Poor technology planning costs enterprises millions.
This lifecycle phase includes needs assessments, technology selection, and procurement. Without an optimized and collaborative approach to these activities, organizations make errors that negatively impact the entire technology lifecycle. These effects reach far beyond the IT department, disrupting operations and producing long-term organizational inefficiencies.
Enterprises can avoid making costly mistakes by adopting practical, proactive strategies for successfully managing the design and sourcing of their connectivity infrastructure. Effective strategies ensure solutions alignment, cost-effectiveness, and future scalability.
This article breaks down the most common design and sourcing pitfalls and explores actionable solutions for avoiding those costly mistakes.
Let’s get started.
Organizations that fail to complete accurate needs assessments face serious consequences. Think misaligned solutions, wasted resources, low user adoption, and even business disruptions.
Take this example: A corporation purchases a CRM system only to realize its features don’t address the sales team’s core customer management issues. This leads to a demand for additional solutions and wasted resources.
Enterprises gain crucial insights and strengthen technology lifecycle management by engaging various stakeholders in needs assessments. So, evaluations of current systems and future needs should always compile a well-balanced range of perspectives. They should also include four components:
Construct surveys that include questions about:
Security needs
Employee and user experience
Effectiveness of current tech
Inefficiencies and productivity issues
Innovation opportunities
Build clear, straightforward questions around KPIs and organizational goals. It is also recommended to include a blend of question formats.
Distribute questionnaires to stakeholders such as procurement specialists, customers, and department heads. Use digital tools—like survey platforms and AI-powered analysis platforms—to optimize distribution and analysis.
Leverage these surveys to develop an overarching understanding of tech needs and locate problem areas.
Strategically develop a set of questions with both structured and unstructured inquiries. Conduct and record interviews with key stakeholders such as business unit leaders and executives before condensing those interviews into concise summaries.
Use them to glean comprehensive, detailed insights on tech needs.
Conduct in-depth market research by:
Determining objectives
Selecting research methods
Ethically collecting data from diverse, reliable sources
Analyzing data
Developing a report with key findings
Involve stakeholders every step of the way. For example, engage executive leadership when defining objectives and ask compliance teams for help selecting research methods.
Leverage reports to assess tech needs within surrounding contexts and highlight potential solutions.
Create detailed, accurate budget projections by:
Identifying expenses
Planning for contingencies
Analyzing historical data
Using software tools and financial models to generate projections
Don’t leave this solely to financial analysts — involve procurement specialists, project managers, and IT leaders. Use final projections to conduct cost-benefit analyses and prioritize procurement initiatives.
Selecting technology without properly evaluating it produces unfavorable outcomes, from widespread performance issues to vendor lock-in.
Here are a few common sourcing errors:
Conducting unbalanced needs assessments
Engaging in biased vendor relations
Focusing solely on cost
Ignoring integration challenges
Not considering future needs
These common mistakes lead to subpar IT planning and bad technology procurement decisions.
Picture an e-commerce company choosing an inventory management system based on vendor reputation alone. Leaders later realize that the system doesn’t integrate with existing platforms and doesn’t offer essential scalability options. As a result, productivity plummets.
Enterprises must adopt a vendor-agnostic mindset. This impartial approach helps enterprises thoroughly evaluate software vendors and other third-party partners. In turn, ensuring they choose the right solutions with the perfect partner.
Here are three essential tools for evaluating offerings from third-party partners.
An RFP is a document that formally solicits bids for solutions. To create one, procurement specialists explicitly list technology requirements, expectations, and contract terms.
RFPs provide a systematic framework for vendor procurement. They are vital for getting better proposals and streamlining the solutions comparison process.
This useful grid presents a side-by-side view of multiple vendors, featuring columns for selected assessment criteria and vendor scores in each column.
To make one, select criteria based on enterprise needs. Examples include scalability, cost, and security. Prioritize and “weigh” those criteria based on importance. Collect data and information on vendors and solutions.
Give each vendor a score for each criterion factor, then score providers overall. Use the data-driven results to compare and assess potential vendors.
A POC—a demonstration that a tech solution works—tests and confirms the viability of vendor offerings. IT teams use them to validate that solutions will fulfill their business needs before they make any choices. Without a POC, organizations risk devastating technology lifecycle management mistakes.
Efficient, optimized procurement processes are crucial. Operating without them causes damaging delays, cost overruns, and service provider relationship issues.
Consider a manufacturing company functioning with fragmented, chaotic procurement workflows. Untracked spending and unmonitored acquisition timelines result in unexpected budget overruns. The lack of available funds causes update delays and service disruptions.
Fragmented procurement processes often lead to deficient contract management, which in turn can severely impact a company's bottom line. World Commerce & Contracting estimates that this leads to revenue losses reaching over 9% annually.
Let’s discuss two strategies leaders use to improve procurement workflows and minimize waste.
With well-designed tools and technologies, developing and maintaining clear technology procurement workflows is much easier.
Contract management systems, for example, simplify contract creation, monitoring, and renewal. Inventory management tools streamline IT asset tracking and inventory. Procurement software centralizes and automates procurement processes.
Securing outstanding contracts ensures service provider accountability, scalability, and long-term cost-effectiveness. It also optimizes technology lifecycle planning by preventing vendor lock-in, disruptions, and misaligned solutions.
Well-negotiated agreements feature:
Favorable pricing
Transparent terms
Clear service-level agreements (SLAs)
Change management solutions
Termination clauses
Ultimately, negotiating favorable contracts empowers companies to maintain control over their technology investments, ensuring alignment with their strategic objectives and maximizing long-term value.
Poor technology design and sourcing costs enterprises millions. To help organizations avoid costly mistakes and achieve long-term success, Advantage Communications Group employs a Technology Lifecycle Optimization Methodology℠.
This unique, client-tested process is built on several key stages:
Design: Configuring purposeful solutions that meet or exceed industry standards and each client's unique needs.
Source: Leveraging over 800 global providers to deliver world-class services at competitive price points.
Install: Overseeing the deployment of all solutions using our team of project management experts.
Operate: Supporting your team's daily operations with our powerful Command Center℠ platform.
Validate: Analyzing inventory to ensure unparalleled contract, expense, and payment accuracy.
This methodology drives value at every stage of an enterprise’s technology journey, a topic we’ll dive deeper into throughout the technology lifecycle management series.
IT planning and procurement errors lead to vendor lock-in, widespread inefficiencies, and wasted budgets. A proactive, efficient approach to the design and sourcing of leading connectivity solutions prevents those errors and helps enterprises achieve overall success.
Take control of your assets with assistance from Advantage. By combining expert solutions engineers, proven processes, and an all-in-one management platform, Advantage solves the complex challenges of implementing a high-value connectivity strategy.
Start the conversation today to ensure business continuity and future scalability.