Integrated design and development for state agencies: Building for the family

There’s a good chance that your organization is in the position of needing to do more with less under the strain of staffing constraints and competing initiatives. With fewer resources to work with, you’ll need to be persuasive to get the green light on new enterprise technology initiatives. To do that, you need to present decision makers with well-thought-out and targeted business cases that show your initiative will have impact and will be successful. Yet developing such a business case is no walk in the park. Perhaps because our firm has its roots in New England, we sometimes compare this process to leading a hiking trip into the woods—into the wild. 

Just as in hiking, success in developing a business case for a new initiative boils down to planning, preparation, and applying a few key concepts we’ve learned from our travels. 

Consensus is critical when planning new technology initiatives

Before you can start the hike, everyone has to agree on some fundamentals: 

Who's going? 

Where are we going? 

When do we go and for how long? 

Getting everyone to agree requires clear communication and, yes, even a little salesmanship: “Trust me. The bears aren’t bad this time of year.” The same principle applies in proposing new technology initiatives; making sure everyone has bought into the basic framework of the initiative is critical to success.

Although many hiking trips involve groups of people similar in age, ability, and whereabouts, for your business initiative you need to communicate with diverse groups of colleagues at every level of the organization. Gaining consensus among people who bring a wide variety of skills and perspectives to the project can be complex.

To gain consensus, consider the intended audiences of your message and target the content to what will work for them. It should provide enough information for executive-level stakeholders to quickly understand the initiative and the path forward. It should give people responsible for implementation or who will provide specific skills substantive information to implement the plan. And remember: one of the most common reasons projects struggle to meet their stated objectives (and why some projects never materialize to begin with), is a lack of sponsorship and buy-in. The goal of a business case is to gain buy-in before project initiation, so your sponsors will actively support the project during implementation. 

Set clear goals for your enterprise technology project 

It’s refreshing to take the first steps, to feel that initial sense of freedom as you set off down the trail. Yet few people truly enjoy wandering around aimlessly in the wilderness for an extended period of time. Hikers need goals, like reaching a mountain peak or seeing famous landmarks, or hiking a predetermined number of miles per day. And having a trail guide is key in meeting those goals. 

For a new initiative, clearly define goals and objectives, as well as pain points your organization wishes to address. This is critical to ensuring that the project’s sponsors and implementation team are all on the same page. Identifying specific benefits of completing your initiative can help people keep their “eyes on the prize” when the project feels like an uphill climb.

Timelines provide additional detail and direction—and demonstrate to decision makers that you have considered multiple facets of the project, including any constraints, resource limitations, or scheduling conflicts. Identifying best practices to incorporate throughout the initiative enhances the value of a business case proposition, and positions the organization for success. By leveraging lessons learned on previous projects, and planning for and mitigating risk, the organization will begin to clear the path for a successful endeavor. 

Don’t compromise on the right equipment

Hiking can be an expensive, time-consuming hobby. While the quality of your equipment and the accuracy of your maps are crucial, you can do things with limited resources if you’re careful. Taking the time to research and purchase the right equipment, (like the right hiking boots), keeps your fun expedition from becoming a tortuous slog. 

Similarly, in developing a business case for a new initiative, you need to make sure that you identify the right resources in the right areas. We all live with resource constraints of one sort or another. The process of identifying resources, particularly for funding and staffing the project, will lead to fewer surprises down the path. As many government employees know all too well, it is better to be thorough in the budget planning process than to return to authorizing sources for additional funding while midstream in a project. 

Consider your possible outcomes

You cannot be too singularly focused in the wild; weather conditions change quickly, unexpected opportunities reveal themselves, and being able to adapt quickly is absolutely necessary in order for everyone to come home safely. Sometimes, you should take the trail less traveled, rest in the random lean-to that you and your group stumble upon, or go for a refreshing dip in a lake. By focusing on more than just one single objective, it often leads to more enjoyable, safe, and successful excursions.

This type of outlook is necessary to build a business case for a new initiative. You may need to step back during your initial planning and consider the full impact of the process, including on those outside your organization. For example, you may begin to identify ways in which the initiative could benefit both internal and external stakeholders, and plan to move forward in a slightly new direction. Let’s say you’re building a business case for a new land management and permitting software system. Take time to consider that this system may benefit citizens, contractors, and other organizations that interact with your department. This new perspective can help you strengthen your business case. 

