Chapter 8 Product Evaluation Strategies and Support Standards

Chapter 8

Product Evaluation Strategies and Support Standards

Guide to Computer User Support, 3e 2

• How product standards emerged

• Common tools and methods analysts use to evaluate and select computer products

• How organizations develop and implement product standards

Learning Objectives


User Support Rolein Product Standards

• Support workers often have expertise to evaluate competing products many employees do not have• Eliminates duplication of effort if many employees

individually evaluate products

• Support employees can act as liaison between users and IT staff to represent viewpoints of each group


• Product standards are lists of hardware, operating systems, network and applications software products selected to meet the needs of end users

• During 1980s

• Significant incompatibility among computer products

• Incompatible platforms were viewed as a marketing advantage

How Product Standards Emerged


• Limited ability to transfer data between systems and between users

• Excessive inventory of parts required to support multiple vendors’ systems

• Difficulty to train and equip hardware service technicians

• User skills not transferable to other systems

• Increased cost to support incompatible systems• Support staff couldn’t be experts on all systems

• Training had to be targeted to specific platforms

Problems Caused byProduct Incompatibility


• During 1980s, to reduce acquisition and support costs, companies began to• standardize on a few selected hardware platforms designed to

meet users’ needs

• adopt standard operating systems, and in the 1990s, standard network operating systems

• limit the choice of application software to a few standard application packages in each software category

Early Development ofProduct Standards


• Product evaluation is a process of researching and analyzing computer product features, capabilities, and suitability to solve specific user needs

• Product evaluation process1. Collect product information

2. Test, compare, and evaluate advantages and disadvantages of competing products

3. Make decisions or recommendations

Methods for Evaluating and Selecting Computer Products


• Vendor literature, marketing information, Web sites, and user manuals

• Demonstrations and evaluation software

• Product reviews and comparison articles in computer periodicals and in e-zines on the Web• An e-zine is an electronic magazine organized like a print

publication, but distributed via the Internet

• Opinions from industry experts in trade publications and Internet news groups

• Opinions of employees who have experience with various products

Resources Available to Help Evaluate Computer Products


Sample Sources of Product Information: Web sites


Sample Sources of Product Information: Trade Publications


• Computing Review

• InfoWorld

• MacWorld

• MaximumPC

• Network Computing

• PC Magazine

• PCWorld

• Smart Computing

• Tom’s Hardware Guide

• ZDNet

Industry (Trade) Periodicals that Publish Product Comparisons


Software Evaluations

• A software evaluation copy permits support staff to• try out a product’s features

• assess a product’s ability to meet user needs

• Software evaluation copies• Distributed via

• CD-ROM

• Internet download

• May have limited features

• May operate for a limited trial period


• Industry standard or best-selling products

• Products used by competitors

• Benchmarks

• Weighted point evaluation method

• Request for proposal (RFP)

• Acknowledged subjective criteria

Product Decision-making Tools


• Industry standard products are computer products that are market leaders in sales

Not really a “standard” defined by an independent organization, such as the American National Standards Institute (ANSI)

• Advantages

• Can reduce support costs

• Likely to be targeted by trade book publishers, training materials developers, and support service vendors

• Disadvantages

• May not meet needs of specialized users

• Standards based on market share change over time

Industry StandardBest-selling Products


• Get user input before making software selection decision

• Find out which products end users have experience with

• Identify advantages and disadvantages of competing products for specialized tasks

• Learn whether users have preferences among products

Adopting Industry Standard orBest-selling Products


• Competitors may have thoroughly researched the market and identified strategic reasons for adopting products, especially in niche markets• A niche or vertical market is a software market that is highly

specialized to a specific industry

• Example: software for title companies`

• Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of products that competitors use

Products Competitors Use


• Benchmark is an objective test used to compare the capabilities of competing products• Benchmarks are unbiased because they use objective

evaluation criteria that are not influenced by personal opinion

• Benchmarks try to eliminate extraneous variables that could bias the results of a product comparison

Benchmarks


Benchmarks (continued)

• Benchmarks can be used to evaluate• Hardware

• Speed

• Capacity

• Software

• User productivity

• Vendors that provide hardware and software benchmarks• Business Applications Performance (BAPCO)

