Information Systems Procurement

Information systems procurement is a challenging process. It will involve a number of steps, from defining the requirements, through create an invitation to tender through to signing a contract and moving to implementation. We may be procuring an application such as an ERP. This will involve defining software, hardware along with aspects of integration, warranty and support. Along the way it will involve the evaluation of proposals and attending demonstrations by suppliers. Procurement of IT can be done centrally by IT department, or by user departments (fairly rare, I guess) or it can be part of general procurement in the organisation.

Tasks

Question 1. Define and explain the expected steps in procuring an IT system for a large organisation. Research some examples of IT procurement processes for organisations. Evaluate and compare. What do you think are the most critical steps? Using a case study, illustrate some of the problems encountered in IT system procurement.

Question 2. Explain the difference between the IT procurement process and the IT procurement policy. Gather some IT procurement policies from various organisations and provide an analysis of them. Explain the benefits and problems around an IT procurement policy. Compare centralised versus decentralised procurement. Provide recommendation for why centralised procurement is a good idea in a large organisation

Question 3. The Invitation to Tender. The invitation to tender is the first step in procurement. Describe the purpose of the Invitation to Tender. Outline a structure or template for an invitation to tender.Find an example of an ITT and critically review it. What are the problem and issues that need to be considered in developing an invitation to tender?Explain how an ITT for procuring software and hardware might differ from an ITT to procure IT services.

Question 4. Evaluation. Once we have a short list of suppliers to provide a software application - ERP is a good example - we need to evaluate short listed suppliers. By this point we have an ITT and the supplier's responses. How do we evaluate? Identify the purpose and expected outcome of an evaluation step. Describe with examples the methods might you use? (Include demonstration, presentations, trials, etc.). Explain how the user or customer can be involved. Explain how the evaluation process will result in the selection of a system and critical appraise the place of cost, or rather taking the cheapest offering in the evaluation process.