This website helps you throughout the outsourcing & supplier management journey.
Document templates
All document templates are free of charge and aren’t subject to copyright.
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Overview
The agile outsourcing project simplifies how organizations source/procure mid to large service packages. The major novelty is the collaborative solution development in iterative steps with the suppliers. This approach reduces unnecessary work in the form of long requirements and statement of work documents and includes the expertise and experience of the supplier instead. The agile outsourcing project builds on different ways of working with suppliers and is independent of the jurisdiction or other legal requirements.
Internal form
Section selection section
- What’s the outsourcing project identifier?
Internal document feedback section
- Which internal document do you provide feedback on?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend this document to others?
- What do you like about this document?
- What can the author improve about this document?
Internal decision feedback section
- Which decision are you referring to?
Supplier document analysis section
- Which internal document do you provide feedback on?
- Which supplier are you referring to?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend this supplier document to others?
- What do you like about this supplier document?
- What don’t you like about this supplier document?
Requirements analysis section
- What are your expectations about this outsourcing project?
- What are your high-level requirements regarding the services/solution we source/procure?
- What are your requirements regarding the outsourcing approach we choose?
- What are your questions about this outsourcing project's “agile” part?
- What challenges and risks regarding this outsourcing project do you see?
Sourcing strategy analysis section
- What service do we want to source/procure externally instead of producing internally?
- What supplier division do we want to make, for whatever reason?
- What other wants and needs must we take into consideration?
Service/solution strategy analysis section
- What service/solution package do we want to source/procure?
- What are the high-level service/solution package requirements?
Supplier research analysis section
- Who are the suppliers you recommend considering in this outsourcing project?
- Who are the suppliers you don’t want to consider in this outsourcing project? Why not?
Supplier reference checks feedback section
- Which supplier are you referring to?
- Are you satisfied with this supplier reference check result?
- What additional feedback do you have?
Solution design analysis (round 1 of n) section
- Which supplier are you referring to?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend this supplier and its solution to others?
- What additional feedback do you have?
Negotiation feedback section
- Which supplier are you referring to?
- Which round of negotiations are you referring to?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend the negotiations with this supplier to others?
- What additional feedback do you have?
Contract signature analysis section
- How do we want to celebrate the contract closure?
Cooperation kick-off analysis section
- What are the necessary steps to prepare for the start of the cooperation?
Project evaluation feedback section
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend this outsourcing project to others?
- What additional feedback do you have?
External form
Supplier response request section
- What’s the outsourcing project identifier?
- What’s your organization?
- What’s your name?
- What’s your email address?
- What kind of supplier response are you submitting?
- Please enter your full-text response
- What's the file's download link?
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Job & Outcomes
- Why do we need an initial definition of the job-to-be-done and outcomes?
- What is the concept of job and outcomes?
- How do we align on the job-to-be-done?
- How do we align on the outcomes?
Observation
- How do we observe?
- How do we observe internally?
- How do we observe externally?
- How do we structure our observations?
- How do we align our observations?
Interview & Survey
- How do interviews and surveys help us?
- How do we conduct interviews?
- How do we conduct surveys?
- How do we structure our observations?
- How do we align our observations?
Root cause analysis
- What is a root-cause analysis?
- How do we conduct a root-cause analysis?
- What are analysis and facilitation tools?
- How do we select tools?
- How do we structure our observations?
- How do we align our observations?
Brainstorming & Workshops
- What is brainstorming?
- How can brainstorming help?
- How do we conduct a brainstorming session?
Capability maturity assessment
- What is a capability maturity assessment?
- How can a capability maturity assessment help?
- What are capability maturity assessment frameworks are available?
- How do we create our own capability maturity assessment framework?
- How do we conduct a capability maturity assessment?
Business case
- What is a business case?
- How can a business case help?
- How can a business case lead into the wrong direction?
- How do we create a business case?
- How do we structure our business case?
Elicitation & Communication
- How do we elicit the facts?
- How do we align on the facts?
- How do we communicate the facts?
Agile solution implementation
- How do we design a minimum viable solution?
- Why is it not necessary to design a full-blown solution?
- How do we test our solution?
- How do we implement the solution?
- How do people adopt the implemented solution?
- How do we support people to adopt the implemented solution?
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Innovative people requirements
- What are our knowledge requirements for innovative people?
- What are our skill requirements for innovative people?
- What are our experience requirements for innovative people?
- What is the right growth mindset attitude?
Organizational image improvement
- What are our organizational work image improvement activities?
- What are our organizational team image improvement activities?
- What are our organizational salary image improvement activities?
- What are our organizational value image improvement activities?
- What are our organizational innovation image improvement activities?
- What are our organizational coaching image improvement activities?
People search
- What are our online platforms to search for people?
- What are our offline networks to search for people?
- Which employee connections can we use to search for people?
- What are our online events to search for people?
- In which offline events can we search for people?
- In which offline career conferences can we search for people?
- In which universities and colleges can we search for people?
- Which competitors can we search for people?
People referrals
- What are our motivations to refer people?
- What are our incentives to refer people?
- What are our networks to refer people?
- What are our people referral practices?
Basic interview questions
- What promising things did you learn about in school / your current company?
- What are some interesting things happening at other companies?
- What are the most important trends in our industry?
- Who are our most promising competitors?
- What are our competitors doing and planning?
- What are some possible disruptive innovations for us in the future?
Advanced interview questions
- What are innovations have you imagined, developed, implemented before?
- What is the business idea you are working in your free time on?
- What would you tell our CEO to change about our business?
- How do you handle setbacks and failures? How do you motivate yourself?
- How do you handle the improper support of your employer of your ideas?
People support questions
- How can we support you with the right leadership?
- How can we support you with the right coaching?
- How can we support you with the right mentoring / sponsoring?
- How can we support you with the right feedback?
- How can we support you with the right people community?
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Entrepreneur hiring
- How do we define an entrepreneurial experience?
- How do we measure an entrepreneurial experience?
- How do we measure people who have only ideas but do not realize them?
- How do we define the domains of entrepreneurial experience we are looking for?
- How do we explain our innovation approach as a slow corporation to entrepreneurs?
- How do we motivate entrepreneurs to join our organization?
- How do we explain the entrepreneurial freedom of our organization?
Entrepreneur support
- How do we support our people in ideating and testing new business models?
- How do we support our people in building a new business?
- How do we motivate our people to build a new business?
- How do we explain to our people that we support entrepreneurship and building new businesses?
- How do we define rules to build new businesses?
- How do we work together with our entrepreneurs?
- How do we support entrepreneurs in their transition from employees of our business to partners of our business?
Shared interests
- How do we analyze the new business in terms of strategic impact to our core business?
- How do we assess the new business in terms of sustaining vs. disruptive and incremental vs. radical innovation?
- How do we copycat the new business of our own people?
Investing
- How do we invest in a similar new business?
- How do we invest in the new business of our entrepreneurs?
- How do we find the right venture capital partners to co-invest in the new business?
- How do we guide the entrepreneurs through the investment process?
- How do we define our expectations of working together?
- How do we participate in the growth of the new business?
- How do we support the lead investor leading the investment?
- How do we position ourselves as the trusted advisor of our entrepreneurs?
- How do we evaluate and improve the investment process for future entrepreneurs?
Venture capital
- How do we fund leaving entrepreneurs with venture capital?
- How do we work together with venture capital firms?
- How do we develop an incubator/accelerator to support leaving entrepreneurs?
- How do we motivate entrepreneurs to use our help in building their new business?
- How do we work together with external incubators/accelerators to support our entrepreneurs?
Business development
- How do we support the new business with our customer acquisition channels?
- How do we use known market experts to spread the word?
- How do we develop complementary business models and solutions to grow together?
- How do we share best practices with the new business?
- How do we make the gained knowledge and experience available for future entrepreneurs?
- How do we find other possible entrepreneurs throughout our business?
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Team
- What is the team size?
- Who is the expert with the business vision?
- Who is the owner of the results of the Innovation Sprint?
- What are the required functions to make the team cross-functional?
- Who are the Innovation Sprint team members?
- Who are the guest experts?
Roles
- Who is the decision-maker?
- Who is the facilitator?
- Who is the time keeper?
- Who is the scribe?
- Who recruits the interviewees?
Decision-making
- What are the practices to make decisions?
- What are the practices to keep discussions concise?
- What are the practices to share different opinions?
- What are the practices to facilitate decisions?
Sprint approach
- What is the duration of the Innovation Sprint?
- What is the daily time commitment?
- What is the frequency of breaks?
- What are the agenda items?
- What are the practices to share the agenda with the team?
Working space
- What is the workshop room?
- What are the collaboration devices?
- What are the stationery supplies?
- What are the practices to supply food & beverages?
- What are the practices to procure the necessary supplies?
Collaboration rules
- What are the practices for 'zero distraction'?
- What are the practices to use electronic devices (phones, laptops, tablets, etc.)?
- What are the practices to respect time limits?
Expectations
- What are the expectations towards product development?
- What are the expectations towards organizational development?
- What are the expectations towards learning?
- What are the expectations towards team collaboration?
- What is the challenge we expect to solve?
Business goals
- Define our reason for running the Innovation Sprint.
- Define our goal for six months.
- Define our goal for a year.
- Define our goal for three years.
- Define our long-term goal.
Customer definition
- What is the industry branch of the customer? (B2B vs. B2C)
- What are the customer's current practices to improve and innovate?
- What are the intellectual capabilities of the customer?
- What are the demographics?
- What are the experiences with existing solutions?
- What is the available budget?
Jobs definition
- What is the core functional job?
- What is the related secondary job?
- What is the related tertiary job?
- What is the emotional job?
Outcomes definition
- What are the core functional job outcomes?
- What are the related secondary job outcomes?
- What are the related tertiary job outcomes?
- What are the emotional job outcomes?
Sprint target
- Who is the most important customer?
- What is the customer's most critical experience?
- Who are the end-users?
- What are the Sprint targets?
Expert selection
- Who are the business experts?
- Who are the product experts?
- Who are the customer experts?
- Who are the technology experts?
- Who are the marketing experts?
Interview structure
- What is the introductory message to the guest experts?
- What are the questions for the guest experts?
- What are the interview summary practices?
- What is the duration of the interviews?
- What are the note-taking practices?
Business expert interview
- Who are the customers we target with our new product?
- What are the customer needs we like to address with the new product?
- What is the innovation for the customers?
- What are the challenges we need to overcome to successfully deploy the new product?
- What are the opportunities for our organization in the next year?
- What is the journey of our organization in the next five years?
Product expert interview
- What are the reasons to launch the new product?
- What are the new product launch practices?
- What are the commercial success criteria for new products?
- What are the new product launch risks?
- What were the failures at launching products in the past?
- What were the previous attempts at offering similar solutions in the past?
Customer expert interview
- Who are the existing customers?
- What is the anticipated reaction to the new product from the existing customers?
- What are the technological innovations sought by the existing customers?
- What are the practices to reach the new customers with the new product?
- What are the current industry/market trends?
- What are the market opportunities for the new product?
- What are the obstacles to the new product?
Technology expert interview
- What are the technical requirements for the new product?
- What are the technical complications related to the product?
- What are the technology innovations to be adopted as part of the new product?
- What are the customer data privacy practices?
- What are the security risks related to product deployment?
- What are the security risk mitigation practices?
Marketing expert interview
- What are the insights from researching the market?
- What are the trends in the market?
- What are the usual competitors of the new product?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the competitors?
- What are the new product marketing practices?
- Which channels will be most effective for new product marketing?
Idea research
- What are the sources of inspiration?
- What are the inspiration search practices?
- What are the research practices?
- What are the idea selection criteria?
- What is the attitude towards copycatting?
Finding & Sharing
- What are the idea listing practices?
- What are the idea sharing practices?
- What are the idea presenting practices?
- What are the additional idea capturing practices?
- What are the team feedback practices?
Team dynamics
- What are the Sprint target splitting practices?
- What are the team division practices?
- What are the group work practices?
- What are the solution design practices?
Solution design
- What are the key information review practices?
- What are the idea generation practices?
- What are the variation sketching practices?
- What are the one-page outline practices?
- What are the possible one-page outline formats?
- What are the sketch contents?
Feedback sharing
- What are the solution approach presentation practices?
- What are the solution approach review practices?
- What are the solution approach presentation practices?
- What are the solution approach feedback sharing practices?
- What are the new idea capturing practices within the feedback session?
Solution to prototype
- What are the solution approach to prototype selection criteria?
- What are the solution selection criteria?
- What are the decision matrix criteria?
- What are the final choice practices?
Winning solutions
- What are the practices for solutions not selected for prototyping?
- What are the practices for the selected solutions that are irreconcilable?
Solution visualization
- What are the storyboard development practices?
- What is the storyboard content?
- What is the storyboard format?
- What is the opening scene?
- What are the prioritization practices?
- What are the storyboard decision-making practices?
Work distribution
- Who is the prototype designer?
- Who is the prototype assembler?
- Who is the written content creator?
- Who is the test data person in charge?
- Who is the prototype reviewer?
- Who is the interviewer?
Prototyping
- What are the prototype development practices?
- What are the right prototype development attitudes?
- What are the possible prototype formats?
- What are the task distribution practices?
- What are the work distribution and tracking practices?
- What are the prototype quality practices?
Showcasing
- What are the prototype verification practices?
- What are the prototype presentation practices?
- What are the gap handling practices?
- What are the prototype confirmation practices?
Interviewee recruitment
- What are the interviewee search practices?
- What are the interviewee selection criteria?
- What is the right number of interviewees?
- What is the offering for the interviewee's participation?
Environment setup
- What are the interview meeting preparation practices?
- What is the interview location?
- What are the required hardware and software components?
Interview structure
- What is the welcome statement?
- What are the trustful rapport practices?
- What are the prototype presentation practices?
- What are the prototype user test practices?
- What are the interview summary practices?
Interview summary
- What do you find useful about this product?
- What do you find out of place about this product?
- How do you describe your experience with this product?
- How would you compare the tested product with what you already use?
- What would you like to improve about this product?
- How do you explain this product in your own words?
Feedback sharing
- What are the interview note-taking practices?
- What are the user feedback discussion practices?
- What are the user feedback summary practices?
Interpretation
- What are the interview interpretation practices?
- What are the interview failure handling practices?
- What are the flawed success prevention practices?
- What are the clear success handling practices?
Follow-up
- What are the innovation sprint follow-up practices?
- Who are the stakeholders that will confirm new product buy-in?
- What are the stakeholder result presentation practices?
- What are the untested idea and solution approach practices?
- What are the immediate actions after the Sprint?
- What are the team follow-up practices?
Success sharing
- Who is the primary communicator of the successful Innovation Sprint?
- Who are the stakeholders to communicate to?
- Who are the other teams to communicate to?
- Who are the other organizations to communicate to?
- What is the message?
- What is the media and format to be used?
Innovation sprint scaling
- What are the Innovation Sprint scaling practices of our team?
- What are the Innovation Sprint scaling practices of other teams?
- What are the Innovation Sprint scaling practices of partnering organizations?
- What are the Innovation Sprint improvement practices?
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Customer definition
- How do we define our customers?
- How do we define the needs of our customers?
- How do we define the demographics of our customers? (e.g., gender, age, ethnic background, or company demographics such as size, market, revenue, profitability)
- How do we classify different groups of customers? (e.g., users, influencers, decision-makers, buyers, procurement, maintenance)
- How do we create personas for target people?
- How do we define possible cognitive biases when defining personas?
Job & Outcomes
- How do we define the core job?
- How do we define secondary jobs?
- How do we understand the customer perspective?
- How do we define outcomes?
- How do we create the job map?
- How do we define alternative job maps?
Segments of opportunity
- How do we find segments of opportunity?
- How do we create the survey?
- How do we record the data?
- How do we use factor analysis and cluster analysis to segment the market?
- How do we create the profiling questions?
- How do we find overserved and underserved customers?
- How do we calculate the data?
- How do we present the data?
Competitive analysis
- How do we find the value proposition?
- How do we define unmet needs?
- How do we conduct the competitive analysis?
- How do we create the survey?
- How do we record the data?
- How do we present the data?
- How do we calculate the data?
Hidden growth opportunities
- How do we target hidden growth opportunities?
- How do we target the overserved desired outcomes?
- How do we target the underserved desired outcomes?
- How do we calculate the opportunity score?
- How do we present the opportunity landscape?
- How do we create an opportunity landscape?
- How do we create an innovation strategy?
- How do we develop new solutions based on the innovation strategy?
- How do we add / cut features?
- How do we define the impact on our business model?
- How do we define the impact on our pricing system?
Market strategy
- How do we create our market strategy?
- How do we define the right offerings for each segment?
- How do we communicate the value propositions of our solution?
- How do we market and sell our solution?
- How do we structure our organization according to the different solutions and segments?
- How do we add features from our competitors?
- How do we create new solutions?
- How do we close offering gaps?
- How do we develop new features?
- How do we create ancillary solutions?
- How do we build a platform to systematize the different solution offerings?
Solution approaches
- How do we define our strategic choices?
- How do we systematize our strategic choice?
- How do we build a better and more expensive solution that appeals to underserved customers?
- How do we build a better and less expensive solution that provides one solution for all customers?
- How do we build a worse performing and less expensive solution that appeals to over-served customers and non-consumers?
- How do we build a worse performing and more expensive solution that appeals to customers with limited alternatives, or customers in captured markets?
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Upfront investment
- How do we show users our long-term commitment?
- How do we estimate the amount of money we have to invest?
- How do we signal to the users the invested sum of money?
Single-sided solution
- How do we define the single-sided customers we build the platform for?
- How do we define the single-sided business model?
- How do we acquire users for the single-side solution?
- How do we release two-sided platform features?
- How do we pivot to the two-sided platform?
- How do we change our business by changing the solution from a one to a two-sided platform?
- How do we define the life cycle of the single-sided solution?
- How do we change the strategy of the single-sided solution after the two-sided solution is released?
Single-sided platform
- How do we combine both user groups into one?
- How do we define the business model of the single-sided platform?
- How do we define the common set of features for both sides?
- How do we find users to act as producers and consumers?
Existing platform
- How do we find existing platforms we can build on?
- How do we approach real-world communities?
- How do we define the subset of users?
- How do we analyze the challenges of the existing platforms?
- How do we determine features the users are missing on the existing platforms?