Expect teamwork

A group that doesn’t practice teamwork won’t last long in the wild. In order to facilitate and promote teamwork, it’s important to recognize the skills and contributions of each and every person. Some have a better sense of direction, while some can more easily start campfires. And if you find yourself fortunate enough to be joined by a truly experienced hiker, make sure that you listen to what they have to say.

Doing the hard work to present a business case for a new initiative may feel like a solitary action at times, but it’s not. Most likely, there are other people in your organization who see the value in the initiative. Recognize and utilize their skills in your planning. We also suggest working with an experienced advisor who can leverage best practices and lessons learned from similar projects. Their experience will help you anticipate potential resistance and develop and articulate the mitigation strategies necessary to gain support for your initiative.

If you have thoughts, concerns, or questions, contact our team. We love to discuss the potential and pitfalls of new initiatives, and can help prepare you to head out into the wild. We’d love to hear any parallels with hiking and wilderness adventuring that you have as well. Let us know! 

BerryDunn’s local government consulting team has the experience to lead technology planning initiatives and develop actionable plans that help you think strategically and improve service delivery. We partner with you, maintaining flexibility and open lines of communication to help ensure that your team has the resources it needs.

Our team has broad and deep experience partnering with local government clients across the country to modernize technology-based business transformation projects and the decision-making and planning efforts. Our expertise includes software system assessments/planning/procurement and implementation project management; operational, management, and staffing assessments; information security; cost allocation studies; and data management.  

Read this if your organization is planning on upgrading or replacing an enterprise technology system.

It can be challenging and stressful to plan for technology initiatives, especially those that involve and impact every area of your organization. Common initiatives include software upgrades or replacements for:

• Financial management, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems
• Asset management systems
• Electronic health records (EHR) systems
• Permitting and inspections systems

Though the number of considerations when planning enterprise technology projects can be daunting, the greatest mistake you can make is not planning at all. By addressing just a few key areas, you can avoid some of the most common pitfalls, such as exceeding budget and schedule targets, experiencing scope creep, and losing buy-in among stakeholders. Here are some tips to help you navigate your next project:

Identify your IT project roles and resources

While most organizations understand the importance of identifying project stakeholder groups, it is often an afterthought. Defining these roles at the outset of your project helps you accurately estimate the work effort.

Your stakeholder groups may include:

• An executive sponsor
• A steering committee
• A project manager
• Functional leads
• A technical team

Once you’ve established the necessary roles, you can begin reviewing your organization’s resources to determine the people who will be available to fill them. Planning for resource availability will help you avoid delays, minimize impact to regular business processes, and reduce the likelihood of burnout. But this plan won’t remain static—you can expect to make updates throughout the project.

Establish clear goals and objectives to keep your technology project on track

It’s important that an enterprise technology project has established goals and objectives statements. These statements will help inform decision-making, provide benchmarks for progress, and measure your project’s success. They can then be referenced when key stakeholders have differing perspectives on the direction to take with a pending decision. For example, if the objective of your project is to reduce paper-based processes, you may plan for additional computer workstations and focus technical resources on provisioning them. You’ll also be able to measure your success in the reduction of paper-based tasks.

Estimate your IT project budget accurately

Project funding is hardly ever overlooked, but can be complex with project budgets that are either underestimated or estimated without sufficient rationale to withstand approval processes and subsequent budget analysis. You may find that breaking down estimates to a lower level of detail helps address these challenges. Most technology projects incur costs in three key areas:

• Vendor cost: This could include both one-time software implementation costs as well as recurring costs for maintenance and ongoing support.
• Infrastructure cost: Consider the cost of any investments needed to support your project, such as data center hardware, networking components, or computing devices.
• Supplemental resource cost: Don’t forget to include the cost of any additional resources needed for their specialized knowledge or to simply backfill project staff. This could include contracted resources or the additional cost of existing resources (i.e., overtime).

A good technology project budget also includes a contingency amount. This amount will depend on your organization’s standards, the relative level of confidence in your estimates, and the relative risk.

Anticipate the need for change management

Depending on the project, staff in many areas of your organization will be impacted by some level of change during a technology implementation. External stakeholders, such as vendors and the public, may also be affected. You can effectively manage this change by proactively identifying areas of likely change resistance and creating strategies to address them.

