know about developing software?
What is your ownership structure? This just flat isn’t relevant and it is intrusive. The business structure of the software vendor has no bearing on the purchasing organization. What’s better: sole proprietorship, limited partnership, general partnership, limited liability corporation, or subchapter S corporation? They all have benefits and limitations.
Bottom line is: If you don’t know what you are going to do with the answer, don’t ask the question.