- How do we define the incremental better value for the defined subset of users?
- How do we attract the subset of users to use our solution?
- How do we facilitate the interaction of the target customers on the existing platform?
- How do we spread the word about our new solution on the existing platform?
- How do we hide our goal to build a new platform and steal the users from the existing platform?
Consumer incentivization
- How do we act as the producers for the consumers of the two-sided platform?
- How do we conceal the fact that we are the real producers of the platform?
- How do we show potential producers the outputs are being sold to real consumers?
- How do we attract real producers to overtake the role of the producers on the platform?
- How do we set the budget to incentivize the consumers?
Producer incentivization
- How do we act as the consumers for the producers of the two-sided platform?
- How do we conceal the fact that we are the real consumers of the platform?
- How do we show potential consumers that there are producers waiting to serve them?
- How do we attract real consumers to overtake the role of the consumers on the platform?
- How do we set the budget to incentivize the producers?
Existing consumers
- How do we get the producers to bring consumers to the platform?
- How do we create single-sided features for the producers?
- How do we incentivize producers to bring their existing consumers to the platform?
- How do we support the producers onboarding their consumers?
- How do we support producers to grow their business?
- How do we collaborate with producers?
Big bang
- How do we jump-start the platform with a big bang?
- How do we engage push marketing strategies to attract a high volume of interest?
- How do we handle the simultaneous onboarding of many users?
- How do we find possible events to launch our platform solution?
- How do we attract attendees of the event to use our platform solution?
- How do we advertise our platform solution at the event?
Micro market
- How do we start the micro market?
- How do we define the micro market?
- How do we attract users of the micro market?
- How do we facilitate network effects?
- How do we determine the right number of initial users?
- How do we facilitate transactions in the micro market?
- How do we define the initial features for the micro market?
- How do we bring existing offline connections to our online platform?
VIP users
- How do we define our VIP users?
- How do we attract our VIP users?
- How do we get our VIPs to act as influencers?
- How do we support VIP users to get their friends on our platform?
- How do we collaborate with the VIP users to develop our platform?
- How do we filter our early users for VIPs?
- How do we show early users our cooperation with the VIPs?
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Short-term profitability
- How do we design a business model based on immaterial services? (e.g. professional services, crafts)
- How do we design a business model with low market entry barriers?
- How do we design a business model with operations of a low learning curve?
- How do we design a business model with low marketing and sales costs?
- How do we design a business model with short-term profitability?
- How do we define our existing assets?
- How do we define the necessary assets to get to profitability with the new business model?
- How do we define a business model that is familiar to our target customers?
Service to subscription
- How do we create a standardized delivery process?
- How do we sell a budget to proactively advise the client?
- How do we develop a lease / rent business for hardware and software?
- How do we build a subscription business? (e.g. LinkedIn Learning, Gartner, industry newspaper)
- How do we build a software business?
- How do we build a platform business?
Scalable core
- How do we define our scalable core solution?
- How do we build the scalable core solution?
- How do we define the business model of the scalable core solution?
- How do we integrate the scalable core solution with our services business?
- How do we sell the core solution to other service providers?
- How do we ensure the customer operates the scalable core solution on its own without services?
- How do we demarcate the scalable core solution from complementary services?
- How do we build up a partner program for channel partners?
Core content
- How do we define the business model of the core content solution?
- How do we define the content architecture/structure?
- How do we integrate the core content solution with our services solution?
- How do we structure the content creation process?
- How do we market and sell the core content solution as a stand-alone offering?
Core software
- How do we create an add-on to an existing solution?
- How do we lower the development costs with modern software frameworks?
- How do we speed up the production of the core software solution?
- How do we integrate the core software solution with the service solution?
- How do we define the business model of the core software solution?
Minimum viable product
- How do we reduce the time for scalable core solution development?
- How do we define the minimum features to sell the scalable core solution?
- How do we find the target customers with the highest demand?
- How do we change the price while maturing the solution?
- How do we test the scalable core solution as part of our service solution?
Scalable services list
- How do we maximize the efficiency of our services?
- How do we maximize the hourly rate of our services?
- How do we build the services around the scalable core solution?
- How do we divide our people for solution development and professional services?
- How do we test the core solution with our services clients?
Licensing
- How do we license the scalable core solution to other service businesses?
- How do we counter conflicts of interests and disincentives?
- How do we offer 2nd and/or 3rd level support?
- How do we offer learning material?
- How do we ensure long-time commitment and support?
- How do we support service businesses in building up complementary content and services?
Consulting to solution
- How do we shift from consulting to solution development and support?
- How do we define our business model with the shift to solution development and support?
- How do we support our service customers while shifting to solution development and support?
- How do we support our partners licensing the solution?
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Virality
- How do we build a highly useful solution?
- How do we invent a new solution category?
- How do we simplify the existing solutions?
- How do we get people to recommend the solution?
- How do we promote the solution on existing platforms? (e.g., online social networks, industry associations)
- How do we incorporate network effects into the solution?
- How do we select the corresponding customer acquisition channels?
- How do we integrate influencers and/or market evangelists?
Zero inventory
- How do we build a platform instead of a pipe business?
- How do we drop-ship our products?
- How do we improve our forecast accuracy?
- How do we improve our supply reliability?
- How do we reduce our demand variability?
- How do we reduce our manufacturing lead times?
- How do we reduce our manufacturing lot sizes?
- How do we reduce our number of items to produce, store, and move?
- How do we reduce our order sizes?
- How do we reduce our supplier lead times?
Platform business model
- How do we create a platform business model?
- How do we create network effects?
- How do we solve the chicken-or-egg problem?
- How do we build a one-sided solution that we transform into a two-sided platform later on?
- How do we co-innovate with our suppliers and customers?
- How do we support the information needs of the participants in our market?
- How do we facilitate exchange in our market?
Low COGS
- How do we lower the costs of goods sold (COGS) to less than 5%?
- How do we develop solutions with a low cost of goods sold?
- How can we transform physical products / immaterial services into content/software/platform solutions?
- How do we lower the transaction costs with fully standardized and automated transactions?
- How do we standardize and automate our marketing and sales?
- How do we automate our customer support?
- How do we standardize our solution delivery?
- How do we standardize our pricing?
- How do we modularize our solution to meet different customer needs?
- How do we reduce our customer acquisition costs?
CAPEX reduction
- How do we operate CAPEX light?
- How do we hire freelancers, consultants, and temporary workers instead of our own internal employees?
- How do we use public-cloud services instead of buying hardware and software?
- How do we outsource production and logistics to contractors?
- How do we buy managed services for commodity capabilities instead of building our own capabilities?
Recurring revenue model
- How do we create our recurring revenue model?
- How do we define our feature sets and tiers of pricing?
- How do we define the corresponding customer acquisition channels? (e.g., content marketing, word-of-mouth marketing)
- How do we make our solution an "exclusive" membership "club" including community interaction instead of "only" a subscription service?
- How do we up-sell our customers to higher-tiered planes and more seats of the solution?
- How do we argue for a subscription instead of perpetual licensing?
- How do we continuously add value to our solution?
- How do we ensure ongoing customer success with our solution?
Self-service
- How do we automate our customer onboarding process?
- How do we automate our solution delivery?
- How do we automate our customer acquisition?
- How do we build a settings and preferences dashboard instead of a manual configuration?
- How do we make marketing and sales (pricing) information publicly available?
- How do we answer prospects' questions electronically instead of in-person/on-site talks?
- How do we support the customer with the adoption of the solution?
- How do we keep in touch with customers through remote coaching and customer service?
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Basic habits
- What are the practices to take interest in others' interests?
- What are smile practices?
- What are the practices to reign with names?
- What are the practices to discuss what matters to them?
- What are the practices to leave others a little better?
Trust
- What are the practices to avoid arguments?
- What are the practices to never say "you are wrong"?
- What are the practices to admit faults quickly and emphatically?
- What are the practices to begin in a friendly way?
- What are the practices to access affinity?
- What are practices to surrender the credit?
- What are the practices to engage with empathy?
- What are the practices to appeal to noble motives?
- What are the practices to share your journey?
- What are the practices to throw down a challenge?
Change leadership
- What are the practices to begin on a positive note?
- What are the practices to acknowledge your baggage?
- What are the practices to call out mistakes quietly?
- What are the practices to ask questions instead of giving direct orders?
- What are the practices to mitigate fault?
- What are the practices to magnify improvement?
- What are the practices to give others a fine reputation to live up to?
- What are the practices to stay connected on common ground?
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Courage
- How do we select the hardest task instead of cherry-picking work?
- How do we speak out loud about problems and challenges instead of sweeping them under the carpet?
- How do we challenge our teammates on their thinking and doing?
- How do we challenge everyone regardless of their position or level?
- How do we stand firm on opinions even if we are the minority?
- How do we support others at all times?
- How do we do the right thing?
Goals
- How do we envision the solution?
- How do we frame the goal of the sprint?
- How do we focus on the work instead of getting distracted?
- How do we give the attention a task demands even if we don't like it?
- How do we stay efficient even if we appreciate the task?
- How do we prevent procrastinating?
- How do we provide regular updates on our work to keep people informed?
Commitment
- How do we know how to support the team?
- How do we go the extra mile?
- How do we stay at home when sick to protect the team?
- How do we be on time instead of keeping the team waiting?
- How do we define work done? (definition of done)
- How do we make personal contributions for the sake of the team?
- How do we support team members with difficult tasks?
Respect
- How do we listen to all team members?
- How do we let everyone finish their points?
- How do we value everyone's opinion?
- How do we value the contribution of everyone regardless of personal preferences?
- How do we use team resources efficiently?
- How do we prioritize our team members before everyone else?
Openness to challenges
- How do we tell bad news to the team and our stakeholders?
- How do we adapt our language to our stakeholders' needs?
- How do we tell news on time to prevent further problems?
- How do we solve personal issues with people to stay productive?
- How do we talk openly about our personal feelings?
- How do we stick to the truth?
- How do we show the progress to our stakeholders?
Values spreading
- Who are the stakeholders we have to integrate into our work ethics?
- What are the communication channels to spread the word about our work ethics?
- How do we further develop our work ethics?
- How do we show other teams our work ethics?
- Who could be the next team to work on their work ethics?
- How do we educate other teams on our work ethics?
- Are there any additional work ethics/work value concepts we could adopt in the future?
Prioritization
- How do we prioritize individuals and interactions over processes and tools?
- How do we prioritize working software/management systems over comprehensive documentation?
- How do we prioritize customer collaboration over contract negotiations?
- How do we prioritize responding to changes in plans?
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Values
- Core values: What are my core values?
- Thought expression: How do I express my thoughts in a unique way?
- Environmental values: How do I align my values with that of my employer?
- Value clarification: How do I explain my values to my teammates?
- Value sharing: How do I provide opportunities for my team to share their values?
- Value alignment: How do we align on our different values?
Example setting
- Proof of action: How do I prove my words by my actions?
- Commitment: How do I show commitment to the values I share?
- Stories: How do I tell stories to encourage my colleagues?
- Communication: How do I highlight my values in daily communication?
- Feedback: How do I ask teammates for feedback on my values and their implementation?
- Feedback incorporation: How do I incorporate the feedback received?
Vision
- Passion: What is the passion that motivates me and makes me move forward?
- Future: How do I imagine future perspectives and possibilities?
- Learning lessons: How do I learn lessons from the past?
- Current developments: How do I follow up with current developments in the work environment?
- Perspectives: How do I discover the important knowledge, skills, and experience of my employees for future perspectives?
- Participation: How do I involve everyone in information on future concepts of the organization?
Enlistment
- Aspiration: How do I recognize my team's personal values?
- Difference: How do I highlight my team members' contributions to our goals?
- Future: How do I speak in a positive and encouraging way about the future?
- Feelings recognition: How do I recognize my team members' emotions and feelings as important?
- Speech: How do I reflect my passion and values as part of my speech?
Challenge
- The case for change: How do I convince my team that constant changes are needed?
- Problem-solving: How do I solve current issues?
- Thinking: How do I encourage others to think differently?
- Knowledge: How do I use collective knowledge to generate new ideas and solutions?
- Listening: How do I listen to other ideas and recommendations?
- Outside ideas: How do I integrate outside ideas to improve things?
Experimentation
- Milestones: How do I set achievable milestones in the engagement?
- Focus: How do I support people to stay focused on their main responsibilities?
- Learning: How do I communicate to others that failing is a good opportunity to learn?
- Environment: How do I create an environment where people are not afraid to fail, but want to learn?
- How do I challenge myself with minor initiatives?
Recognition
- Trust: How do I encourage trust within the team?
- Collaboration: How do I promote collaboration within the team?
- Caring: How do I show people that I care about them and their work?
- Knowledge sharing: How do I encourage people to share their knowledge?
- Support: How do I encourage people to offer help to others?
Celebration
- Empowering: How do I empower my team to work better?
- Freedom: How do I increase the freedom of the team?
- Work distribution: How do I distribute tasks to the strengths of the people?
- Training: How do I train the team to build up their knowledge and skills?
- Questioning: How do I focus on questions instead of giving answers?
Coaching
- What are you thinking about now?
- What else can you think of here?
- What struggles are you having at the moment?
- What do you (really) want?
- What can I assist you with?
- What are you giving up when saying yes or no? (this or that)
- What do you consider to be the most useful form discussed now?
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Elicitation
- What are the software solutions currently in use?
- How do you use these software solutions?
- What is the level of user satisfaction with these software solutions?
- What did you do to improve the use of online collaboration software?
- What is your approach to reducing the costs of online collaboration software?
- What is your approach to standardizing the use of online collaboration software?
- Which online collaboration software solutions are planned for implementation?
- Which online collaboration software solutions were decommissioned last time?
- What are the online collaboration solutions used by affiliated businesses?
- What are the online collaboration solutions used by client businesses?
Meeting
- What is our use case?
- What is the normal number of participants?
- What is the maximum number of participants?
- What is the normal duration?
- What is the maximum duration?
- How do we prepare?
- How do we invite people?
- What is the structure?
- How do we take notes?
- How do we follow up?
Workshop
- What is our use case?
- What is the normal number of participants?
- What is the maximum number of participants?
- What is the normal duration?
- What is the maximum duration?
- How do we prepare?
- How do we invite people?
- What is the structure?
- How do we take notes?
- How do we follow up?
Training
- What is our use case?
- What is the normal number of participants?
- What is the maximum number of participants?
- What is the normal duration?
- What is the maximum duration?
- How do we prepare?
- How do we invite people?
- What is the structure?
- How do we take notes?
- How do we follow up?
Meetup
- What is our use case?
- What is the normal number of participants?
- What is the maximum number of participants?
- What is the normal duration?
- What is the maximum duration?
- How do we prepare?
- How do we invite people?
- What is the structure?
- How do we take notes?
- How do we follow up?
Email
- What is our use case?
- What is our software solution?
- What is the normal number of participants?
- What is the maximum number of participants?
- What is the average duration?
- What is the maximum duration?
- What is our standard structure?
- What are our tone and voice?
Asynchronous messaging
- What is our use case?
- What is our software solution?
- What is the normal number of participants?
- What is the maximum number of participants?
- What is the average duration?
- What is the maximum duration?
- What is our standard structure?
- What are our tone and voice?
File collaboration
- What is our use case?
- What is our software solution?
- What is the normal number of participants?
- What is the maximum number of participants?
- What is the average duration?
- What is the maximum duration?
- What is our standard structure?
- What are our tone and voice?
Corporate social network
- What is our use case?
- What is our software solution?
- What is the normal number of participants?
- What is the maximum number of participants?
- What is the average duration?
- What is the maximum duration?
- What is our standard structure?
- What are our tone and voice?
Wiki
- What is our use case?
- What is our software solution?
- What is the normal number of participants?
- What is the maximum number of participants?
- What is the average duration?
- What is the maximum duration?
- What is our standard structure?
- What are our tone and voice?
Database
- What is our use case?
- What is our software solution?
- What is the normal number of participants?
- What is the maximum number of participants?
- What is the average duration?
- What is the maximum duration?
- What is our standard structure?
- What are our tone and voice?
Text chat
- What is our use case?
- What is our software solution?
- What is the normal number of participants?
- What is the maximum number of participants?
- What is the average duration?
- What is the maximum duration?
- What is our standard structure?
- What are our tone and voice?
Web conference
- What is our use case?
- What is our software solution?
- What is the normal number of participants?
- What is the maximum number of participants?
- What is the average duration?
- What is the maximum duration?
- What is our standard structure?
- What are our tone and voice?
PSTN call
- What is our use case?
- What is our software solution?
- What is the normal number of participants?
- What is the maximum number of participants?
- What is the average duration?
- What is the maximum duration?
- What is our standard structure?
- What are our tone and voice?
Virtual town hall
- What is our use case?
- What is our software solution?
- What is the normal number of participants?
- What is the maximum number of participants?
- What is the average duration?
- What is the maximum duration?
- What is our standard structure?
- What are our tone and voice?
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Facilitator preparation
- What is the scope of the workshop?
- What is the planned duration?
- What is the number of participants?
- What is the collaboration model?
- What is the expected output?
Team preparation
- What is the expected time to prepare the workshop?
- How do we learn about the workshop methodology?
- How do we prepare for the workshop?
- How do we generate ideas for the workshop?
- What do we have to brainstorm in preparation for the workshop?
Reading
- What is the average length of the documents we have to read?
- What time do we need to read all the documents?
- How do we gather questions on the documents to be read?
- How do we collect feedback on the documents to be read?
Presentation
- What time do we plan to present?
- How do we include questions from the audience?
- How do we collect feedback on the presentation?
Discussion
- How do we arrange the interventions during the discussion?
- How long do we plan to discuss in general?
- What should be the average duration of a contribution?
- What should be the maximum duration of a contribution?
- How do we keep contributions concise?
- How do we align on facts?
- How do we align on opinions?
Decision-making
- How do we make decisions?
- What is our procedure to make decisions?
- How do we lead a discussion to a decision?
- How do we include everyone in the room in the decision-making procedure?
- How do we collect feedback on our decisions?
- How do we disagree and commit?
Results documentation
- How do we document our results?
- What is the software solution to collect our results?
- What is the format of our documentation?
- What is the content structure?
- What is our tone and style?
Sharing
- What is the audience we share our results with?
- What are our online communication channels?
- What are our offline communication channels?