In any technology implementation, you will encounter change resistance you did not predict. Having strategies in place will help you react quickly and effectively. Some proven change management strategies include communicating throughout your project, involving stakeholders to get their buy-in, and helping ensure management has the right amount of information to share with their employees.

Maintain focus and stay flexible as you manage your IT project

Even with the most thought-out planning, unforeseen events and external factors may impact your technology project. Establish mechanisms to regularly and proactively monitor project status so that you can address material risks and issues before their impact to the project grows. Reacting to these items as they arise requires key project stakeholders to be flexible. Key stakeholders must recognize that new information does not necessarily mean previous decisions were made in error, and that it is better to adapt than to stick to the initial direction.

Whether you’re implementing an ERP, an EHR, or enterprise human resources or asset management systems, any enterprise technology project is a massive undertaking, involving significant investment and a coordinated effort with individuals across multiple areas of an organization. Common mistakes can be costly, but having a structured approach to your planning can help avoid pitfalls. Our experienced, objective advisors have worked with public and private organizations across the country to oversee large enterprise projects from inception to successful completion.

Contact our software consulting team with any questions.

Read this if your company is considering outsourced information technology services.

For management, it’s the perennial question: Keep things in-house or outsource?

For management, it’s the perennial question: Keep things in-house or outsource? Most companies or organizations have outsourcing opportunities, from revenue cycle to payment processing to IT security. When deciding whether to outsource, you weigh the trade-offs and benefits by considering variables such as cost, internal expertise, cross coverage, and organizational risk.

In IT services, outsourcing may win out as technology becomes more complex. Maintaining expertise and depth for all the IT components in an environment can be resource-intensive.

Outsourced solutions allow IT teams to shift some of their focus from maintaining infrastructure to getting more value out of existing systems, increasing data analytics, and better linking technology to business objectives. The same can be applied to revenue cycle outsourcing, shifting the focus from getting clean bills out and cash coming in, to looking at the financial health of the organization, analyzing service lines, patient experience, or advancing projects.  

Once you’ve decided, there’s another question you need to ask
Lost sometimes in the discussion of whether to use outsourced services is how. Even after you’ve done your due diligence and chosen a great vendor, you need to stay involved. It can be easy to think, “Vendor XYZ is monitoring our servers or our days in AR, so we should be all set. I can stop worrying at night about our system reliability or our cash flow.” Not true.

You may be outsourcing a component of your technology environment or collections, but you are not outsourcing the accountability for it—from an internal administrative standpoint or (in many cases) from a legal standpoint.

Beware of a false state of confidence
No matter how clear the expectations and rules of engagement with your vendor at the onset of a partnership, circumstances can change—regulatory updates, technology advancements, and old-fashioned vendor neglect. In hiring the vendor, you are accountable for oversight of the partnership. Be actively engaged in the ongoing execution of the services. Also, periodically revisit the contract, make sure the vendor is following all terms, and confirm (with an outside audit, when appropriate) that you are getting the services you need.

Take, for example, server monitoring, which applies to every organization or company, large or small, with data on a server. When a managed service vendor wants to contract with you to provide monitoring services, the vendor’s salesperson will likely assure you that you need not worry about the stability of your server infrastructure, that the monitoring will catch issues before they occur, and that any issues that do arise will be resolved before the end user is impacted. Ideally, this is true, but you need to confirm.

Here’s how to stay involved with your vendor
Ask lots of questions. There’s never a question too small. Here are samples of how precisely you should drill down:

• What metrics will be monitored, specifically?
• Why do the metrics being monitored matter to our own business objectives?
• What thresholds must be met to notify us or produce an alert?
• What does exceeding a threshold mean to our business?
• Who on our team will be notified if an alert is warranted?
• What corrective action will be taken?

Ask uncomfortable questions
Being willing to ask challenging questions of your vendors, even when you are not an expert, is critical. You may feel uncomfortable but asking vendors to explain something to you in terms you understand is very reasonable. They’re the experts; you’re not expected to already understand every detail or you wouldn’t have needed to hire them. It’s their job to explain it to you. Without asking these questions, you may end up with a fairly generic solution that does produce a service or monitor something, but not necessarily all the things you need.

Ask obvious questions
You don’t want anything to slip by simply because you or the vendor took it for granted. It is common to assume that more is being done by a vendor than actually is. By asking even obvious questions, you can avoid this trap. All too often we conduct an IT assessment and are told that a vendor is providing a service, only to discover that the tasks are not happening as expected.