• PassMark

• Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation

• VeriTest


• Weighted Point Evaluation Method uses several evaluation criteria of predefined importance to arrive at a numerical score for each product

• also called Kepner-Tregoe method

• Goal: to make the evaluation and selection process as objective as possible

• Treat competing products equally

• Eliminate favoritism or bias among evaluators

• Force evaluators to specify in advance the important factors in evaluation

Weighted Point Evaluation Method


Steps in Weighted Point Evaluation Method

1. Decide on evaluation criteria

2. Determine importance of each criterion

3. Rate each product against all evaluation criteria

4. Compute average rating for each product for each criterion

5. Weight the product rating by the importance of the criterion

6. Compute the total rating for each product

7. Compare product ratings

Guide to Computer User Support, 3e 21 continued

Examples of Criteria Used in Weighted Point Evaluation Method


Example of Weighted Point Evaluation Results


• Request for Proposal (RFP) is a product selection or competitive bidding procedure that uses objective criteria to select among products proposed by vendors• Often used as the basis for awarding a contract to provide

computer products

• May be a legal requirement for computer selection in public agencies

• An objective product and vendor selection tool

The Request for Proposal (RFP)


1. Conduct a needs analysis2. Develop a purchase specification 3. Define

• decision criteria

• importance of each criterion

4. Write the RFP document5. Send the RFP to prospective vendors6. Receive vendor proposals

• describes how vendor’s products address user requirements

• bid price

7. Analyze vendor responses to the RFP• often uses weighted point evaluation tools

8. Select a vendor and award the contract

continued

Primary Steps in the RFP Process


• Subjective evaluation criteria are factors that are not directly related to the fit between product features and user needs

• Based on:

• personal relationships

• convenience

• personal preferences

• traditional practices

• Are neither measurable nor repeatable from one evaluator to another

Subjective Evaluation Criteria


• Help control user support costs by limiting the number of hardware and software options users can choose

• May offer options to balance two extremes• One-size fits all

• Buy whatever you want

• Often adopted by larger organizations with a substantial investment in computer technology because the potential for waste is so large

Product Support Standards


• Company computer culture

• Historic computer traditions

• Product standards committee is a group which defines computer product standards and coordinates their use

• Composed of• support specialists

• end users

• technical support staff

• management

How Organizations Develop Computer Product and Support Standards


Changes in Computer Product Standards

• Changes in computer product standards may be met with user resistance• Users are comfortable with existing standard

• If it ain’t broke, why fix it?

• Changes in standards should• be discussed with users

• involve users in decisions


Computer Use Standards

• Acceptable use guidelines are policies adopted by an organization about how users are permitted and not permitted to use computer systems• Activities that are prohibited by organizational policy

• Activities that are illegal


• Adoption and implementation of product and service standards is influenced by:

–Investment in existing hardware and software

–Continual arrival of new products, services, and product upgrades

• Conversion to new standards• can result in loss of employee productivity during transition

period

• can be phased in over time

How Organizations Implement Computer Product Standards


Criteria Used to Update Product Standards

• New products offer technical improvements

• New product features may improve user productivity

• Employee preferences change over time

• New products offer cost savings

• New products may be compatible with or set new industry standards

• New products become best-sellers


• Requires analysis and evaluation of products and services

• Triggers potential support cost increases for installation, upgrades, training, documentation, trouble-shooting, and help desk services

Adopting or Modifying Technology Standards


• In order to reduce computer product and support costs and increase compatibility, many organizations began to develop product standards during the 1980s

• User support staff often evaluate computer products and services to be able to make recommendations to users that will meet their needs

• Support staff use a variety of information resources to evaluate computer products

Chapter Summary


Chapter Summary (continued)• Aids to product evaluation and selection decisions

• Industry standards

• Best-selling products

• Products used by competitors

• Benchmarks

• Weighted Point Evaluation Method

• Request for Proposals (RFP)

• Product standards are based on

• company culture or tradition

• decisions by a product standards committee

• Organizations also adopt acceptable use policies to communicate what uses are and are not permitted

Documents

Chapter 8 Product Evaluation Strategies and Support Standards