- How do we process questions from the audience?
- How do we collect feedback from the audience?
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Content model
- Who is the audience of the content?
- What is the use case for the learning initiative?
- What is the use case for the standard content model?
- What software application do we use to store the knowledge?
- What is the standard content format and structure?
- What are the exceptions to this standard format and structure?
- How do we communicate this standard format and structure?
- How do we ensure the alignment of this standard format and structure?
Content collection
- How do we collect useful written information?
- How do we collect tacit knowledge?
- How do we clean sensitive information?
- How do we collect knowledge in our daily work?
- Which special events can we collect knowledge at?
- How do we distribute ownership of our content pieces?
- How do we collaborate on our content?
Content creation
- How do we cooperate?
- How do we collaborate?
- How do we communicate?
- How do we meet in small groups?
- How do we meet in large groups?
Content quality
- What is the required level of content quality?
- What is our approach to quality vs. quantity?
- What is our required initial quality?
- What is our required quality for re-use?
- How do we improve the quality of our content?
- How do we continually improve our content?
- What are our quality checks/gates?
- How do we involve more people in content quality improvement?
Content navigation
- What is the navigation model?
- What is our approach to labels and tags?
- What additional metadata do we have to include?
- How do we search our content?
- How do we ensure interoperability with different software solutions?
- How do we ensure interoperability with future software solutions?
- What are the decision rights to change the content once archived?
Content structure
- What is the standard article structure?
- How do we use categories and sub-categories?
- How do we use header 1?
- How do we use header 2?
- How do we use header 3?
- How do we further develop this structure?
- How do we test new content structure approaches?
- What is the right amount of text per content piece?
Content style
- What primary language do we use?
- What translations do we have to produce?
- What is our sentence structure?
- What is our writing style?
- How do we use industry jargon?
Content distribution
- Who is the additional audience of our content?
- How do we distribute our content?
- How do we ensure a proper level of quality before distribution?
- What are the content quality checks before distribution?
- What are our online distribution channels?
- What are our offline distribution channels?
- How do we provide support to users?
Content sharing
- Who is our audience to share our content with?
- What is the use case for sharing our content?
- What are our online channels?
- What are our offline channels?
- What are our quality requirements to share content externally?
- How do we select the content to be shared?
- How do we collect feedback?
- How do we answer the questions of our defined audience?
- How do we react to feedback and questions from readers outside of our audience?
Content feedback
- Who provides feedback to us?
- How do we collect feedback?
- Which meeting formats could improve the quality of our content?
- How do we invite people to provide feedback?
- What is the preferred seniority to provide feedback?
- Who is our target community to discuss our content?
- How do we discuss our content?
- How do we support out-of-the-box thinking?
Content update
- What is our release system?
- What is our release cycle?
- How do we update the content on our publishing system?
- How do we update already distributed content?
- How do we extend existing content pieces?
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Internal communities of practice
- Who is the target group of these communities?
- What is the case for these communities?
- How do we structure these communities?
- How do we communicate in these communities?
- How do we cooperate in these communities?
- How do we collaborate in these communities?
- What is our approach to meetings?
Internal communities of innovation
- Who is the target group of these communities?
- What is the case for these communities?
- How do we structure these communities?
- How do we communicate in these communities?
- How do we cooperate in these communities?
- How do we collaborate in these communities?
- What is our approach to meetings?
Internal communities of interest
- Who is the target group of these communities?
- What is the case for these communities?
- How do we structure these communities?
- How do we communicate in these communities?
- How do we cooperate in these communities?
- How do we collaborate in these communities?
- What is our approach to meetings?
Internal communities of place
- Who is the target group of these communities?
- What is the case for these communities?
- How do we structure these communities?
- How do we communicate in these communities?
- How do we cooperate in these communities?
- How do we collaborate in these communities?
- What is our approach to meetings?
External customer communities
- Who is the target group of these communities?
- What is the case for these communities?
- How do we structure these communities?
- How do we communicate in these communities?
- How do we cooperate in these communities?
- How do we collaborate in these communities?
- What is our approach to meetings?
External partner communities
- Who is the target group of these communities?
- What is the case for these communities?
- How do we structure these communities?
- How do we communicate in these communities?
- How do we cooperate in these communities?
- How do we collaborate in these communities?
- What is our approach to meetings?
External supplier communities
- Who is the target group of these communities?
- What is the case for these communities?
- How do we structure these communities?
- How do we communicate in these communities?
- How do we cooperate in these communities?
- How do we collaborate in these communities?
- What is our approach to meetings?
External competitor communities worksheet
- Who is the target group of these communities?
- What is the case for these communities?
- How do we structure these communities?
- How do we communicate in these communities?
- How do we cooperate in these communities?
- How do we collaborate in these communities?
- What is our approach to meetings?
External startup communities worksheet
- Who is the target group of these communities?
- What is the case for these communities?
- How do we structure these communities?
- How do we communicate in these communities?
- How do we cooperate in these communities?
- How do we collaborate in these communities?
- What is our approach to meetings?
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Customer definition
- What is the target size of the customer organization?
- What is the target customer's innovation capability?
- What are the customer's knowledge and skills?
- What is the customer's market/industry?
Customer's decision-maker
- What is the position inside the customer organization?
- What is the available budget?
- What is the age of the company?
- What are the intellectual capabilities?
- What is their experience with existing solutions?
- What is their willingness to improve and innovate?
- What is their experience with consultants?
- What are their challenges?
- What are their goals?
- What is their willingness to change the status quo?
- What is the available time to work on the challenge?
- What are the constraints to buying solutions?
Job & Outcomes (of the customer)
- What is the job to be done?
- What are the outcomes of the job-to-done?
Customer experience with existing solutions
- What is the compared existing solution?
- What is the selection experience?
- What is the purchasing experience?
- What is the collaboration experience?
- What is the adoption experience?
- What is the recommendation to other potential customers?
- What is the replacement experience?
Complexities of existing solutions
- What is the compared existing solution?
- What is the complex variety?
- What are expensive benefits?
- What are manual processes/steps?
- What are orchestration challenges?
- What are sales intermediaries?
- What is complex technology?
- What are other features overshooting the customer demands?
Existing solutions
- What are the existing physical product solutions?
- What are the existing intangible service solutions?
- What are the existing content solutions?
- What are the existing software solutions?
- What are the existing platform solutions?
- What are the most relevant existing solutions?
Reasons for non-consumption
- What are the "no skills" reasons for non-consumption?
- What are the "no money" reasons for non-consumption?
- What are the "no access" reasons for non-consumption?
- What are the "no time" reasons for non-consumption?
Previous attempts at solving the challenge (from the customer perspective)
- What is the job to be done? (copied from above)
- What are the failures of the value proposition?
- What are the failures of the price?
- What are the failures of complexity?
- What are the failures of functionality?
- What are the failures of time-consuming use cases?
Previous attempts at solving the challenge (from the vendor's/provider's perspective)
- What is the job to be done? (copied from above)
- What are the failures of the value proposition?
- What are the failures of the price?
- What are the failures of complexity?
- What are the failures of functionality?
- What are the failures of time-consuming use cases?
- What are the failures of target client selection?
- What are the failures of copycatting by incumbents?
Solution
- What is the solution?
- What is the purchasing process?
- What is the consulting process?
- What is the internal operating model?
- What is the incorporation of the customer?
- What is the core competency of the vendor?
Solution components
- What is the physical product component?
- What is the intangible service component?
- What is the content component?
- What is the software component?
- What is the platform component?
- What is the focus of the solution?
Strategic five forces
- What is the rivalry inside the market?
- What is the bargaining power of the buyers?
- What is the bargaining power of the suppliers?
- What is the threat of new entrants?
- What is the threat of substitutes?
Strategic SWOT
- What is the job to be done? (copied from above)
- What are the internal strengths?
- What are the internal weaknesses?
- What are the external opportunities?
- What are the external threats?
Value proposition
- What is the "commodity" value of the solution?
- What are the operational improvements?
- What is the change from external sourcing to do-it-yourself?
- What are time savings?
- What are money savings?
- How does the customer organization learn?
- What are social gains? (e.g., community building)
Buying challenges (of the new solution)
- How do we solve the "no skills" reasons for non-consumption?
- How do we solve the "no money" reasons for non-consumption?
- How do we solve the "no access" reasons for non-consumption?
- How do we solve the "no time" reasons for non-consumption?
Proposition simplification
- What is the compared solution?
- How do we simplify the handling? (ease of use)
- How do we increase the usefulness?
- How do we increase the aesthetics?
- How do we simplify the purchasing process?
- How do we increase the quality?
- How do we add customization options?
Price simplification
- What is the compared solution?
- How do we subtract features?
- How do we reduce the variety?
- How do we add cheap benefits?
- How do we automate?
- How do we orchestrate?
- How do we co-opt the customers?
- How do we sell directly?
- How do we use simpler technologies?
- How do we scale up internationally?
Unique components
- What are the unique physical product components?
- What are the unique intangible service components?
- What are the unique content components?
- What are the unique software components?
- What are the unique platform components?
Competitive advantage
- What is the brand advantage?
- What is the proprietary technology?
- How do we create network effects?
- How do we scale the business model?
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Brand monopoly
- What is the goal?
- What is the view of the customers?
- What is the visibility to the competitors?
- What is the position of the true competitors?
- What is the pricing approach?
Proprietary technology monopoly
- What is the goal?
- What is the view of the customers?
- What is the visibility to the competitors?
- What is the position of the true competitors?
- What is the pricing approach?
Network effects monopoly
- What is the goal?
- What is the view of the customers?
- What is the visibility to the competitors?
- What is the position of the true competitors?
- What is the pricing approach?
Positioning monopoly
- What is the goal?
- What is the view of the customers?
- What is the visibility to the competitors?
- What is the position of the true competitors?
- What is the pricing approach?
Circumstances monopoly
- What is the goal?
- What is the view of the customers?
- What is the visibility to the competitors?
- What is the position of the true competitors?
- What is the pricing approach?
Regulatory monopoly
- What is the goal?
- What is the view of the customers?
- What is the visibility to the competitors?
- What is the position of the true competitors?
- What is the pricing approach?
Speed of serving emerging needs monopoly
- What is the goal?
- What is the view of the customers?
- What is the visibility to the competitors?
- What is the position of the true competitors?
- What is the pricing approach?
Incumbent inertia monopoly
- What is the goal?
- What is the view of the customers?
- What is the visibility to the competitors?
- What is the position of the true competitors?
- What is the pricing approach?
New capabilities monopoly
- What is the goal?
- What is the view of the customers?
- What is the visibility to the competitors?
- What is the position of the true competitors?
- What is the pricing approach?
Professional services engagement format monopoly
- What is the goal?
- What is the view of the customers?
- What is the visibility to the competitors?
- What is the position of the true competitors?
- What is the pricing approach?
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Physical asset solution
- What are the solution modularization practices?
- What are the production outsourcing practices?
- What are the production offshoring practices?
- What are the practices to determine the typical buying interval for the solution?
- What are the practices to determine complementary solutions?
- What are the pricing system design practices?
- What are the financing practices? (e.g., leasing, renting)
- What are the stocking system practices? (eg., large stock, on-demand production)
- What are the product life cycle practices?
- What are the stock reduction practices?
Physical asset solution leasing
- What are the financing contract practices?
- What are the payment terms practices?
- What are the production and logistics optimization practices?
- What are the all-inclusive / unlimited plan practices?
- What are the financing partnering practices? (e.g., commercial bank)
- What are the product lifecycle practices?
- What are the practices to lower objections on purchasing with financing?
- What are the practices to adapt the pricing system to an output-oriented system? (e.g., GE power by the hour)
Intangible service solution
- What are the service packaging practices?
- What are the service operations practices?
- What are the practices to limit the variability of the customer demands?
- What are the practices to offer hourly packages to serve variable demands?
- What are the practices to charge for the output?
- What are the practices to package the service with other solution types? (e.g., physical asset product solution)
- What are the practices to create a recurring revenue business?
- What are the systematization, standardization, modularization, and automation practices?
Content & Software solution licensing
- What are the solution licensing practices?
- What are the solution packaging practices?
- What are the practices to sell the solution as a physical product? (e.g. book)
- What are the arguments for the high upfront costs?
- What are the solution evaluation practices for the users?
- What are the practices for selling upgrades after some time?
Content & Software solution subscription
- What are the subscription pricing system design practices?
- What are the practices to change to a subscription pricing system?
- What are the subscription selling practices?
- What are the regular update argument practices?
- What are optimal pricing cycle practices? (e.g. monthly vs. yearly)
- What are the possible pricing increments? (e.g., users, hours, physical assets)
- What are the customer churn counter practices?
- What are the trial period practices?
- What are the customer adoption support practices?
- What are the self-service design practices?
Transaction commission
- What are the transaction commission practices?
- What are the chicken-or-egg problem-solving practices?
- What are the commission fee estimation practices?
- What are the money flow design practices?
- What are the practices to let users interact freely on the platform?
- What are the practices to offer additional value to keep the participants on the platform?
- What are the discount practices for heavy users?
- What are the B2B exchange practices?
Advertising
- What are the practices to charge for advertising?
- What are the standard ad network practices? (e.g. Google Ads)
- What are the individual ad network design practices?
- What are the practices to increase the number of shown/clicked ads?
- What are the practices to increase the number of shown ads?
- What are the practices to acquire enough users to fund the solution development?
- What are the user acquisition practices?
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Elicitation
- Who are the current customers?
- Who are the target customers?
- What are the current topics for potential customers?
- How does the interaction with the customers work?
- How are the customers clustered?
- What are the future topics for customers and new prospects?
- Who are the potential referrals?
- How do customers and their referrals communicate with each other?
- How do customers and their referrals work together?
- What are the information materials to support the customer for referral communication?
Customer talkers
- What is the persona?
- What is our relationship?
- What is our reach and influence?
- What are the topics to talk about?
Employee talkers
- What is the persona?
- What is our relationship?
- What is our reach and influence?
- What are the topics to talk about?
Fan talkers
- What is the persona?
- What is our relationship?
- What is our reach and influence?
- What are the topics to talk about?
Professional talkers
- What is the persona?
- What is our relationship?
- What are our reach and influence?
- What are the topics to talk about?
Identification of talkers
- What is the right passion of the talkers?
- What is the right credibility of the talkers?
- What are the right connections of the talkers?
- What are the right opportunities to spot the talkers?
General topics
- What are the topics to talk about?
- What are the customer services specialties to talk about?
- What are the crazy things to talk about?
- What are the altruistic activities to talk about?
Offering topics
- What are the offerings to talk about?
- What is the noteworthy uniqueness?
- What is the customer experience to talk about?
- What are the corresponding marketing and sales activities?
- How do we structure the overall viral campaign?
- What is the free knowledge to be shared?
- What are the possible public relations stunts?
Talker support package
- Who is the target audience?
- What is the content?
- How do we create the content?
- What are the channels for sharing?
Case study content
- Who is the target audience?
- What is the content?
- How do we create the content?
- What are the channels for sharing?
Educational content
- Who is the target audience?
- What is the content?
- How do we create the content?
- What are the channels for sharing?
Do-it-yourself handbook
- Who is the target audience?
- What is the content?
- How do we create the content?
- What are the channels for sharing?
Commercial content samples
- Who is the target audience?
- What is the content?
- How do we create the content?
- What are the channels for sharing?
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Flow
- What are the possible email marketing use cases?
- What are the email marketing budget practices?
- What is the required knowledge level of the email marketing team?
- What is the required size of the email marketing team?
- What is the required skill set of the email marketing team?
Style & Tone
- What is the language of the audience?
- What are the email campaign tone and voice practices?
- What are the email campaign writing style practices?
- What are the practices to use consistent tone and voice?
Software
- What are the email marketing software solution requirements?
- What are the possible email marketing software solutions?
- What are the email marketing software solution learning & training practices?
- What are the email marketing software solution access practices?
Schedule
- What is the frequency of transactional emails?
- What is the frequency of engagement email campaigns?
- What is the frequency of promotional email campaigns?
List collection
- What are the subscription practices?
- What are the subscription practices through the website?
- What are the subscription practices through social media?
- What are the subscription practices through the employees?
- What are the opt-in practices?
Segmentation
- What are the demographics segmentation practices?
- What are the geographic segmentation practices?
- What are the solution segmentation practices?
- What are the past purchase segmentation practices?
- Are there any other segmentation practices?
Unsubscription procedure
- What are the unsubscription practices?
- What is the feedback on unsubscription practices?
- What are the alternatives offered to subscribers who want to unsubscribe?
- What are the re-engagement practices?
Text
- Define our pre-writing procedure.
- Define our writing procedure.
- Define our editing procedure.
- Define our spell-check tool.
- Define the personalization approach.
Design
- Define the email campaign template.
- Choose the font family and size of our email campaigns.
- Define the visualization elements of our email campaigns.
- Define the additional visualization content to add.
- Define the branding approach of the email campaign.
CTA
- Define the purpose of the CTA.
- Write the CTA content.
- Define a call to action placement.
- Define the CTA design.
- Test CTA.
Lead magnet
- Define the lead magnet.
- Define the content for a lead magnet.
- Define the platform to share the lead magnet.
- Add the lead magnet dispatch approach.
Test preparation
- Define the tools for the A/B test.
- Define the list of A/B tests.
- Define the list of variables for the A/B test.
- Define performance indicators for the A/B test.
Subject line test
- Define the format of the subject line A/B test.
- Define the subject line group A for the A/B test.
- Define the subject line group B for the A/B test.
- Define the timing for the subject line A/B test.
- Define the KPIs for the subject line A/B test.
Design test
- Define the format of the template design A/B test.
- Define the template design group A for the A/B test.
- Define the template design group B for the A/B test.
- Define the timing for template design A/B test.
- Define the KPIs for the template design A/B test.
Schedule test
- Define the format of the schedule A/B test.
- Define the schedule group A for the A/B test.
- Define the schedule group B for the A/B test.
- Define the timing for the schedule A/B test.
- Define the KPIs for the schedule A/B test.
Reporting
- Define the tool for the email reports.
- Define the format of email reports.
- Define the roles of our email analytics specialist.
- Define the frequency of the email reports.
Performance measurement
- Define the open rate of the email campaigns.
- Define the click-through rate of the email campaigns.
- Define the conversion rate of the email campaigns.
- Define the email sharing rate of the email campaigns.