You are accountable for your whole team—in-house and outsourced members
An outsourced solution is an extension of your team. Taking an active and engaged role in an outsourcing partnership remains consistent with your management responsibilities. At the end of the day, management is responsible for achieving business objectives and mission. Regularly check in to make sure that the vendor stays focused on that same mission.

Writing a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a new software system can be complex, time-consuming, and—let’s face it—frustrating, especially if you don’t often write RFPs. The process seems dogged by endless questions, such as:

• How specific should the problem statement and system requirements be?
• How can the RFP solicit a response that proves the vendor is qualified?
• Should the RFP include legal terms and conditions? If so, which ones? 
• Is there another strategy that can help cut down on size without forfeiting a quality response?

The public RFP process can be onerous for both the issuer and the respondents, as they can reach lengths upwards of 100 pages. And, while your procurement department would probably never let you get away with developing an RFP that is only one page, we know a smaller document requires less labor and time devoted to writing and reading. What if you could create a lean, mean, and focused RFP? Here are some tips for creating such a document: 

Describe the problem as simply as possible. At its core, an RFP is a problem statement—your organization has a particular problem, and it needs the right solution. To get the right solution, keep your RFP laser-focused: adequately but briefly convey your problem and desired outcomes, provide simple rules and guidelines for respondents to submit their proposed solutions, and clarify how you will evaluate responses to make a selection. Additional information can be white noise, making it harder for respondents to give you what you want: easy-to-read and evaluate proposals. Use bullet points and keep the narrative to a minimum.

Be creative and open about how vendors must respond. RFPs often have pages of directions on how vendors need to write responses or describe their products. The most important component is to emphasize vendor qualifications. Do you want to know if the vendor can deliver a quality product? Request sample deliverables from past projects. Also ask for the number of successful past projects, with statistics on the percent deviation to client schedule, budget, including explanations for large variances. Does your new system need to keep audit trails and product billing reports? Rely on a list of pass/fail requirements and then a separate table for nice-to-have or desired functionalities.

Save the legal stuff until the end. Consider including legal terms and conditions as an attachment instead of in the body of an RFP. If you’re worried about compliance, you can require respondents to attest in writing that they found, read, and understand your terms and conditions, or state that by responding to the RFP they have read and agreed to them. State that any requested deviations can be negotiated later to save space in the RFP. You can also decrease length by attaching a glossary of terms. What’s more, if you find yourself including language from your state’s procurement manual, provide a link to the manual itself instead.

Create a quality template to save time later. Chances are your organization has at least one RFP template you use to save time, but are you using that template because it gets you the best responses, or because you’re in the habit of using it? If your answer is the latter, it may be to time review and revise those old templates to reflect your current business needs. Maybe the writing style can be clearer and more concise, or sections combined or reordered to make the RFP more intuitive.

Qualify providers in advance and reduce the scope. Another time-saver is a pre-qualification, where solution providers propose on an RFP focused primarily on their experience and qualifications. Smaller statements of work are then issued to the qualified providers, allowing for shorter drafting, response, and award timelines. If procurement rules allow, break the procurement up into a requests for information (RFI) and then a smaller RFP.

Need additional RFP assistance?
A simplified RFP can reduce long hours needed to develop and evaluate responses to RFPs, while vendors have more flexibility to propose the solutions you need. To learn more about how BerryDunn’s extensive procurement experience can help your organization develop effective RFPs.
 

Modernization means different things to different people—especially in the context of state government. For some, it is the cause of a messy chain reaction that ends (at best) in frustration and inefficiency. For others, it is the beneficial effect of a thoughtful and well-planned series of steps. The difference lies in the approach to transition - and states will soon discover this as they begin using the new Comprehensive Child Welfare Information System (CCWIS), a case management information system that helps them provide citizens with customized child welfare services.

The benefits of CCWIS are numerous and impressive, raising the bar for child welfare and providing opportunities to advance through innovative technology that promotes interoperability, flexibility, improved management, mobility, and integration. However, taking advantage of these benefits will also present challenges. Gone are the days of the cookie-cutter, “one-size-fits-all” approach. Here are five facts to consider as you transition toward an effective modernization.

