You instinctively know when your business or department has a problem. When there is something that just isn't working as you want it to. You also know when you feel you are missing a trick or when there is an opportunity to do something better and perhaps to take a step ahead of your rivals. The question is - when you have this 'need' or 'opportunity', how do you know which technology and which technology vendor can help?
There is an assumption amongst the IT community that as a business leader, you know the technology that is available to you. That you will have heard about it on social media. That you will have seen emails flood into your inbox. That you may have read an interesting report or analyst opinion. But invariably that's a wrong assumption. It's likely that those emails, reports, and adverts may have been available to you, but you didn't give them any attention because they were not relevant to you at that time - and why would you? But now you have a need - now they are really important, so how do you connect your business need to the options that are available to you.
It is this requirement that has led Viewpoint Analysis to establish our Technology Options and Ideas service. Through our Technology Ideas Workshop, we look to understand your thoughts, write them up as a problem statement in vendor-friendly language - and then approach the vendors that we know (as technology industry experts) can help you. It's then for the vendors to show how they can meet your need. You just sit back and listen and see if the options that you hear can satisfy your requirement.
It is designed to be quick - we know that your problem (or opportunity) is in the here and the now. It doesn't need a long market investigation (our recent survey suggests it takes an average of 6-12 months to conduct a technology market selection!) - we are looking for who can solve the problem, how they would solve it, and how much it will cost. That doesn't need to be difficult or time-consuming.
We also have the choice of ANY technology and ANY technology vendor in the global marketplace. We are not a Systems Integrator. We are not a Value Added Reseller. It means that we do not have a vested interest to select any particular technology or IT vendor. We work on behalf of your business to find the very best options available to you.
If we can help, drop us a line at contactus@viewpointanalysis or download our whitepaper talking about how you can do an initial market assessment at the following link: https://resources.viewpointanalysis.com/creating-a-longlist