Sales measurement
- Define the website traffic from the email campaigns.
- Define the time on the website from the email campaigns.
- Define the time before purchase from the email campaigns.
- Define the sales rate of the email campaigns.
- Define overall ROI.
Measurement
- Define the list growth rate.
- Define the number of unengaged subscribers.
- Measure the number of new leads generated.
- Measure the cost per lead.
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Assessment
- What makes you happy?
- What drives you?
- What are your goals in life?
- What are your core values & beliefs?
- What is your core knowledge?
- What skills are a disadvantage for you?
- What is your personal/educational/working experience?
- What is your satisfaction with your current job?
- What is your dream job?
- How much money do you want to make in the long term?
- What were your past efforts to build a personal brand?
- Who has supported you in building a personal brand?
- Who supports you today in building a personal brand?
Personal assets - Experience
- Determine the person related to the professional experience.
- Determine the educational experience.
- Determine the professional experience.
- Determine the side hustle experience.
Personal assets - Current and future state of business
- Determine the current business situation.
- Determine the future business direction.
- Determine the main challenges of the business situation.
- Determine the root cause of the challenge.
- Determine the primary lever for change.
Personal assets - Role models
- Determine the role model.
- Determine the external perception of the role model.
- Determine the role model's best practices.
- Determine the approach of keeping track of the role model.
Business model - Personal mission
- Determine the inspiration.
- Determine the core values.
- Determine the life footprint.
- Determine the vision.
- Determine the mission.
- Determine the person's job to be done.
Business model - Target clients
- Determine the target market.
- Determine the challenges of the target clients.
- Determine the decision-maker.
- Determine the available budget of the target clients.
Business model - Job to be done
- Determine the job to be done of the target clients.
- Determine the target clients' core outcomes.
- Determine the competitors and their existing solutions.
Business model - Value proposition
- Determine the "commodity" value.
- Determine the unique value proposition.
- Determine the monopoly. (view of clients | visibility to competitors | true competitors | pricing approach)
- Determine the proposition simplification.
- Determine the price simplification.
- Determine the time savings.
- Determine the money savings.
- Determine the social value.
Business model - Core assets
- Determine the brand statement / tagline / slogan.
- Determine the elevator pitch.
- Determine the tangible core assets. (i.e. intellectual property, retaining clients)
- Determine the physical products.
- Determine the intangible services.
- Determine the content.
- Determine the software.
- Determine the platform (network).
- Determine the purchasing process.
- Determine potential substitutions by technology.
Business model - Personal network
- Determine the group of people to market together.
- Determine the shared values.
- Determine the sponsors/promoters.
- Determine additional external collaborators.
- Determine the internal value proposition.
- Determine the client's value proposition.
- Determine the amount of time to invest.
Business model - Feedback
- What do you think about my analysis of my past?
- What do you think about my future aspirations?
- What is your advice to get the job done?
- What do you think about my unique value proposition?
- What do you think about my influence on others' lives?
- What do you think about my life footprint?
SWOT - Strengths
- Determine the value strengths.
- Determine the passion strengths.
- Determine the knowledge strengths.
- Determine the skill strengths.
- Determine the experience strengths.
- Determine the appearance strengths.
- Determine the network strengths.
SWOT - Weaknesses
- Determine the value weaknesses.
- Determine the passion weaknesses.
- Determine the knowledge weaknesses.
- Determine the skill weaknesses.
- Determine the experience weaknesses.
- Determine the appearance weaknesses.
- Determine the network weaknesses.
SWOT - Opportunities
- Determine the family opportunities.
- Determine the friends opportunities.
- Determine the local community opportunities.
- Determine the employment opportunities.
- Determine the people network opportunities.
- Determine technology opportunities.
- Determine industry trend/competition opportunities.
- Determine additional opportunities.
SWOT - Threats
- Determine the family threats.
- Determine the friends threats.
- Determine the local community threats.
- Determine the employment threats.
- Determine the people network threats.
- Determine technology threats.
- Determine industry trend/competition threats.
- Determine additional threats.
Content - Internal use case
- Determine the personal growth use case.
- Determine the self-marketing use case.
- Determine the knowledge (research) use case.
- Determine the (writing) skills use case.
- Determine the money use case.
- Determine the people networking use case.
- Determine the societal use case.
Content - Target audience use case
- Determine the target audience.
- Determine the learning use case.
- Determine the entertainment use case.
- Determine the opinionating use case.
- Determine the networking use case.
- Determine the money use case.
- Determine the time-saving use case.
Content - Writing style and content structure
- Determine the intellectual capabilities of the readers.
- Determine the language(s) of the readers.
- Determine the article structure.
- Determine the length of the articles.
- Determine the writing style.
Content - Feedback by the target audience
- Do you understand the topic?
- Do you understand the writing style?
- Do you understand the wording?
- Do you know about other articles on this topic?
- How will you use this article?
- Who will you share this article with?
- What are your remaining open questions?
Spread the word - Personal website
- Determine the job-to-be-done.
- Determine the topic.
- Determine the tone and style.
- Determine the time to invest in the website.
- Determine the domain and website service and plan.
- Determine the typical story of a website visitor.
Spread the word - Social media
- Determine the primary online social network
- Determine the job-to-be-done of the social media activities.
- Determine the approach to find more friends on social media.
- Determine organizations to follow on social media.
- Determine the type of content to be shared.
- Determine the approach to monitor the brand.
Spread the word - Webinars
- Determine the job-to-be-done of the webinars.
- Determine audience.
- Determine the duration.
- Determine the structure.
- Determine the webinar software tool.
- Determine the shareable content.
Spread the word - Community
- Determine the target community member.
- Determine the job-to-be-done of the community.
- Determine the community activities.
- Determine the events to attend.
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DACH region
- 4C Group
- Accenture Lexta
- Active Sourcing
- Amendos
- Axxcon
- Bach Consulting
- BearingPoint
- Cassini Consulting
- Capgemini
- CAP Consulting
- Coeus
- Conwiss
- Deloitte
- Dr. Fochler & Company
- EY
- Gartner
- Gebhardt
- HDP
- Horvath & Partners
- HiSolutions
- IT-SCM
- ISG
- KPC
- KPMG
- Matrix Technology
- Metrics
- Microfin
- Mindeight
- Mita Consulting
- Navisco
- Novedas
- Noventum
- Primestone Consulting
- PwC
- Timetoact
- Ventum Consulting
- Victor
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Sourcing
- Business case SOP
- Business case template
- Commercial environment evaluation SOP
- Commercial environment evaluation template
- Contract negotiation SOP
- Contract template
- Pre-qualification questionnaire template
- Procurement approach selection SOP
- Procurement approach template
- Service level agreement negotiation SOP
- Service level agreement template
- Service requirements elicitation SOP
- Service requirements template
- Sourcing-related process descriptions development SOP
- Sourcing-related process descriptions template
- Sourcing plan development SOP
- Sourcing plan template
- Sourcing project SOP
- Sourcing strategy development SOP
- Sourcing strategy template
- Supplier negotiation acceptance criteria template
- Supplier negotiation SOP
- Supplier research results template
- Supplier research SOP
- Tender acceptance documentation template
- Tender collaboration SOP
- Tender evaluation criteria development SOP
- Tender evaluation criteria template
- Tender evaluation SOP
- Tender invitation template
- Terms and conditions legislation & policy compliance check results template
- Terms and conditions legislation & policy compliance check SOP
- Terms and conditions negotiation SOP
- Terms and conditions template
Supplier management
- Conflict and dispute resolution SOP
- Continual supplier service improvement SOP
- Contract (re)negotiation SOP
- Contract adherence monitoring SOP
- Customer satisfaction monitoring SOP
- Key performance indicator management SOP
- Market intelligence monitoring SOP
- Operational supplier relationship management SOP
- Proactive supplier collaboration SOP
- Security requirement adherence monitoring SOP
- Supplier-related incident and problem resolution SOP
- Supplier/service supply/value chain management SOP
- Supplier and service benchmarking SOP
- Supplier communication SOP
- Supplier development SOP
- Supplier management & sourcing strategy alignment SOP
- Supplier management SOP
- Supplier management strategy SOP
- Supplier performance data collection SOP
- Supplier performance monitoring SOP
- Supplier problem investigation SOP
- Supplier risk management SOP
Contract management
- Business objective monitoring results template
- Business objective monitoring SOP
- Contract and terms & conditions compliance monitoring results template
- Contract and terms & conditions compliance monitoring SOP
- Contract change backlog SOP
- Contract change backlog template
- Contract change request template
- Contract change SOP
- Contract management SOP
- Contract performance data (KPI) collection SOP
- Contract performance data (KPI) collection template
- Contract risk monitoring results template
- Contract risk monitoring SOP
- Contract template
- Contract template development SOP
- Contract template review results template
- Contract template review SOP
- Internal contract performance reporting SOP
- Internal contract performance reporting template
- Terms and conditions template development SOP
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Resources
- Argo Group: Vendor Management Policy (PDF)
- Comarch: Best Practices for Effective and Efficient Vendor Management (PDF)
- Deloitte: Next Generation Vendor Management (PDF)
- Gartner Glossary: Supplier Relationship Management
- Gartner Glossary: Vendor Management
- Government of South Australia: Department of Child Protection: Contract Management Framework (PDF)
- Government of South Australia: Department of Finance: Contract Management Guide (PDF)
- Government of Western Australia: Department of Finance: Supplier Performance Management Framework (PDF)
- Harvard University: Vendor Management Office Training (PDF)
- IT Process Maps: Supplier Management
- Relevant: IT Vendor Management: What It Is and How to Get It Right
- KPMG: Digital Sourcing Trend Radar (PDF)
- KPMG: Disrupting the contract management paradigm (PDF)
- PwC: Supplier Relationship Management: How key suppliers drive your company's competitive advantage (PDF)
- SFIA: Supplier management SUPP
- SolarWinds Orange Matter: What is Supplier Management From an ITIL Perspective?
- South Somerset District Council: Contract Management Framework (PDF)
- TBI: Establishing a Framework for Improving IT Vendor Management
- Wikiversity: IT vendor management
‣
‣
Tasks
- Strategy: How do we manage our assets and configurations?
- Inventory: How do we create our inventory?
- Planning: How do we plan for asset and configuration management?
- Configuration Identification: How do we identify configurations?
- Configuration Control: How do we control configurations?
- Reporting: How do we report on our assets and configurations?
- Audit: How do we audit our assets and configurations?
Inventory
- What are the name, type, organizational affiliation, and location?
- What are the manufacturer, model, serial number, and ID/tag?
- Who are the owner, admin, and user?
- What are the MAC address and IP address?
- What are the operating status, system/OS, and OS version?
- What are the tech specs?
- What are additional notes?
Planning
- Objective: What is our objective?
- Requirements: What are our requirements?
- Policies: What are our policies?
- Roles and Responsibilities: What are our roles and responsibilities?
- Software Tool: What tool do we use for asset and configuration management?
- Implementation: How do we implement asset and configuration management?
- Integrations: What are necessary process and software integrations?
- Metrics: How do we measure asset and configuration management?
- Communication: How do we communicate on asset and config. man?
Generic configuration identification
- What are the asset categories?
- What are the configuration categories?
- What are the standard attributes?
- How do we (automatically) update the database entries?
Category configuration identification
- What is the category?
- What are attributes to increase the service quality?
- What are attributes to make the life of the admins easier?
- What are the attributes to make the life of the service / process owners easier?
- What are the relations between assets and configurations?
Configuration control
- Add: What do we have to be aware of to add a configuration item?
- Change: What do we have to be aware of to change a configuration item?
- Remove: What do we have to be aware of to remove a configuration item?
Reporting
- List of CIs: What are our configuration items?
- List of IMACRD: install, move, add, change, remove, dispose
- List of Issues: What are current issues with asset & configuration management?
- List of Unauthorized Changes: What are past unauthorized changes?
- List of Process Changes: How did we change the process of asset & configuration management?
Audit
- What are the Cis that do not match CMDB record?
- What is the status of the documentation of the change, release, configuration ractices?
- How do we diverge in daily work from the documented practices?
- What time do we need to reflect IMACRDs in the CMDB?
‣
Tasks
- Measure, monitor, analyze availability data
- Assessment and diagnosis of failures
- Reliability and resiliency plans
- Availability plan cost analysis
- Failure impact plans
- Risk in change and release plans evaluation
- Availability test and recovery plans
- Availability and investment plan
Measure, monitor, and analyze availability data
- What is our data?
- Where do we get our data from?
- How do we collect our data?
- How do we analyze our data?
- How do we ensure availability of data?
- How do we ensure reliability of data?
- How do we ensure resilience of data?
- How do we ensure maintainability of data?
Assessment and diagnosis of failures
- How do we reduce the time to detect?
- How do we reduce the time to diagnose?
- How do we reduce the time to repair?
- How do we reduce the time to restore?
Reliability and resiliency plans
- What is the target MTBF?
- How do we reduce the mean time between failures (MTBF)?
- What is the target MTRS?
- How do we reduce the mean time to restore service (MTRS)?
Availability plan cost analysis
- What are the required service assets?
- What are the available support personnel and skill sets?
- What are the required components?
- What is the target mean time between failures (MTBF)?
- What is the target mean time to restore service (MTRS)?
- How do we ensure redundancy?
- What are the key procedures and policies?
- What is the maintenance plan?
Failure impact
- What are our assumptions on availability?
- What are our assumptions on failure duration?
- What are our assumptions on the agreed service levels?
- What are our assumptions on failure scope?
- What are our assumptions on failure costs (money, time, other resources)?
- What are our assumptions on the user productivity?
- What are our assumptions on the impact to satisfaction of our users?
- What are our assumptions on lost revenue / performance?
- What are other impacts in case of a failure?
Risks in change and release plans
- What is the availability planning?
- What is the release planning?
- What are the challenge areas?
- What is the availability risk?
New service plan and design
- How do we conduct new services planning?
- What do we plan for new services?
- What availability requirements do we have for the planned services?
- What financial requirements do we have for the planned services?
Basic availability test and recovery
- Which service/release do we test?
- How do we test the most common failure cases?
- What are the common failure cases?
- How do we simulate recovery from failures?
- How do we handle high-risk failure cases?
- What are high-risk failure cases?
- How do we conduct training for recovery procedures?
- How do we identify high-risk components?
- What are high-risk components?
Advanced availability test and recovery plans
- How do we create the availability test schedule?
- How do we publish and communicate the availability test schedule?
- How do we test the targeted MBTF?
- How do we test the targeted MTRS including the recovery procedure?
- How do we train the repair process?
- How do we prevent failures through preemptive maintenance?
Availability test and recovery situation
- How do we create a high volume of test cases?
- How do we create ad-hoc tests to identify new risks?
- How do we log and track test failures?
- How do we evaluate test failures?
- How do we simulate the testing and recovery procedure?
- How do we continually improve the test and recovery procedure?
Availability and investment plan
- What is the required level of services for our business / our users?
- What are the IT assets that enable the delivery of our services?
- How do we meet and exceed the needs of the business and the users?
- What amount of investment do we need to maintain the services on their current level?
- What amount of investment do we need to improve the services from their current level?
‣
Tasks
- Request for Change Creation: How do we create requests for changes?
- RFC Review: How do we review requests for changes?
- Emergency Change: How do we handle emergency changes?
- RFC Pre-Approval: How do we pre-approve changes?
- Change Evaluation: How do we evaluate changes?
- Change Approval: How do we confirm/deny changes?
- Record Update: How do we update records?
- Implementation Facilitation: How do we facilitate the implementation?
- Change documentation: How do we document changes?
Request for change
- Basics: Who is the requester, what is the change ID, date?
- Services: What are the affected services?
- CIs: What are the affected configuration items?
- Summary: What do we want to change?
- Resources: What are the required resources?
- Categorization: How do we categorize this change?
- Risks: What are the (known) risks?
- Benefits: What are the benefits of the change?
- CAB Date: When does the change advisory board meet?
Review
- What is the proposed change?
- What is the status of the request for change document?
- What additional details do we need?
- What is the scope of the change regarding the scope of change management?
- What are related other change requests?
- What is the outlook of the change request?
Pre-approval
- Pre-approval: How do we pre-approve changes?
- Manager Approval: How do we include an additional management approval?
- Communication: How do communicate the change early?
- Collaboration: How do we include the stakeholders into the change procedure?
Emergency change
- What are the cases we use our emergency change procedure for?
- Who are the roles to be informed immediately?
- What is the structure of the emergency change approval board?
- How do we document an emergency change?
- How do we learn from an emergency change?
Evaluation
- Change: What is the proposed change?
- Change Value: What is the value of the change?
- Implementation Cost: What is the cost of the implementation?
- Key Resources: What are required key resources?
- Side Effects: What are negative side effects of the change?
- Urgency: What is the urgency of this change?
- Success Probability: What is the probability of success?
- Failure Impact: What is the impact of a failure of this change?
- Alternatives: What are the alternatives to this change?
CAB members
- Audit/Governance: What is the role of the audit manager?
- Business Owner: What is the role of the business owner?
- Change Manager: What is the role of the change manager?
- Executive Sponsor: What is the role of the executive sponsor?
- Head of IT Infrastructure: What is the role of the head of IT infrastructure?
- Head of IT Operations: What is the role of the head of IT operations?
- Head of Service Desk: What is the role of the head of service desk?
- Other process owners (e.g. problem manager): What is the role of other process owners?
- Security: What is the role of the security manager?
- Technical Experts (e.g. architects, admins): What is the role of technical experts?
CAB meeting
- What are the unauthorized changes since the last CAB?
- What are the emergency changes since the last CAB?
- What are the approved changes not authorized by the CAB?
- What are the changes performed outside our change windows?
- What are the change requests for review at the current CAB?
- What are additional change management team actions?
- What are the today's special guest briefings?
- What are our current metrics?
Record update
- What are the information resources we have to update for changes?
- How do we update the information resources?
- How do we collect the necessary information from stakeholders?
- How do we inform the affected users?
- How do we connect different applications and information resources?
Implementation facilitation
- How do we test changes?
- How do we communicate changes?
- How do we remediate changes?
- How do we review changes?
Implementation facilitation
- What is the planned change?
- What is the testing procedure?
- What is the communication plan?
- What is the remediation approach?
- What is the review approach?
Documentation
- How do we document changes?
- How do we document procedures?