1. There are advantages and challenges to buying a system versus building a system internally. CCWIS transition may involve either purchasing a complete commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) product that suits the state, or constructing a new system internally with the implementation of a few purchased modules. To decide which option is best, first assess your current systems and staff needs. Specifically, consider executing a cost-benefit analysis of options, taking into account internal resource capabilities, feasibility, flexibility, and time. This analysis will provide valuable data that help you assess the current environment and identify functional gaps. Equipped with this information, you should be ready to decide whether to invest in a COTS product, or an internally-built system that supports the state’s vision and complies with new CCWIS regulations.
    
2. Employ a modular approach to upgrading current systems or building new systems. The Children’s Bureau—an office of the Administration for Children & Families within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services—defines “modularity” as the breaking down of complex functions into separate, manageable, and independent components. Using this modular approach, CCWIS will feature components that function independently, simplifying future upgrades or procurements because they can be completed on singular modules rather than the entire system. Modular systems create flexibility, and enable you to break down complex functions such as “Assessment and Intake,” “Case Management,” and “Claims and Payment” into modules during CCWIS transition. This facilitates the development of a sustainable system that is customized to the unique needs of your state, and easily allows for future augmentation.
    
3. Use Organizational Change Management (OCM) techniques to mitigate stakeholder resistance to change. People are notoriously resistant to change. This is especially true during a disruptive project that impacts day-to-day operations—such as building a new or transitional CCWIS system. Having a comprehensive OCM plan in place before your CCWIS implementation can help ensure that you assign an effective project sponsor, develop thorough project communications, and enact strong training methods. A clear OCM strategy should help mitigate employee resistance to change and can also support your organization in reaching CCWIS goals, due to early buy-in from stakeholders who are key to the project’s success.
    
4. Data governance policies can help ensure you standardize mandatory data sharing. For example, the Children’s Bureau notes that a Title IV-E agency with a CCWIS must support collaboration, interoperability, and data sharing by exchanging data with Child Support Systems?Title IV-D, Child Abuse/Neglect Systems, Medicaid Management Information Systems (MMIS), and many others as described by the Children’s Bureau.
   
   Security is a concern due to the large amount of data sharing involved with CCWIS systems. Specifically, if a Title IV-E agency with a CCWIS does not implement foundational data security measures across all jurisdictions, data could become vulnerable, rendering the system non-compliant. However, a data governance framework with standardized policies in place can protect data and surrounding processes.
    
5. Continuously refer to federal regulations and resources. With the change of systems comes changes in federal regulations. Fortunately, the Children’s Bureau provides guidance and toolkits to assist you in the planning, development, and implementation of CCWIS. Particularly useful documents include the “Child Welfare Policy Manual,” “Data Sharing for Courts and Child Welfare Agencies Toolkit,” and the “CCWIS Final Rule”. A comprehensive list of federal regulations and resources is located on the Children’s Bureau website.
   
   Additionally, the Children’s Bureau will assign an analyst to each state who can provide direction and counsel during the CCWIS transition. Continual use of these resources will help you reduce confusion, avoid obstacles, and ultimately achieve an efficient modernization program.

Modernization doesn’t have to be messy. Learn more about how OCM and data governance can benefit your agency or organization.

Truly effective preventive health interventions require starting early, as evidenced by the large body of research and the growing federal focus on the role of Medicaid in addressing Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).

Focusing on early identification of SDoH and ACEs, CMS recently announced its Integrated Care for Kids (InCK) model and will release the related Notice of Funding Opportunity this fall.

CMS describes InCK as a child-centered approach that uses community-based service delivery and alternative payment models (APMs) to improve and expand early identification, prevention, and treatment of priority health concerns, including behavioral health issues. The model’s goals are to improve child health, reduce avoidable inpatient stays and out-of-home placement, and create sustainable APMs. Such APMs would align payment with care quality and support provider/payer accountability for improved child health outcomes by using care coordination, case management, and mobile crisis response and stabilization services.

State Medicaid agencies have many things to consider when evaluating this funding opportunity. Building on current efforts and innovations, building or leveraging strong partnerships with community organizations, incentivizing evidence-based interventions, and creating risk stratification of the target population are critical parts of the InCK model. Here are three additional areas to consider:

1. Data. States will need information for early identification of children in the target population. State agencies?like housing, justice, child welfare, education, and public health have this information?and external organizations—such as childcare, faith-based, and recreation groups—are also good sources of early identification. It is immensely complicated to access data from these disparate sources. State Medicaid agencies will be required to support local implementation by providing population-level data for the targeted geographic service area.