- How do we document best practices?
- How do we document the architectural changes?
- How do we ensure access to the documentation by our people?
- How do we align our change documentation with our knowledge practices?
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Tasks
- Business Case Preparation: How do we prepare our business cases?
- Business Case Review and Approval: How do we review and approve our business cases?
- Budgeting and Cost Controls: How do we control our budget and our costs?
- Value and Investment Analysis: How do we analyze the value and the needed investments?
Business case preparation
- Overview: What is the overall case of the new investment?
- Function: What is the function of the new investment?
- Benefits: What are the benefits of the new investment?
- Costs: What are the costs of the new investment?
- Risks: What are the risks of the new investment?Recommendation: What is the recommendation for the next steps?
- Recommendation: What is the recommendation for the next steps?
Business case review
- What is the new investment?
- How does the investment support our higher organizational goals?
- How do we align the new investment with our long-term investment strategy?
- How do we align the new investment with our short-term budget planning?
- What are alternatives to the proposed new investment?
- How long/good can we proceed without this new investment?
- What is the final assessment of the new investment?
- What is the final decision regarding the proposed new investment?
Budgeting and cost control
- How do we communicate our budget?
- How do we evaluate our budget?
- How do we control our costs?
- What do we discuss in our cost control meetings?
- What is the cadence for the cost control meeting?
- Who participates in the cost control meetings?
Value and investment analysis
- How do we evaluate the value we produce?
- How do we control the value we produce?
- How do we quantify the value we deliver?
- How do we compare the projected investment with the delivered?
- How do we create best practices to control investments in the future?
- How do we inform the stakeholders on our investments?
- How do we inform the users on our investments?
- How do we communicate externals on our investments?
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Tasks
- What is the required information to create an incident?
- How do we receive and log an incident?
- How do we categorize and prioritize an incident?
- How do we check for a major incident?
- How do we investigate the incident?
- How do we escalate incidents?
- How do we resolve incidents?
- How do we document incidents?
- How do we close incidents?
Information gathering
- Incident ID: What is the incident ID?
- Person Logging the Incident: Who reports the incident?
- Brief Description: What is the issue?
- Incident Priority: What is the priority of this incident?
- Related CIs: What are related the configuration items?
- User Contact Information: How do we contact the issuer?
- User Location: Where is she located?
- Date and Time Created: When was the incident reported?
Good practices
- How do we develop a mindset for service excellence?
- How do we increase the speed of incident resolution?
- What are possible self-service technologies?
- How do we measure our incident resolution?
- How do we hustle for major/P1 incident resolution?
- How do we escalate incidents?
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Strategy
- What is the goal of knowledge management in our organization?
- What are the people roles and responsibilities?
- How do we define guidelines, policies, and practices to govern our knowledge?
- What are possible performance metrics?
- What are possible timelines and milestones?
- What technology solutions do we need to support the strategy?
Information management
- What is the valuable information?
- Where does the information resides?
- Who is the subject matter expert/knowledge owner?
- Who needs this knowledge?
- How do we use this knowledge?
- What is the best method to transfer knowledge?
Knowledge article structure
- Category: What is the category?
- Content: What is the content?
- Status: What is the status?
- Version: What is the version?
- Owner: Who is the owner?
- Date of publication: What is the date of the publication?
- Date of last change: What is the date of the last change?
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Tasks
- Business Service Catalog: How do we maintain the business service catalog?
- Technical Service Catalog: How do we maintain the technical service catalog?
- Service Pipeline: How do we maintain the service pipeline?
Business service catalog
- How do we maintain the business service catalog?
- What are the services we include?
- What is the methodology to cut systems and technologies into services?
- How do we collect feedback from the users?
- How do we collect feedback from the stakeholders?
- How do we offer an ordering process for the users?
Technical service catalog
- How do we maintain the technical service catalog?
- What are the services we include?
- What is the methodology to cut systems and technologies into services?
- How do we integrate the technical service catalog with architecture planning?
- How do we integrate the technical service catalog with the sourcing of IT services and systems?
- How do we integrate the technical service catalog with the supplier management?
- How do we collect feedback?
Service pipeline
- What is the planning period for service updates and new services?
- How do we design service updates and new services?
- Who designs service updates and new services?
- How do we analyze the demand from the business units and users?
- How do we integrate innovative technology solutions?
- How do we test newly designed services and collect feedback?
- How do we launch new services?
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Tasks
- Detection: How do we detect problems?
- Revisitation: How do we revisit problems?
- Prioritization: How do we prioritize problems?
- Investigation: How do we investigate problems?
- Workaround: How do we create workarounds?
- Known Error: How do we create a known error entry?
- Change Review: How do we review a proposed change?
- Resolution: How do we resolve problems?
- Close: How do we close problems?
- Problem Review Board: How do we review open and closed problems together?
Registration
- Problem: What is the problem?
- Problem Owner: Who is the owner of the problem?
- Solution Owner: Who is the owner of the solution?
- Priority: What is the priority?
- Status: What is the status?
- Date Registered: What is the problem registration date and time?
- Category: What is the problem category?
- Source of Report: What is the problem report source?
- Manifestation: What is the problem manifestation?
- Root Cause: What is the problem’s root cause?
- Error Message: What are the related error messages?
- Workarounds: What are possible workarounds?
Benefits
- How do we prevent future incidents and problems?
- How do we eliminate recurring incidents?
- How do we reduce disruptions to the business?
- How do we foster collaboration between incident and change management?
- How do we accelerate the resolution of incidents?
- How do we reduce the volume of incidents?
- How do we understand the risks to service delivery?
- How do we develop workarounds for reducing incident impact?
- How do we create and maintain the known error database?
- How do we create a culture of investigation and root cause analysis?
Practices
- Priority: How do we prioritize problem management in our daily work?
- People: How do we staff the right people for problem management?
- Measurement: How do we define, track, and publish problem management metrics?
- Culture: How do we develop a culture of registering and resolving problems?
Prioritization
- Problem: What is the problem?
- Impact: What is the impact on the business?
- Cost of Solution: What are the costs to develop a solution?
- People Required for Solution: Who are the people required for a solution?
- Risks of Solution: What are the risks of solving the problem? (e.g. add. Incidents)
- Known Solutions: What are possible known solutions?
- Time for Solution: What is the expected time needed to solve the problem?
Investigation & Workaround
- Problem: What is the problem?
- Problem Investigation: What is the cause of the problem?
- Workaround: What are possible workarounds?
- Implementation: How do we implement the selected workaround?
- Problem Record Update: What is the update to the problem record?
- Longevity: How long do we use the workaround?
Root cause analysis
- Issue: What is the issue?
- Why?
- Why?
- Why?
- Why?
- Why?
- Conclusion: What is the conclusion?
- Next Steps: What are the next steps?
Ishikawa A
- Challenge: What is the challenge?
- Man: What are people-related issues?
- Machine: What are machine (equipment, information) related issues?
- Material: What are material (material, information) related issues?
- Method: What are method (process, procedure, system) related issue?
- Measurement: What are measurement (inspection, overview) related issues?
Ishikawa B
- Challenge: What is the challenge?
- Surroundings: What are the surrounding issues?
- Suppliers: What are the supplier issues?
- Systems: What are the systems issues?
- Skills: What are the skills issues?
Ishikawa C
- Challenge: What is the challenge?
- People: What are the people issues?
- Process: What are the process issues?
- Technology: What are the technology issues?
- Information: What are the information issues?
- Externals: What are the external issues?
Change procedure
- Request for Change: How do we create request for changes?
- Change Workflow: How do we handle standard changes?
- Emergency Change: How do we handle emergency changes?
- Implementation: How do we implement changes to resolve problems?
Change review
- Request for Change: What is the request for change?
- Change Workflow: How do we handle this change?
- Implementation: How do we implement this change?
Resolution
- Problem: What is the problem?
- Resolution: What is the resolution?
- Well Understood: How do we ensure the resolution is well understood?
- Acceptable Risk: How do we ensure there is an acceptable risk?
- Affordable: How do we ensure the resolution is affordable?
- Time: How do we ensure the resolution can be achieved in time?
- Available skills: What are the needed skills?
- Better than Workaround: What are the alternatives?
Problem review
- What was the problem?
- What was the final resolution?
- How long did we need to resolve the problem?
- What were the challenges during the resolution process?
- How can we mitigate these challenges in the future?
- What are additional follow-up actions?
- What are additional remarks on this problem?
Integrations
- How do we define the relationships of problem management with other practices?
- How do we assign owners to every problem?
- How do we measure and publish resolution metrics for incidents and problems?
- How do we use proactive problem management to avoid future problems?
- How do we escalate problems and who will be when involved in that?
- How do we use incentives for creative and fast problem resolution?
- How do we motivate our team by celebrating success in finding solutions to problems?
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Tasks
- Release Planning: How do we plan releases?
- Build and Test: How do we build and test releases?
- Deployment Preparation: How do we prepare the release deployment?
- Deployment: How do we deploy the release?
- Support: How do we support new releases?
- Close: How do we close releases?
Planning
- What is the related system?: (e.g. software, device)
- What is the scope of the release?
- How do we define the working state of this system?
- Who is the release owner?
- How do we test the release?
- How do we train our people for this release?
Build & Test
- Who builds the release?
- How do we build the release?
- What are relevant guidelines to follow to build the release?
- Who tests the release?
- How do we test the release?
- What are relevant guidelines to follow to test the release?
Deployment preparation
- How do we prepare for our deployments?
- How do we assure to incorporate all feedback?
- How do we involve release-specific information?
- How do we collaborate with our stakeholders?
- How do we use checklists to ensure high-quality deployments?
- How do we include vendor information into our release process?
Deployment
- How do we deploy this release?
- How do we communicate this release?
- How do we deliver the documentation of this release?
- How do we train the users on this release?
- What are redundant services to be decommissioned?
- What are redundant assets to be decommissioned?
- What are the requirements the service has to meet?
- How do we ensure all data/information is transferred?
- How do we collect feedback on the release?
- What is the feedback on the release?
Support
- How do we adapt our service levels to this release?
- How do we gather feedback from our users about this new release?
- How do we communicate to our users after this rollout?
- How do we train our users after this rollout?
- How do we log, report, and resolve initial issues with this release?
- How do we debrief our process and service owners and stakeholders?
- How do we ensure service performance and ist monitoring after this release?
Closure
- What are the final checklist points specifically for this release?
- How do we conduct a review for this release?
- What are known issues and errors for this release/service?
- What are the audit requirements to verify the completion of this release?
- What are the documents to be updated for this release?
- What are possible improvements for release management?
- What are possible improvements for the next release of this service?
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Tasks
- How do we submit requests?
- How do we evaluate and log requests?
- How do we approve requests?
- How do we fulfill requests?
- How do we confirm fulfillment?
- How do we close requests?
Preparation
- What is the overall goal?
- How do we plan for growth?
- How do collect approvals for requests?
- How do we automate the service requests?
- How do we collect user feedback?
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Tasks
- Requirements: How do we design the service level requirements?
- Design: How do we design and document the service level agreement?
- Operational Level Agreement: How do we design the operational level agreements?
- Underpinning Contract: How do we design the underpinning contracts?
- Performance Evaluation: How do we measure the SLA's, UC's and OLA's?
- Customer Satisfaction: How do we evaluate the customer satisfaction?
- Service Improvement: How do we develop service improvements?
- Contract Evolution: How do we further develop the contracts?
Requirements
- Business Needs: What are our business needs for this service?
- Storyboard: How does the storyboard for this service looks like?
- Use Case: What is the use case for this service?
- Requirements: What are the service level requirements?
Design & Documentation
- What is the desired service by the customer?
- What is the level of service IT is capable to deliver?
- What are the performance elements to be measured?
- What are the metrics for each performance element?
- What are the costs associated with delivering the desired level of service?
Performance evaluation
- What service level do we evaluate here?
- How did the service provider perform?
- What can we do to increase the quality of the service?
Customer satisfaction
- How do we conduct regular surveys?
- How do we conduct regular service reviews?
- How do we conduct unscheduled phone calls with users to get feedback?
- How do we conduct meetups to collect customer feedback?
- How do we follow up phone calls and meetings?
- How do we conduct user customer conferences?
- How do we set up a customer reference program?
Service improvement
- What are the actions of the last meeting?
- How do the performance metrics compare to the SLA metrics?
- What are the breaches and exceptions?
- What are already planned service improvements?
- What is the customer feedback on the service experience?
- What are necessary additional changes?
- What are the action items and who are they assigned to?
Contract & Agreement
- What are necessary contract changes?
- What are necessary investments?
- How do we implement the necessary changes?
- How do we update the necessary metrics?
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Service strategy, catalog, and design
- How do we determine our organizational capabilities?
- How do we create a service strategy?
- How do we create a service catalog?
- How do we design a service?
- How do we align different departments on one design?
- How do we design other relevant service management processes?
- How do we manage service provider relationships?
- How do we learn from service providers?
Procurement project planning
- How do we structure the procurement process?
- How do we internally sell our project?
- How do we communicate and collaborate in the project?
- How do we include organizational stakeholders in our decision-making?
- How do we determine the accountabilities of project roles?
- How do we decide on a type of service provider request?
- How do we determine our operational decisions?
- How do we gather valuable knowledge for the next service procurement project?
- How do we ensure organizational learning throughout the project?
- How do we communicate and collaborate with the service providers?
Request document creation
- How do we define the service to procure?
- How do we gather our service requirements?
- How do we structure our request document?
- How do we conduct stakeholder interviews to gather our requirements?
- How do we structure a request for information?
- How do we structure a request for quote?
- How do we structure a request for proposal?
- How do we structure a request for solution?
- How do we distribute our request documents?
Service provider research & inquiry
- How do we research potential service providers?
- How do we collect potential service provider information?
- How do we inquire about contact information?
- How do we make a selection to distribute our request document?
- How do we answer questions about our request document?
- How do we ensure service providers are interested to work with us?
- How do we build a directory of potential service providers?
Request answer evaluation & comparison
- How do we determine our evaluation approach?
- How do we determine our evaluation criteria?
- How do we reduce bias in our evaluation?
- How do we determine our selection criteria?
- How do we internally communicate our evaluation & selection?
- How do we inform service providers about our selection & decision?
- How do we proceed with the successful service providers?
- How do we abort the process with the outvoted service providers?
Contract negotiation & project closure
- How do we get templates for our service contract?
- How do we structure our service contract?
- How do we write our service contract?
- How do we decide on content?
- How do we include good practice content?
- How do we include legal content?
- How do we negotiate the contract with the service providers?
- How do we inform the remaining service providers about the winners/losers?
- How do we sign our service contract?
- How do we initialize our work relationship with the new service provider?
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Roles: Definition
- What is the standard team size?
- How do we reduce hierarchical structures?
- How do we self-organize / work autonomously?
- How do we reduce interruption by stakeholders and additional tasks?
- Who is the Product Owner?
- Who is the Scrum Master?
- Who is the Development Team?
Roles: Scrum master
- What is the knowledge proficiency of the Scrum approach?
- What is the need for certifications?
- What is the level of involvement in team operations?
- What is the need for coaching skills?
- What is the need for leadership skills?
- What is the need for technical knowledge?
- How do we define the ability to act as the servant leader for the Scrum Team?
Roles: Product owner
- What is the need for leadership skills?
- What is the need for technical knowledge?
- What are the needed skills?
- What is the level of involvement of the Product Owner?
- How do we make decisions to maintain the product backlog?
- How do we distribute authorities to maintain the product backlog?
- What is the level of knowledge of Agile and Scrum?
Roles: Development team
- What is the needed involvement/commitment level?
- What is the appropriate degree of specialization?
- What are the roles of the Development Team?
- What is the right number of developers per role?
- What are the needed role-independent skills?
- What are the needed role-specific skills?
- How do we share the knowledge and skills?
Roles: People development
- How do we evaluate the knowledge and skills of the people?
- How do we develop the people?
- What framework do we use to systematize the knowledge and skills of the people?
- What skills do we want to develop?
- What knowledge do we want to develop?
- How do we lead and coach the people?
- how do we provide feedback to the people?
- How do we learn new things?
Events: Sprint planning meeting
- What are the objectives?
- What is the location to meet?
- What is the expected duration?
- Who are the participants?
- What is the agenda?
- Who is the final decision-maker?
- What are the expected outcomes of the meeting?
Events: Scrum sprint
- What is the duration?
- How do we handle slack time?
- What are the duties of the Product Owner?
- What are the duties of the Scrum Master?
- What are the duties of the Development Team?
- Who are temporary team members?
- What visualization tools do we use?
Events: Daily standup meeting
- What are the objectives?
- What is the location?
- What is the meeting interval?
- What is the duration?
- Who are the participants?
- What is the agenda?
- What is the expected output?
Events: Product backlog refinement meeting
- What are the objectives?
- What is the location?
- What is the meeting interval?
- What is the duration?
- Who are the participants?
- What is the agenda?
- What is the expected output?
Events: Sprint review
- What are the objectives?
- What is the location?
- What is the meeting interval?
- What is the duration?
- Who are the participants?
- What is the agenda?
- What is the expected output?
Events: Sprint retrospective
- What are the objectives?
- What is the location?
- What is the meeting interval?
- What is the duration?
- Who are the participants?
- What is the agenda?
- What is the expected output?
Events: Virtual meeting
- How do we schedule the meetings?
- What is the web conference software solution?
- What is the spreadsheet/database tool?
- What is the synchronous writing tool?
- What is the asynchronous writing tool?
- Who invites virtual meetings?
Artifacts: Product backlog
- What is the Product Backlog software solution?
- Who maintains the Product Backlog?
- What is the update interval?
- How do we separate the Product Backlog Team and Scrum Team?
- How do we structure Product Backlog Items?
- How do we order the items?
- How do we estimate the amount of work on items?
Artifacts: Sprint backlog
- What is the Sprint Backlog software solution?
- Who maintains the Sprint Backlog?
- How do we split tasks?
- How do we order items?
- How do we estimate the amount of work on items?
- How do we monitor the progress of the Sprint?
Artifacts: Impediments backlog
- What is the definition of an impediment?
- Who maintains our impediments?
- How do we track impediments?
- How do we handle impediments?
- How do we divide the focus between tasks and impediments?
- What is the event to discuss impediments?
Artifacts: Work visualization
- How do we report the progress?
- What are the metrics?
- What is the software to report progress?
- How do we communicate online?
- How do we communicate offline?
- How do we integrate our online and offline communication?
Artifacts: Scrum board
- What technology solution do we use?
- Who maintains the information?
- What format do we use?
- What columns do we use?
- What metrics do we show on the Scrum Board?
- How do we use additional Scrum Boards for sub-teams?
- How do we integrate our online and offline Scrum boards?
Enhancement: 'Done' definition
- How do we define 'done'?
- What are our minimum quality standards?
- What are our average minimum standards?
- What are additional task-related definitions of done?
Enhancement: Visualization
- How do we visualize our tasks?
- How do visualize our team collaboration?
- How do we visualize our metrics?
Enhancement: Success measurement
- What are our expectations of success?
- How do we adopt Scrum?
- How do we improve our Scrum adoption?
- What are our primary outcomes using Scrum?
Enhancement: Scrum sprint communication
- Who sends out regular information as part of the Scrum Sprint?
- Who receives the information?
- What media do we use?
- What format do we use?
- Who are the stakeholders of this information?
Enhancement: Feedback
- What is your opinion on our Scrum adoption?
- What is well working on our Scrum adoption?
- What is not working on our Scrum adoption?
- What do you not understand about our Scrum adoption?
- Where do we create muda?
- What can we improve on our Scrum adoption?
- Who can support us on our Scrum adoption?
Enhancement: Office environment
- How do we support the team with a good working environment?
- How do we support the team with a working environment for web conferences and phone calls?
- How do we support the team with a working environment for pair-working?
- How do we support the team with a working environment for team meetings?
- How do we support the team with space and time for breaks?
- How do we support the Product Owner and her stakeholders with an appropriate working environment?
- How do we support the Scrum Master with an appropriate working environment when coaching the team members.
Enhancement: Success communication
- Who communicates our success?
- Who are the stakeholders we communicate to?
- Who are the Development Teams we communicate to?
- What other organizations do we communicate our success to?
- What is the message?
- What are the demands in exchange for our good work?
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Overview
Requesting supplier information is the first step to establishing a (potential) supplier relationship. The request for information (RFI) includes some basic information about the organization but focuses on the information needed by the supplier organization. The process of requesting basic information can be the first step for a supplier evaluation rating and/or including suppliers in a future request for quote (RFQ), request for proposal (RFP), and/or request for solution (RFS) activities. The request for information process should make the information submittal as simple as possible for the supplier.
Form structure
Request for information section
- What’s your organization?
- What’s your name?
- What’s your email address?
- What do you want to tell us?
- What’s the address of the website containing your thought leadership?
- We’re always in search of potential future suppliers. To understand your portfolio, expertise, and experience, please drop us the hyperlink of one(!) document (PDF file) with your combined offering structure, thought leadership, and engagement references.
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Overview
Requirements elicitation is necessary when an organization plans to source/procure a new service/technology solution. It includes the analysis of the current situation and creates options for the future. The requirements elicitation should include as many stakeholders, employees, and external people as possible to facilitate crowd intelligence as much as possible. The requirements elicitation is (along with some other parts) the input for the sourcing/procurement project.
Form structure
Section selection section
- Which kind of task do you want to do?
- Who is the interviewee?
- Is this a test form response?
Business case elicitation section
- What’s the general problem with the current situation?
- What’s the overall business rationale for improving the current situation?
- What’s the financial case for improving the situation?
- What are the indicators that the improvement has become too expensive?
- What are the indicators that the improvement won't work out?
Culture requirements elicitation section
- What are the current solution’s leadership challenges?
- What are the future solution’s leadership requirements?
- What are the current solution’s decision-making challenges?
- What are the future solution’s decision-making requirements?
- What are the current solution’s execution challenges?
- What are the future solution’s execution requirements?
- What are the current solution’s VUCA challenges?
- What are the future solution’s VUCA requirements?
- What are the current solution’s innovation culture challenges?
- What are the future solution’s innovation culture requirements?
Process requirements elicitation section
- What are the current solution’s command & control challenges?
- What are the future solution’s command & control requirements?
- What are the current solution’s communication & coordination challenges?
- What are the future solution’s communication & coordination requirements?
- What are the current solution’s cooperation & collaboration challenges?
- What are the future solution’s cooperation & collaboration requirements?
- What are the current solution’s information & knowledge challenges?
- What are the future solution’s information & knowledge requirements?
- What are the current solution’s continual improvement challenges?
- What are the future solution’s continual improvement requirements?
- What are the current solution’s organizational change challenges?
- What are the future solution’s organizational change requirements?
Technology requirements elicitation section
- What are the current functional challenges?
- What are the future solution’s functional requirements?
- What are the current solution’s reliability challenges?
- What are the future solution’s reliability requirements?
- What are the current solution’s usability challenges?
- What are the future solution’s usability requirements?
- What are the current solution’s flexibility challenges?
- What are the future solution’s flexibility requirements?
Compliance requirements elicitation section
- What are the current solution’s legal challenges?
- What are the future solution’s legal requirements?
- What are the current solution’s contractual challenges?
- What are the future solution’s contractual requirements?
- What are the current solution’s certification challenges?
- What are the future solution’s certification requirements?
- What are the current solution’s payment challenges?
- What are the future solution’s payment requirements?
Sourcing options elicitation section
- What are the possible product solution vendors?
- What are the possible professional & managed services providers?
Summary feedback section
- What are your comments about the summarized current state?
- What are your comments about the summarized desired future state?
- How would you like to move on with this initiative?
Solution options elicitation section
- Which product solution vendors do you know?
- Which content/information solution suppliers do you know?
- Which platform solution vendors do you know?
- Which professional services providers do you know?
- Which managed services providers do you know?
Supplier presentation feedback section
- Which supplier presentation are you referring to?
- What did you like about this supplier presentation?
- What did you not like about this supplier presentation?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this supplier presentation?
Solution options feedback section
- Which solution option are you referring to?
- What do you like about this solution option?
- What don’t you like about this solution option?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this solution option?
Decision feedback section
- What’s your feedback about the decision made?
- How do you agree with the decision made?
- How do you disagree with the decision made?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this decision?
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Overview
The service transition follows after the outsourcing / managed service transaction is complete (i.e., contract closure). It’s a structured project which ensures the contracted services will get up and running as fast as possible with the highest achievable quality. For the buying organization, the project consists of managing the service transition which the supplier mainly executes. The service transition project isn’t very complicated to plan but needs stakeholders with a flexible mindset, who are able to make quick decisions while working with the new supplier.
Form structure
Section selection section
- Which kind of task do you want to do?
- Who is the interviewee?
- Is this a test form response?
Team and stakeholder section
- Who participated in the service transaction (contract design, negotiations, and closure)?
- Which teams do you need to involve in the service transition?
- Which other stakeholders do you need to involve in the service transition?
- What external stakeholders (except the supplier) do you need to involve in the service transition?
- Who don’t you need to involve in the service transition?
Contract clauses section
- What are the deliverables your supplier must implement?
- What are the obligations your organizations must provide?
- What are the other contractual clauses to look at?
- What are the other relevant contracts for this service transition?
- What were the most challenging contractual clauses to negotiate in the transaction project?
Project outcomes section
- What are the expected outcomes?
- What are the possible project milestones?
- What isn’t expected?
- How can your organization and the supplier ensure everything will be delivered within scope, time, and budget?
- What’s the approach to designing the schedule?
- What are the fixed waterfall elements?
- What are the agile backlog elements?
Project reporting section
- What’s the project reporting process?
- What are your requirements for the supplier reporting in this project?
- Which information do you require to be included?
- Which project KPIs do you want to measure?
- Which optional information do you want to include?
- What reporting cycle do you recommend for this project?
- Which information should your organization regularly report to the supplier?
- Which reporting format (e.g., dashboard, PDF) do you prefer?
- Who will need to read and discuss the project reports?
Information management section
- What’s the approach to sharing information throughout this project?
- What are the technical requirements to share information between the involved organizations?
- What’s the approach to transferring tacit knowledge in both directions throughout this project?
- Which information does the customer require?
- Which information does the supplier require?
Staff education section
- What’s the approach to educating the customer?
- What’s the approach to educating the supplier?
- What’s the approach to keeping transferred knowledge in the organization?
- Which learning/education formats do you prefer?
- What can the supplier do to support your organizational learning?
Operational change section
- What are the relevant change preparations?
- What are the relevant strategic changes?
- What are the relevant process changes?
- What are the relevant design activities?
- What are the relevant development activities?
- What are the relevant implementation activities?
- What are the relevant adoption activities?
- What are the relevant continual improvement activities?
Organizational change section
- Which cultural changes does the new supplier need from your organization?
- How can your organization use this supplier relationship for cultural change?
- Which cultural changes would you like to introduce in your organization?
- Why is cultural change so hard in your organization?
- What are some tactics your organization can use to support the necessary cultural change?
People change section
- What changes in your organizational structure do you need to make?
- What people/teams does the supplier bring into your organization?
- What are cultural differences between your organization and the supplier?
- What are the actions to align the teams of the two organizations?
Process change section
- Which processes does your organization need to set up?
- Which processes does your organization need to change?
- What’s the approach to integrate the processes of your organization and the supplier?
- What’s the approach to mature the relevant processes in your organization faster than usual?
- What can you learn from the supplier?
Technology change section
- Which technology solutions will the supplier implement into your organization?
- Which technologies does your internal staff need to learn?
- Which technology solutions will the supplier retire after service transformation?
- Which new technology solutions will your organization manage instead of the supplier?
- Which processes does the new technologies require your organization to change?
Service reporting section
- What are your requirements regarding the future regular service reporting process?
- Which information do you need to see in the service reports?
- Which KPIs do you want to measure in addition to the contractually defined ones?
- Who will need to read and discuss the future service reporting?
- Which regular service reporting KPIs have to be detailed as part of the service transition project?
Project acceptance section
- How does the project team manage the intermediate transition acceptance criteria?
- What are the final acceptance criteria to complete the service transition project?
- Who will decide about the final service transition project acceptance?
- What are the acceptance criteria which your organization could forget to look at?
Continual improvement section
- What’s the approach to get the service up and running as quickly as possible, with the minimum quality standard required to function?
- Which continual improvement activities do you recommend to implement with the project?
- What are the continual improvement (meta) measurements?
- What’s the approach to integrate this future service into the existing continual improvement activities?
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The sourcing & supplier management function setup includes the execution of high-maturity outsourcing transactions while setting up the corresponding process at the same time.
Process maturity analysis
The process maturity analysis determines the maturity levels of various management processes and elicits the general organizational sourcing & supplier management situation.
The following documents should be prepared:
- Situation analysis
- Maturity analysis result
- Activity backlog
The following exemplary questions should be asked:
- What are the most pressing challenges facing the IT sourcing and supplier management function?
- What are the maturity levels of the organization in technology sourcing and supplier management-relevant process areas?
- Which activities are to be carried out in the short, medium, and long term?
Strategy
The strategy phase is used to decide on fundamental technology sourcing questions.
The following documents should be prepared:
- Organizational strategy
- Technology/IT/digital strategy
- Technology sourcing strategy
- Other related conceptual documents (e.g., process management, information management)
The following exemplary questions should be asked:
- What does the organization offer to its customers?
- What technologies does the organization want to develop internally/externally?
- How should external services be split among different suppliers? (service cut)
- How are information and process management carried out in the organization and in cooperation with suppliers?
Transaction
The transaction phase is used to search, evaluate, and contract one or more suppliers for one or more service areas.
The following documents should be prepared:
- Result of the market investigation
- Request for information + result
- Transaction process and project plan
- Request for quote/proposal/solution
- Collected stakeholder decisions
- Supplier contract and annexes
The following exemplary questions should be asked:
- What services does the market offer?
- Which suppliers can be considered?
- How does the purchasing process work in detail?
- What services does the organization need?
- What does the organization want (and not want) to decide/purchase/do?
- Which legal conditions are important to the stakeholders?
Transition
The transition phase serves to initialize the contract and start the cooperation between the buyer and the supplier.
The following documents should be prepared:
- Operational agreement
- Process descriptions (x 3-15)
- Transition process description
- Transition project plan
The following exemplary questions are to be asked:
- What processes do the parties agree to at the operational level?
- How do the contracting parties cooperate during service delivery?
- What information will the parties exchange during the transition?
- How, when, and with whom does the transition project take place?
Transformation
The transformation phase is used for the contractually agreed change implementation until the successful start-up and initial adaptation of all agreed services.
The following documents should be prepared:
- Technical transformation plan
- Organizational change plan
- Backlog of necessary contract adjustments
The following exemplary questions are to be asked:
- Which services are to be introduced, adapted, or phased out, and how?
- How does the transformation team involve colleagues indirectly involved in the transformation?
- Which contract adjustments could be helpful?
Delivery
The delivery phase is for continuous service delivery and improvement without significant contract or service changes.
The following documents should be prepared:
- Operational IT management protocols
- Operational improvement actions
- Future (contractual) improvement actions
The following exemplary questions are to be asked:
- What actions occur during deployment?
- Which operational improvements would be helpful/have contractors implemented?
- What contractual changes would be helpful during a new procurement?
Supplier management
Continual (strategic) supplier management is used to further develop the supplier relationship at a higher management level compared to operational cooperation.
The following documents should be prepared:
- Supplier management process description
- Strategic supplier management protocols
- Innovation proposals
The following exemplary questions are to be asked:
- How does the organization work with its suppliers at a strategic/conceptual level?
- What evaluations/measures/changes are made in cooperation with suppliers?
- What additional (innovative) services could the existing suppliers provide?
Reassessment
The re-evaluation of a supplier relationship is used to prepare a contract extension (if agreed) or a new tender for the service package.
The following documents should be prepared:
- Consolidated supplier and performance evaluation
- Supplementary market investigation
- Innovation findings
The following exemplary questions are to be asked:
- How satisfied is the organization with service delivery?
- How has the market changed since the last market survey?
- What new technologies/architectures/processes have become available since the last RFP?
Schedule
The following schedule refers to medium-sized companies and represents the best case. With pure analysis, implementation, and documentation, this schedule can be kept. According to experience, delays are in the majority due to stakeholder alignment (wait and see, concerns, knowing better, criticizing).
- Maturity analysis: approx. one month
- Strategy: approx. one month
- Transaction: about two months (if standard contracts and clauses are used)
- Transition: approx. two months
- Transformation: three to twelve months
- Delivery: Depending on the contract
- Supplier management: parallel set-up, continual process maturity increase
- Reassessment: six to twelve months before the contract ends
The establishment of the IT sourcing function, IT sourcing processes, and IT sourcing team occurs in parallel with the initial execution of the activities outlined above. There will be a joint sourcing project execution and process set-up instead of a sequential set-up and subsequent implementation.
Summary
The IT sourcing function is more similar between organizations than commonly thought. Essential capabilities need to be built and operated across many industries and organizational sizes. The challenge for smaller organizations is fast and lean implementation. Developing 90% solutions ensures a working process maturity level in the shortest possible time. Using good practices and templates, the remaining challenge is usually the alignment of the organization's internal stakeholders, instead of the preparation of process and contract documents.
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Situation & Challenges
- Necessity of setting up a supplier management
- Issues with few software solutions available on the market
- Software solutions are often associated with massive lock-in effects
- Microsoft Excel is difficult to manage in the long term
- Solution for use by stakeholders needed instead of use by the supplier management team only
- Supplier management team as coordinator and for information management instead of another operational team
- Supplier management team to drive systematization, standardization, and automation instead of execution of operational activities only
- Supplier manager to design processes instead of executing processes
- Microsoft 365 was introduced and is in successful use
Solution & Contents
- Provider management tool based on Microsoft Forms as part of Microsoft 365
- Forms are a simple, tried and tested, and fast tool for process management
- From the user's point of view, every process software is an interaction of forms (user interface)
- Microsoft Forms provides a simple interface for entering information about one-time projects and/or recurring processes
- Provider management tool in Microsoft Forms maps initial, ad-hoc, and regular activities of stakeholders
Outlook
- Stakeholder briefing and data collection (one month behind original schedule)
- Model and forms customization
- Backend development for analysis and visualization
- Further forms in various areas are possible
Other form subjects
- Forms for analysis (e.g., interviews) in projects
- Forms for holistic process control (such as supplier management)
- Forms for data collection of sub-processes not yet mapped (e.g., employee onboarding) (https://www.formpl.us/templates)
- Forms as checklists or standard operating procedures
- Forms for the confirmation of acknowledgment of instructions (e.g., manuals)
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Introduction
This description is a draft for further processing by a qualified lawyer familiar with contract law. It’s not a text section that can be copied into a draft contract.
Basics
- The supplier cooperates with the customer both on the basis of operational processes and within the supplier management process.
- The customer and the supplier are interested not only in a contractual but also in mutually pleasant cooperation.
- The customer controls the supplier with a supplier management process on a strategic level, and for certain scenarios (e.g., management escalations) on an operational level.
Methodology
- The supplier management process consists of a number of process components that handle various tasks.
- A number of forms are tools for exchanging information, along with web conferences and emails.
- The purpose of the forms is to store important exchanged information in a traceable and auditable manner.
- A common browser (e.g., Chrome, Firefox) is required to use the forms.
- The supplier receives the link to the corresponding form, a concise written overview, and instructions on how to use it at the start of the contract and service.
- The supplier shall use the form independently and without being requested to do so and/or upon request by the customer.
- The supplier fills in the form with information in text and using selection fields.
- The customer shall provide feedback on selected entries made by the supplier.
- The customer shall ensure that its personnel can operate the forms software tool.
- The customer shall be available during the contract and performance period for questions regarding the technical and content-related operation of the forms.
- The customer shall evaluate the supplier’s entries and provide qualified feedback and an evaluation of the content.
- The customer alone determines the frequency and scope of form entries from the supplier.
- The customer alone determines the frequency and extent of qualified feedback to the supplier.
- The supplier shall strive to provide detailed text-based descriptions in complete sentences.
- The supplier shall fill in the fields of the form in such a way that they are conducive to the improvement and further development of the cooperation between the customer and the supplier.
- The supplier shall take into account the customer’s feedback on the filling of the form and communicate it to its employees filling the form.
Monthly invoicing section
- The supplier shall additionally provide its invoices to the customer using this section of the form.
- The classic finance-based invoicing process is unaffected by this and is described elsewhere in this contract.