• Data collection challenges include a lack of standardized measures for SDoH and ACEs, common data field definitions, or consistent approaches to data classification; security and privacy of protected health information; and IT development costs.
• Data-sharing agreements with internal and external sources will be critical for state Medicaid agencies to develop, while remaining mindful of protected health information regulations.
• Once data-sharing agreements are in place, these disparate data sources, with differing file structures and nomenclature, will require integration. The integrated data must then be able to identify and risk-stratify the target population.

For any evaluative approach or any APM to be effective, clear quality and outcome measures must be developed and adopted across all relevant partner organizations.

2. Eligibility. Reliable, integrated eligibility and enrollment systems are crucial points of identification and make it easier to connect to needed services.

• Applicants for one-benefit programs should be screened for eligibility for all programs they may need to achieve positive health outcomes.
• Any agency at which potential beneficiaries appear should also have enrollment capability, so it is easier to access services.

3. Payment models. State Medicaid agencies may cover case management services and/or targeted case management as well as health homes; leverage Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, and Treatment (EPSDT) services; and modify managed care organization contract language to encourage, incent, and in some cases, require services related to the InCK model and SDoH. Value-based payment models, already under exploration in numerous states, include four basic approaches:

• Pay for performance—provider payments are tied directly to specific quality or efficiency indicators, including health outcomes under the provider organization’s control. 
• Shared savings/risk—some portion of the organization’s compensation depends on the managed care entity achieving cost savings for the targeted patient population, while realizing specific health outcomes or quality improvement.
• Pay for success—payment is dependent upon achieving desired outcomes rather than underlying services.
• Capitated or bundled payments—managed care entities pay an upfront per member per month lump sum payment to an organization for community care coordination activities and link that with fee-for-service reimbursement for delivering value-added services.

By focusing on upstream prevention, comprehensive service delivery, and alternative payment models, the InCK model is a promising vehicle to positively impact children’s health. Though its components require significant thought, strategy, coordination, and commitment from state Medicaid agencies and partners, there are early innovators providing helpful examples and entities with vast Section 1115 waiver development and Medicaid innovation experience available to assist.

As state Medicaid agencies develop and implement primary and secondary prevention, cost savings can be achieved while meaningful improvements are made in children’s lives.

When an organization wants to select and implement a new software solution, the following process typically occurs:

1. The organization compiles a list of requirements for essential and non-essential (but helpful) functions.
2. The organization incorporates the requirements into an RFP to solicit solutions from vendors.
3. The organization selects finalist vendors to provide presentations and demonstrations.
4. The organization selects one preferred vendor based on various qualifications, including how well the vendor’s solution meets the requirements listed in the RFP. A contract between the organization and vendor is executed for delivery of the solution.
5. The preferred vendor conducts a gap analysis to see if there are gaps between the requirements and its solution—and discloses those gaps.
6. The preferred vendor resolves the gaps, which often results in change orders, cost adjustments, and delays.

Sound painful? It can be. Step #5—the gap analysis, and its post-contract timing—is the main culprit. However, without it, an organization will be unaware of solution shortcomings, which can lead to countless problems down the road. So what’s an organization to do?

A Possible Solution
One suggestion: Don’t wait until you choose the preferred vendor for a gap analysis. Have finalist vendors conduct pre-contract gap analyses for you.

You read that right. Pay each finalist vendor to visit your organization for a week to learn about your current and desired software needs. Then pay them to develop and present a report, based on both the RFP and on-site discussions, which outlines how their solution will meet your current and desired software needs—as well as how they will meet any gaps. Among other things, a pre-contract gap analysis will help finalist vendors determine:

• Whether programming changes are necessary to meet requirements
• Whether functions can be provided through configuration setup, changes in database tables, or some other non-customized solution
• What workarounds will be necessary
• What functionalities they can't, or won't, provide

Select a preferred vendor based on both their initial proposal and solution report.
Of course, to save time and money, you could select only one finalist vendor for the pre-contract gap analysis. But having multiple finalist vendors creates a competitive environment that can benefit your organization, and can prevent your organization from having to go back to other vendors if you’re dissatisfied with the single finalist vendor’s proposal and solution report, or if contract negotiations prove unsuccessful.