- The supplier shall be able to submit its invoices both automatically or by email and via this form.
- The supplier is capable of providing invoices via a hyperlink instead of a file upload.
Monthly supplier-to-customer reporting section
- The supplier shall provide service reporting, which is described in more detail elsewhere in this agreement.
- The supplier shall provide the customer with regular service reporting via this form section.
- The supplier shall summarize the regular reporting for this form section in concise plain text.
- The supplier shall ensure that the reporting is done in a coherent manner and that the reports fit together logically.
- The supplier shall explain any changing reporting system and, in particular, any changes to the structure, layout, and information of the reports.
Ad-hoc pricing table update section
- The supplier shall provide price lists for certain categories of services.
- The procedure for changing the prices of the services under this agreement is described elsewhere in this agreement.
- The supplier shall provide updated price lists via this section of the form.
- The supplier shall briefly explain the background, with reference to the relevant parts of the contract for updating the price lists in the free text field of this section of the form.
- The supplier can provide price lists using a hyperlink instead of a file upload.
Monthly supplier-to-customer learning section
- The supplier shall provide feedback on the cooperation with the customer using this form section.
- The supplier shall provide feedback on each month of cooperation between the customer and the supplier.
- The supplier shall first agree internally on the monthly feedback and consolidate views into it.
- The supplier evaluates the cooperation with the customer in the past month by using the "Net Promoter Score."
- The supplier describes negative and positive individual events of the past month in detail by text.
- The supplier reports on joint learning for the purpose of long-term continual improvement of the partners.
- The supplier includes references to other documents that are results of the joint learning process.
- The customer incorporates the contractor's monthly feedback into the further development of its own organization.
- The customer discusses the contractor's monthly feedback with the operational teams and develops strategies and solutions to improve the cooperation with the supplier.
- The customer uses the supplier’s submitted monthly feedback contributions for the further development of the supplier and the working relationship.
- The customer shall not use the submitted monthly feedback contributions for selection decisions of other sourcing projects, or for the purpose of decisions on future further cooperation with the supplier.
- The customer shall maintain a comparable internal form for feedback of the customer’s organization on the cooperation with the supplier.
- A form of the supplier that the customer fills in on a monthly basis is not the subject of this contract section.
Ad-hoc supplier-to-customer escalation section
- The supplier has the possibility to initiate an escalation along the agreed escalation path using this form section.
- The supplier, like the customer, is able to initiate an escalation and thus start a discussion at the next higher management level.
- The supplier coordinates within his organization before an escalation in order to carry out the subsequent escalation as effectively and efficiently as possible.
- The customer and the supplier do not consider an escalation as a negative event but as an opportunity to draw the attention of other stakeholders to a specific situation within the scope of this contractual relationship.
- The customer and supplier are equal partners, which the escalation form section clarifies.
- The escalation form section of the supplier is structured in a similar way to the corresponding internal form section of the customer.
- This section of the contract does not regulate the communication between the customer and the supplier after an escalation has been initiated.
Yearly supplier-to-customer evaluation section
- The supplier shall evaluate the cooperation with the customer once a year with this form section.
- The supplier describes the performance of the customer in comparison to other customers of the supplier.
- The supplier describes possible improvements in the cooperation that the customer evaluates and incorporates into its own organizational development.
- The supplier describes behaviors that lead other customers to better cooperation.
- The supplier describes possible forms of cooperation for the joint development of innovations in the coming time period until the next annual evaluation and/or beyond.
- The supplier describes a possible specific innovation project in the corresponding form field.
- This innovation project need not be related to this contract and its deliverables; rather, this form field is intended to lead to additional cooperation.
- The concrete innovation project described may have already been mentioned elsewhere by the supplier; the decisive factor here is the written fixation for further processing by the customer’s organization.
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Introduction
This manual describes the form information model in more detail and provides recommendations for using the forms. After a general introduction, the manual is structured along the sections of the form.
- The author uses the term supplier management which is a synonym for (technology) vendor management and (service) provider management.
- The aim of supplier management is strategic control and operational support of the organization's supplier relationships.
- Supplier management as a separate capability/function/process/team intends to create transparency about the state of supplier relationships, increase the service delivery quality, and prepare future supplier decisions.
- Forms based on Microsoft Forms simplify data and information entered by internal stakeholders and external suppliers.
- Forms are a tried and tested approach to systematization and standardization of processes.
- Project managers use forms to systematize and standardize requirements.
- Microsoft Forms is included in Microsoft 365 and therefore doesn’t come with additional costs.
- The advantages of usability and fast implementation outweigh the disadvantages of the limitations of Microsoft Forms.
- Microsoft Forms brings a low lock-in effect and the deploying organization can swiftly replace it with another form software tool.
- Software tools of other categories (e.g., workflow management software tool) can replace form software tools with a low implementation effort.
Internal and external form
- Supplier management is built on two forms, one for use by the organization's internal stakeholders and one for use by external supplier staff.
- The separation into an internal and an external form is due to information security: The internal form contains selection dropdowns that reveal internal information; the external form contains text fields instead of selection dropdowns to avoid revealing confidential information.
- The internal and external forms are both implemented with Microsoft Forms, so there is no difference in the user experience.
Form structure
- The forms are divided into individual sections.
- The sections contain the questions and the fields for entering the answers.
- The form is structured in such a way that one section corresponds to one task.
- The first section is used to select the section to be used, e.g., a table of contents and task selector.
- The number of sections and questions per form is limited by Microsoft Forms.
- The form usually ends after the selection section and another content section.
- An exception to this rule is the evaluation sections, which distribute a large number of questions over several sections for a better user experience.
- After submitting the form, the user can immediately fill it in again and submit it.
- If someone interviews another person, the interviewer fills in all sections.
Internal: Home-All: Section selection section
- In the section selection section the user selects the section of the form to be filled in.
- Specifying a component (explained later in this manual) is necessary for sections marked by "Component".
- Microsoft Forms automatically captures the email address of the user completing the form and the start and end times of the completion process if the form is configured appropriately, so this section doesn’t need to query these values separately.
Internal: General-Registration: Initial form user registration section
- Each user of the form fills in this section once when using the form for the first time.
- In the case of an interview, neither the interviewer nor the interviewee fills in this section.
Internal: General-Challenges: Initial challenges elicitation section
- This section captures the stakeholders' assessment of the supplier management’s current state and maturity.
- The aim is to provide a quantitative analysis of the state of service delivery in order to prioritize supplier management activities.
- The section is particularly useful when setting up the supplier management function, but the supplier management team can also ask for it to be filled in at intervals.
Internal: General-Requirements: Initial requirements section
- This section elicits the supplier management’s current state in a qualitative way.
- The supplier management team typically fills this section as interviews, as the questions may often require explanation.
- Since this section is the first time stakeholders have encountered provider management as a function/capability/team, the interviewer should use explanatory examples.
Internal: General-Feedback: Ad-hoc supplier management feedback section
- This section is for users to provide feedback to the supplier management team.
- The goal is to provide regular feedback to the supplier management team from all individuals working with the supplier management team.
- The supplier management team uses the feedback for its own continual improvement.
- Stakeholders can also use this section as a grievance box for challenges with supplier management.
Internal: General-Template1: Ad-hoc contract template request section
- This section is used for stakeholders involved in sourcing to request a suitable contract from the supplier management team.
- Due to the need for customization to the specific sourcing project, contracts are provided via this separate section instead of via an openly shared contract template.
- The section ensures traceability of contract requests.
- The section is an example of how organizational process management ensures traceability of a process by using a form.
Internal: General-Template2: Ad-hoc contract template feedback section
- This section allows stakeholders to provide feedback on a contract template.
- For the purpose of continual improvement of the contract templates, the supplier management team collects feedback on them.
- A form makes sporadic feedback trackable and allows the supplier management team to incorporate it into contract template revisions.
- This section is an example of a not-so-common process where collecting feedback and making it trackable works in favor of continual improvement.
Internal: General-Question: Ad-hoc supplier management Q&A section
- This section is for answering questions asked to the supplier management team.
- Stakeholders use the form to ask questions that the supplier management team answers via email.
- This section is an example of a simple question process, which collects the questions centrally to publish them later as "Frequently Asked Questions".
- A response process and other service desk elements can be added by the supplier management team at a later stage using Microsoft Forms complementary software tools.
Internal: General-Internal: Internal supplier management feedback section
- This section serves as a tool for the supplier management team for their own continual improvement.
- Supplier management team members use this section to collect feedback and suggestions for improvement.
- The section contains neutral questions in a few areas that team members use as guidance.
- The supplier management team can adjust this section’s structure and questions with comparatively little internal coordination effort due to the internal nature of this section.
- The section is an example of tracking improvement ideas within a team.
Internal: Component-Information: Ad-hoc component information update section
- This section is for creating and updating components.
- The component is the central entity of this supplier management framework.
- Components include suppliers, contracts, services, products, and other common terms/entities in any combination.
- The definition of components as a summary unit allows the greatest possible flexibility to cover a wide variety of suppliers and services without the user having to "bend" the supplier management framework.
- Components don’t have to map the organization's supplier and service landscape in a MECE ("mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive") way; rather, the supplier management team can also maintain suppliers alongside their contract and service bundles.
- Other sections of the internal form refer to the component model.
- All other sections are designed to be flexible enough to allow the supplier management team to define a variety of different kinds of components.
Internal: Component-Missing: Ad-hoc missing information section
- This section is used to control the request to suppliers to provide documents.
- If the customer organization has lost contractual documents, it requests them from the supplier.
- Since the provisioning and maintenance of these documents is a key responsibility of the supplier management team, but the organization commonly finds this process embarrassing, this section controls the supplier document request process.
- The organization can customize the section depending on its own process, particularly depending on the organizational unit that regularly contacts suppliers about lost documents.
- The section also ensures that the organization requests missing documents only once from the corresponding supplier.
- The organization maintains a table/list/database of all documents as PDF files outside of Microsoft Forms (e.g., using Microsoft Lists).
Internal: Component-Relationship: Initial relationship management section
- The section is used to capture the relationship management process of a particular component.
- The component owner initially fills in this section for the information of the supplier management team.
- Filling in this section is the prelude to increasing the maturity of this process at the corresponding component.
Internal: Component-Compliance: Initial compliance management section
- The section is used to capture the legal compliance process of a specific component.
- The component owner initially fills in this section for the information of the supplier management team.
- Filling in this section is the prelude to increasing the maturity of this process at the corresponding component.
Internal: Component-Performance: Initial performance management section
- The section is used to capture the performance improvement process of a specific component.
- The component owner initially fills in this section for the information of the supplier management team.
- Filling in this section is the prelude to increasing the maturity of this process at the corresponding component.
Internal: Component-Learning: Monthly customer-to-supplier learning section
- This section is used to communicate feedback on components and their suppliers from various involved stakeholders.
- Regular feedback is not limited to a single submission of this section per component per month, but rather as many involved persons as possible should provide their feedback on a component and its supplier.
- The section is kept short to lower the barriers for regular feedback from as many different people as possible.
Internal: Component-Escalation: Ad-hoc customer-to-supplier escalation section
- This section is used to perform and log escalations.
- An escalation is a common sub-process or process step in supplier and IT management.
- The escalation is not a description of an event, but an orderly process for involving other stakeholders and/or teams higher up in the organizations involved.
- Due to a large number of different escalation types, this section is kept general and concise.
Internal: Component-Evaluation: Yearly component evaluation section
- This section is used for the component evaluation.
- The component evaluation is the central activity of the supplier management function for controlling suppliers and their deliverables.
- The evaluation objects of this provider management framework are "components", which may include suppliers, contracts, services, and products.
- The evaluation is extensive and may take some time to complete.
- Having a large number of stakeholders involved in the component evaluation is important for the created data set and the following quantitative analysis.
- The evaluators should conduct the evaluation without prior consultation with their teams.
- The section includes an indication of the type of evaluation to separate initial, regular, and spontaneous evaluations.
External: Home-All: Section selection section
- This section is used to select the section in the external form.
- The organization publishes the external form as publicly available.
- With the public visibility setting, Microsoft Forms does not capture the user's email address.
- The section contains fields for user identity information which the user enters manually.
- The section selection section contains fewer fields that require explanation, simplifying the form filling for supplier users.
- All sections of the external form refer to a component, which means that it’s always necessary to specify a component.
External: General-Invoice: Monthly invoicing section
- Supplier users use this section to provide the monthly supplier invoices.
External: General-Reporting: Monthly supplier-to-customer reporting section
- This section is for the provision of regular reports by suppliers.
External: General-Pricing: Ad-hoc pricing table update section
- This section allows suppliers to provide updated price lists.
- With the use of a form section, the price list provision is auditable.
External: General-Learning: Monthly supplier-to-customer learning section
- This section is used to communicate feedback from suppliers to the internal organization.
- Regular feedback isn’t limited to a single submission of this section per component per month, but it’s likely that suppliers will first coordinate their feedback internally before using this section to provide feedback.
- The section is kept short so that as many suppliers as possible provide monthly feedback.
- This section serves the often underappreciated task of the supplier management team to facilitate and log feedback from suppliers to their own organization.
- This section is the counterpart to the corresponding section of the internal monthly feedback form.
External: General-Escalation: Ad-hoc supplier-to-customer escalation section
- This section enables the external supplier to escalate a situation to higher management.
- Suppliers usually coordinate internally before escalating to higher management.
- The section is also intended as a signal that two equal partners are working together.
- The section is structured in a similar way to the corresponding section of the internal form.
External: General-Evaluation: Yearly supplier-to-customer evaluation section
- This section is used for the annual evaluation of the customer by the supplier.
- The section is kept more concise than the internal counterpart.
- The aim of this section is primarily to provide innovative conceptual information which can also be incorporated into the internal evaluation of the components/suppliers.
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Software implementation
Internal form
Internal supplier management section selection section
- What’s the related supplier/contract/service component?
- Which kind of task do you want to do?
- Only answer this question if you know what you're doing.
- Is this a test form response?
Initial form user registration section
- What's your name?
- What's your email address?
- What's your mobile phone number?
- What's your organization?
Initial challenges elicitation section
- The delivered service lacks the quality you expect from suppliers.
- The suppliers don’t bring the business value you expected for these services.
- The supplier's delivery of the services is too expensive compared to alternative suppliers and/or a calculated internal delivery.
- The suppliers aren’t committed to shared success with the services delivered.
- The suppliers don’t staff their services with high-quality human resources.
- The suppliers don’t have adequate processes that make cooperation quick and simple.
- The suppliers don’t use adequate technology solutions to deliver their services.
- The suppliers don’t bring the expected written information and tacit knowledge to your organization.
- The suppliers don’t bring the expected innovation to your organization.
- The sourcing of suppliers and services lacks a coherent strategy.
- The sourcing of suppliers and services lacks a coherent process/project execution.
- Do you have any other supplier management challenges/requirements/preferences?
- What should the supplier management team do next to improve working with the suppliers?
Initial requirements section
- What are your challenges/requirements/preferences regarding your organization’s suppliers’ service performance?
- What are your challenges/requirements/preferences regarding cooperation with your organization’s suppliers?
- What are your problems/requirements/preferences regarding your organization’s supplier management?
- What are your challenges/requirements/preferences regarding supplier management software tools?
- Do you have any other challenges/requirements/preferences?
Ad-hoc supplier management feedback section
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend your organization’s supplier management function to others?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend your supplier management function’s support with your supplier issues?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend your supplier management function’s responsiveness?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend your supplier management function’s level of innovation with suppliers?
- What works especially well?
- What are the potential areas for improvement?
Ad-hoc contract template request section
- Which contract template do you need?
- What contract changes do you need?
- When do you need the changes by?
Ad-hoc contract template feedback section
- Which contract template are you referring to?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this contract template to others?
- How can your organization improve this contract template?
Ad-hoc supplier management Q&A section
- Which contract are you referring to?
- What’s your question?
- When do you need an answer by?
Internal supplier management feedback section
- How does the supplier management team get people to work (more) on supplier management?
- How does the supplier management team improve supplier relationships and their service delivery performance?
- How does your organization develop/implement/adopt the new technologies of the suppliers in a way that is better/faster/cheaper?
- How does the supplier management team collect, use, and share good practices from the suppliers?
- How does the supplier management team adopt improvements and innovations from the suppliers?
Ad-hoc component information update section
- What type of submission is this?
- What’s the component's (new) name?
- What’s the component’s (new) identifier?
- What’s this component’s (new) description?
- What’s this component's (new) category?
- What’s the component’s (new) status?
- What are this component’s major suppliers, contracts, and services?
- What are this component’s suppliers?
- What are this component’s contracts?
- What are this component’s services?
- Who's this component's (new) internal accountable owner?
- Who are this component's (new) internal responsible contacts?
- Who participated in this component's development?
- What’s the component's (new) preference status?
- What’s this component's contract value with your organization?
- When were the crucial contracts closed?
- When will the crucial contracts end?
- What’s the longest contract notice period?
- When must your organization start the renewal process?
- Who's the relationship owner with your organization on the component side?
- Are there any additional notes about this component?
Ad-hoc missing information section
- What information/document is missing?
- Who gave authorization to ask the supplier for this information/document?
Initial relationship management section
- What’s the status of this component relationship?
- What’s the process to manage this component relationship?
- How does your organization want to improve this component relationship?
- Are there any additional notes about this component relationship?
Initial compliance management section
- What are the agreed compliance and regulatory requirements for this component?
- What’s the status of this component’s compliance management?
- What’s your organization’s process to check this component’s compliance requirements?
- What does your organization need to improve regarding this component’s compliance management?
- Are there any additional notes about this component’s compliance management?
Initial performance management section
- What are this component’s agreed performance requirements?
- What’s the status of this component’s performance management?
- What’s your organization’s process to check this component’s performance requirements?
- What does your organization need to do to improve this component’s performance management?
- Are there any additional notes about this component’s performance management?
Monthly customer-to-supplier learning section
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component based on its performance last month?
- What went well this month?
- What went wrong this month?
- What did your organization learn to become better in the future?
- Which service level is affected?
- What went wrong?
- How will the component improve in the future?
Ad-hoc customer-to-supplier escalation section
- What happened?
- Why can’t you solve this challenge on your level?
- What do you expect from this escalation?