Pros
You can set realistic expectations. By having finalist vendors conduct gap analyses during the selection process, they will gain a better understanding of your organization, and both your essential and nonessential software needs. In turn, your organization gets a better understanding of the functionality and limitations of the proposed solutions. This allows your organization to pinpoint costs for system essentials, including costs to address identified gaps. Your organization can also explore the benefits and costs of optional functions. Knowing the price breakdowns ahead of time will allow your organization to adjust its system requirements list.

You can reduce the need for, or pressure to accept, scope changes and change orders. Adding to, or deleting from, the scope of work after solution implementation is underway can create project delays and frustration. Nailing down gaps—and the preferred vendor’s solutions to meet those gaps—on the front end increases efficiency, helps to ensure best use of project resources, and minimizes unnecessary work or rework. It may also save you expense later on in the process.

Cons
You will incur additional up-front costs. Obviously, your organization will have to pay to bring finalist vendors on-site so they can learn the intricacies of your business and technical environment, and demonstrate their proposed solutions. Expenses will include vendors’ time, costs for transportation, lodging, and meals. These costs will need to be less than those typically incurred in the usual approach, or else any advantage to the modified gap analysis is minimized.

You might encounter resistance. Some finalist vendors might not be willing to invest the time and effort required to travel and conduct gap analyses for a system they may not be selected to implement. They will be more interested in the larger paycheck. Likewise, stakeholders in your own organization might feel that the required costs and time investments are impractical or unrealistic. Remind staff of the upfront investment and take note of which vendors are willing to do the same.

Most of us have been (or should have been) instructed to avoid using clichés in our writing. These overstated phrases and expressions add little value, and often only increase sentence length. We should also avoid clichés in our thinking, for what we think can often influence how we act.

Consider, for example, “death by committee.” This cliché has greatly — and negatively — skewed views on the benefits of committees in managing projects. Sure, sometimes committee members have difficulty agreeing with one another, which can lead to delays and other issues. In most cases, though, an individual can’t possibly oversee all aspects of a project, or represent all interests in an organization. Committees are vital for project success — and arguably the most important project committee is the steering committee.

What Exactly is a Steering Committee?
It is a group of high-level stakeholders that provides strategic direction for a project, and supports the project manager. Ideally, the group increases the chances for project success by closely aligning project goals to organizational goals. However, it is important to point out that the group’s top priority is project success.

The committee should represent the different departments and agencies affected by the project, but remain relatively small in size, chaired by someone who is not an executive sponsor of the project (in order to avoid conflicts of interest). While the project manager should serve on the steering committee, they should not participate in decision-making; the project manager’s role is to update members on the project’s progress, areas of concern, current issues, and options for addressing these issues.

Overall, the main responsibilities of a steering committee include:

1. Approving the Project Charter
2. Resolving conflicts between stakeholder groups
3. Monitoring project progress against the project management plan
4. Fostering positive communicating about the project within the organization
5. Addressing external threats and issues emerging outside of the project that could impact it
6. Reviewing and approving changes made to the project resource plan, scope, schedules, cost estimates, etc.

What Are the Pros and Cons of Utilizing a Steering Committee?
A group of executive stakeholders providing strategic direction should benefit any project. Because steering committee members are organizational decision-makers, they have the access and credibility to address tough issues that can put the project at a risk, and have the best opportunities to negotiate positive outcomes. In addition, steering committees can engage executive management, and make sure the project meshes with executive management’s vision, mission, and long-range strategic plan. Steering committees can empower project managers, and ensure that all departments and agencies are on the same page in regards to project status, goals, and expectations. In a 2009 article in Project Management Journal, authors Thomas G. Lechler and Martin Cohen concluded that steering committees are important to implementing and maintaining project management standards on an operational level — not only do steering committees directly support project success, they are instrumental in deriving value from an organization's investments in its project management system.

A steering committee is only as effective as it’s allowed to be. A poorly structured steering committee that lacks formal authority, clear roles, and clear responsibilities can impede the success of a project by being slow to respond to project issues. A proactive project manager can help the organization avoid this major pitfall by helping develop project documents, such as the governance document or project plan that clearly define the steering committee structure, roles, responsibilities and authority.

Steer Toward Success!
Steering committees can benefit your organization and its major projects. Yet understanding the roles and responsibilities — and pros and cons — is only a preliminary step in creating a steering committee. Need some advice on how to organize a steering committee? Want to learn more about steering committee best practices? Together, we can steer your project toward success.