Yearly component evaluation section
- What type of component evaluation is this?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s bandwidth to deliver?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component's capacity?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s ability and diligence to complete tasks in the given period of time?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component's competency?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s consistency of high-quality output?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component's consistency?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s management processes?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component's process management?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s delivery quality?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component's delivery quality?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s financial situation?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component's financial situation?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s cost-efficiency?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component's cost-efficiency?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s work culture?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component's work culture?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s legal and regulatory compliance?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component's compliance status?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s communication culture, processes, and technology?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component's communication approach?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s performance?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component’s performance?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s scalability?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component’s scalability?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s reliability?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component’s reliability?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s availability?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component’s availability?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s extensibility?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component’s extensibility?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s maintainability?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component’s maintainability?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s manageability?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component’s manageability?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s security?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component’s security?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s personnel?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component’s personnel?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s response time?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component’s response time?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s willingness to improve?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component’s willingness to improve?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s willingness to innovate?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component’s willingness to innovate?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s sales team?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component’s sales team?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component’s delivery team?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component’s delivery team?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this component in general?
- What’s your additional feedback regarding this component?
- Which area needs improvement? Why?
- What’s the outlook for your organization using this component?
- What are the internal strengths of this component?
- What are the internal weaknesses of this component?
- What are the external opportunities for working with this component?
- What are the external threats to working with this component?
- Which organizational pain would you like to solve with this component?
- Which (other) organizational function could this supplier innovate?
External form
External supplier management section selection section
- What’s your name?
- What’s your email address?
- Which supplier organization are you part of?
- Which component are you referring to?
- Which kind of task do you want to do?
Monthly invoicing section
- What’s the invoice name?
- What’s the due date?
- What's the file's download link?
Monthly supplier-to-customer reporting section
- What’s the report name?
- What’s the report date?
- What’s the report category?
- What’s the report summary?
- What's the file's download link?
Ad-hoc pricing table update section
- What’s the pricing table name?
- Why are you updating this pricing table?
- What's the file's download link?
Monthly supplier-to-customer learning section
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this customer organization as a customer based on last month's performance?
- What went well last month?
- What didn’t work last month?
- What did you learn to become better in the future?
Ad-hoc supplier-to-customer escalation section
- What happened?
- Why can’t you solve this challenge on your level?
- What do you expect from this escalation?
Yearly supplier-to-customer evaluation section
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this customer organization in comparison to your other customers?
- How did the customer perform in the last year?
- Which area needs improvement? Why?
- How are other customers better than this customer organization?
- How can the two organizations innovate together?
- What’s the most relevant and concrete innovation idea you propose?
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Information capturing using forms (e.g., Google Forms, Microsoft Forms) and initial information storage in spreadsheet software (i.e., Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel) is simple and fast, but requires a more advanced information processing chain using other software solutions in the long term.
Starting point
- Supplier management with forms is a simple and quick-to-implement method for managing and controlling technology suppliers.
- Collecting information using forms is easy to explain, so many stakeholders can contribute without having to learn software tools or user instructions.
- The collected information is available in a spreadsheet (Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel) from where it can be further processed.
- Most organizations today have adopted either Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 as their basic collaboration solution; this paper does not consider other spreadsheet software tools.
- Organizations can connect Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 to a variety of software solutions and share data between them with little effort.
- Google and Microsoft themselves also offer a variety of complementary software solutions that organizations can use to process supplier management information collected through forms.
Requirements
- The information collected via forms is available in a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel).
- The form results list in the spreadsheet contains the information of all submitted form inputs, which should also not be changed for traceability.
- The supplier management team wants to process the form information entered in a way that provides as much benefit as possible, with as little effort as possible.
- The supplier management team wants to create different reports for different stakeholders, with as few different software solutions as possible.
- The supplier management team wants to perform initial and advanced configuration in a way that does not require in-depth knowledge of spreadsheet formulas, as this isn’t necessarily a focus of the team's activities.
- Further processing should be done using software solutions included in Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 instead of third-party software solutions, if possible.
- Further processing should be carried out in such a way that regular reports are automated as far as possible with just a few mouse clicks, while infrequent reports do not require a great deal of configuration work.
Basic technology route with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365
- Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 offer options for further processing of the collected form information.
- When using Google Forms or Microsoft Forms, the submitted forms end up in Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel.
- The user can manually copy new rows to a sister spreadsheet to archive the submitted form data without changes.
- Users should not modify the information in the sister spreadsheet, but only delete entire rows or comment on them using supplementary columns.
- The supplier management team creates and maintains complete records of the various entities (e.g., services/components) in a third sister spreadsheet.
- The supplier management team copies supplementary information into the initially created table row so that the corresponding record always contains all current information.
- Automated graphical analysis of regular reports can be performed using formulas and visualization features natively included in the spreadsheet in a fourth sister spreadsheet.
- With automated graphical reporting, the supplier management team doesn’t make regular changes but only views the automatically updated reports.
Advanced technology routes with Google Workspace
- Google AppSheet is a low-code software solution with which the supplier management team can easily perform further processing.
- AppSheet licensing can be affordable if the supplier management team only uses the software solution for their own internal graphical reporting but leaves the user input to Microsoft Forms.
- Various low-code/no-code software solutions offer tight integration with Google Sheets, though the deploying organization must always license these software solutions separately.
Advanced technology routes with Microsoft 365
- Microsoft Power Automate is a powerful software tool for automating otherwise manual activities within Microsoft 365 or with partner software tools.
- The supplier management team can use Microsoft Power Automate to automate copy activities between different spreadsheets.
- The supplier management team can also use Microsoft Lists (but not Microsoft SharePoint lists) in addition to Microsoft Excel.
- Microsoft Power Automate automatically writes all entered information into a list in Microsoft Lists, in addition to Microsoft Excel.
- The supplier management team then uses Microsoft Lists as a backend for further information processing, for example in Microsoft Power Apps and/or Microsoft Power BI.
- Microsoft Power BI, as part of Microsoft 365, is a data analysis solution for form information collected in Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Lists.
- With Microsoft Power BI, the supplier management team develops dashboards for various stakeholder groups.
- Microsoft Power BI's licensing allows for cost-effective deployment by providing only the supplier management team or dashboard developers with appropriate license upgrades for Microsoft 365.
- Microsoft Power BI has a learning curve, but a variety of consulting firms can augment staff to assist with onboarding and dashboard development.
- Microsoft Power Apps is a solution for developing low-code/no-code software applications based on form information collected in Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Lists.
- With Microsoft Power Apps, the supplier management team develops a low-code application to display dashboards for various stakeholder groups.
- Microsoft Power Apps is a licensed component of Microsoft 365, with additional costs incurred if a certain number of accesses are made (which would rarely occur in this use case scenario).
- The billing for the additional costs is done through the existing Microsoft license agreement and doesn’t require a separate contract.
- Microsoft Power Apps has a bit of a learning curve, making it particularly worthwhile to use if the organization wants to develop additional applications/dashboards outside of the supplier management function.
- Microsoft Power Apps is a technology that can be applied to a wide variety of organizational functions and processes, making it a good software tool for a process management team to take the lead in building the supplier management dashboard.
Approach
- In the vast majority of cases, an organization will have adopted either Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.
- The foundational collaboration software suited introduced determines the technology path taken.
- Reporting using Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel only is recommended as an initial approach, as no additional expertise is required and implementation can often be done within the supplier management team.
- Reporting using Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel can also include sophisticated and visually appealing dashboards.
- The supplier management team should at least begin to exhaust the capabilities of Google Sheets or Microsoft 365 before thinking about turning to additional software tools.
- The use of complementary software tools in addition to Google Workspace / Microsoft 365 depends on the technology strategy of the organization.
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Overview
This introduction describes the principles of strategic supplier management. The target audience is all stakeholders who are not part of the supplier management team. The introduction highlights the essential basics, background, and necessities of strategic supplier management.
Why supplier management?
- Supplier management manages, controls, and maintains the relationships with suppliers on a strategic-conceptual level.
- Supplier management doesn’t organize the day-to-day collaboration with the supplier, but ensures that the collaboration is good in the long term.
- Supplier management develops suppliers in such a way that their contribution to the success of the buyer organization grows in the medium to long term.
- Supplier management is a central management and escalation instance in case of problems with cooperation with a supplier.
- Supplier management works together with the sourcing & procurement function to find and evaluate future suppliers with the aim of purchasing valuable solutions.
- Supplier management evaluates current and potential suppliers in terms of their contribution to the organization.
- Supplier management develops proposals for (re)tendering services in order to improve the quality and price of solution purchasing.
- Supplier management carries out an innovation process in collaboration with existing and potential suppliers in order to identify innovation potential and prepare for its realization.
Operational vs. strategic supplier management
- Operational supplier management is a component of other IT management processes and functions.
- Operational supplier management is comparable to internal operational IT management processes (e.g., incident, change, asset management), with the difference that the organization cooperates with an external organization for service provisioning.
- Operational supplier management is responsible for cooperation with an external supplier, in the context of operational service provision and the related management processes.
- Strategic supplier management maintains the relationship with external suppliers at a higher management level.
- Strategic supplier management ensures that the external suppliers deliver the agreed service with the agreed quality.
- Strategic supplier management ensures good long-term cooperation with external suppliers, for the purpose of further cooperation and the development of innovations for the customer organization.
Responsibilities of the strategic supplier management
- Strategic supplier management collects expectations about external suppliers from the internal stakeholders and incorporates them into the further development of supplier contracts.
- Strategic supplier management maintains information on existing supplier relationships in a central information repository.
- Strategic supplier management researches missing information and documents and, if necessary, requests these from suppliers.
- Strategic supplier management records the status of individual contracts, services, and suppliers and determines the respective operational and strategic management maturity levels.
- Strategic supplier management serves as a centralized management layer between the internal organization and the supplier organization.
- Strategic supplier management improves cooperation with external suppliers.
- Strategic supplier management works as a central escalation authority for serious and/or persistent issues that operational teams cannot resolve at their level.
- Strategic supplier management modularizes, systematizes, and standardizes contract templates for sourcing if no stand-alone contract management exists.
- Strategic supplier management supports operational supplier management by providing methodologies, processes, and software tools.
- Strategic supplier management promotes joint learning and continuous development of the organization and the supplier organization (for the benefit of the organization).
- Strategic supplier management evaluates suppliers and their performance on a regular basis, taking into account the assessments of the personnel who work operationally with the suppliers.
- Strategic supplier management promotes the development of supplier innovations for the customer organization.
- Strategic supplier management develops processes and software tools that suppliers use to provide information.
- Strategic supplier management may take over other areas such as sourcing, contract management, and/or innovation management if these areas are not developed as separate teams.
Methodology and approach
- Strategic supplier management can be ad-hoc and controlled, with the latter representing a higher level of capability maturity.
- Strategic supplier management is done through conversations, written communication, and document development.
- Google/Microsoft Forms is a software solution for forms, which organizations can use for modularization, systematization, and standardization of information inputs.
- The advantage of Google/Microsoft Forms is the harmonization of information and the separation between form and information access.
- In comparison to Microsoft Excel or wiki software, the information-entering users always have access to the other users’ information as well, which is to be avoided in case of confidential information or supplier assessments.
- The supplier management form is divided into sections, each of which serves a specific task.
- The supplier management form serves the tasks described in the corresponding handbook.
- The supplier management team is responsible for processing, evaluating, and communicating information entered by form users.
- The supplier management team further processes the received form information in various ways.
Possible extensions
- The supplier management team decides on further information processing after input into the form.
- The "Information management" document provides information on the options for further information processing after input into the form.
- The supplier management team can extend the provider management framework with additional sub-processes or task areas as required.
- Microsoft Forms has certain limitations regarding the number of questions in a form, which the supplier management team can circumvent by using several forms.
Related processes
- Related topics are strategic sourcing and operational procurement.
- In the area of technology services, a service catalog is helpful in order to provide an overview of purchased services and services for sale and to make economic and technical dependencies transparent.
- For purchasing-related processes such as requirements elicitation and proof-of-concept projects, the organization must decide which team will take the lead in deciding on information models and processes.
- The organization decides which team will perform the task of capturing and maintaining potential future suppliers through market exploration and requests for information.
- The capture and maintenance of possible future suppliers is closely linked to innovation and partner management and should therefore be decentralized with a central management level.
- The organization should limit the already lateral function of provider management to specific subject areas, rather than transferring too many different additional subject areas.
- Operational process areas and content-related transformation tasks should be carried out by appropriate other teams, using external services if necessary.
- If there are a certain number of external suppliers, the scope of supplier management tasks should not be overloaded in order to enable further development in addition to day-to-day business.
Supplier management and operational teams
- The operational teams manage their suppliers independently at the operational level and at the strategic level in accordance with the specifications of the supplier management team.
- The operational teams and the supplier management team integrate the operational processes of the teams with the operational and strategic processes of the supplier management team.
- The operational teams pursue the goal of harmonizing their operational processes for supplier management in order to reduce complexity within their own organization and implement strategic supplier management without process exceptions.
Supplier management and strategic sourcing
- Strategic sourcing supports the operational departments in selecting and contracting suppliers.
- The supplier management team incorporates new suppliers into the supplier management process after the contract is signed.
- Strategic sourcing communicates the supplier management process to suppliers during the purchasing process so that suppliers can include it in service delivery.
Supplier management and operational procurement
- Operational procurement executes the purchase orders of contracted services.
- The supplier management team supports operational procurement by providing contract information and pointing out potential challenges in the purchase order process.
- Operational procurement and supplier management coordinate their process interfaces.
Supplier management and innovation management
- Innovation management searches for and evaluates innovations to be purchased (instead of developed in-house).
- Supplier management takes care of potential suppliers and their services.
- Supplier management focuses on service providers (consulting, outsourcing) and innovation management on new technology vendors, business models, and customer solutions.
Supplier management and process management
- Process management describes the interfaces between supplier management and other functions/processes/teams.
- Due to the large number of interfaces between supplier management and other functions/processes/teams and the large number of stakeholders, cooperation with the process management team is particularly important.
- Process management advises supplier management on the further development and integration of supplier management forms and the further processing of captured information in other software solutions.
Summary
- Supplier management has been an underdeveloped capability whose value increases with the number and volume of supplier relationships.
- With the current emerging shift to smaller agile supplier contracts, the relevance of central coordinating supplier management is also increasing.
- The principle of subsidiarity is maintained with the operational management of suppliers in the specialist departments.
- Strategic supplier management doesn’t replace the operational departments but complements them with a central management level.
- Strategic supplier management has the potential to create significant value for the organization at a time when external supplier relationships stay relevant and are becoming more complex.
Outlook
- As the maturity of supplier management increases, so will its value contribution to the organization.
- Supplier management has the potential to take on additional tasks (e.g., innovation management)
- Supplier management can perform additional tasks/functions that are not done by someone else in the organization.
- With an increasing number of supplier relationships and the importance of these for a faster-moving organization, the relevance of supplier management for the organization will increase.
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Tasks
- Inform stakeholders
- Interview stakeholders
- Adapt form
- Create form in tenant
- Decide about product catalog
- Determine product categories
- Fill in dropdowns
- Publish standard operating procedure
- Explain form to users
- Invite users to form by email
- Conduct Q&A sessions with users
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The initial stakeholder interviews serve the goals of requirements elicitation and organizational change management. The interviewer (usually a supplier management team member) elicits the organizational requirements for the supplier management process. In addition, the interviewer incorporates the early stakeholder requirements, interests, and opinions into the supplier management setup project, which reduces the amount of later opposition.
Initial challenges elicitation section
The delivered service lacks the quality you expect from suppliers.
- What are some examples of a lack of quality in the delivered services?
- Why was your organization not able to increase the quality?
- What actions are being taken to increase the service delivery quality?
The suppliers don’t bring the business value you expected for these services.
- What’s the most important business value your organization should work on?
- How do you measure business values?
- What do the suppliers say about this?
The suppliers’ delivery of the services is too expensive compared to alternative suppliers and/or a calculated internal delivery.
- How do you compare service pricing?
- How could your organization save money?
- What are some more cost-efficient alternative technologies/services/suppliers?
The suppliers aren’t committed to shared success with the services delivered.
- How do you measure supplier commitment?
- What’s missing in the supplier relationships?
- What are some possible contract architectures/clauses to guarantee commitment?
The suppliers don’t staff their services with high-quality human resources.
- How do you compare people between each other and between suppliers?
- Which competencies are you missing?
- Why should suppliers staff their projects with good people?
The suppliers don’t have adequate processes to make cooperation quick and simple.
- How do you observe lacking processes?
- How could your organization help its suppliers to set up adequate processes?
- Which management processes need attention most urgently?
The suppliers don’t use adequate technology solutions to deliver their services.
- How do your suppliers select their technology solutions?
- What are the possible reasons for past technology solution decisions?
- How can your organization and its suppliers update the technology solutions used?
The suppliers don’t bring the expected written information and tacit knowledge to your organization.
- Which information are you missing?
- How would you like to receive written information and tacit knowledge?
- What are some examples of good information and knowledge transfer?
The suppliers don’t bring the expected innovation to your organization.
- Which information are you missing?
- Where does your organization need additional innovation?
- What are some innovative suppliers?
The sourcing of suppliers and services lacks a coherent strategy.
- What are some examples of uncoordinated sourcing projects?
- How could your organization design a sourcing strategy?
- Who should be accountable/responsible for creating a sourcing strategy?
The sourcing of suppliers and services lacks a coherent process/project execution.
- What are the signs of a lacking sourcing process?
- What do other organizations do better?
- Which sourcing process steps need first/most attention?
Do you have any other supplier management challenges/requirements/preferences?
- What?
- Why?
- How?
What should the supplier management team do next to improve working with the suppliers?
- What?
- Why?
- How?
Initial requirements section
What are your challenges/requirements/preferences regarding your organization’s suppliers’ service performance?
- What doesn’t work well?
- How can your organization’s suppliers improve?
- How can your organization better support its suppliers?
What are your challenges/requirements/preferences regarding cooperation with your organization’s suppliers?
- How do you want to cooperate/communicate with your suppliers?
- How can your suppliers improve coordinating/communicating with your organization?
- How can your organization improve coordinating/communicating with its suppliers?
What are your problems/requirements/preferences regarding your organization’s supplier management?
- How can your organization’s supplier management function contribute to your supplier relationships?
- What should the supplier management function focus on first?
- Which outputs (e.g., documents) should the supplier management function deliver to you?
What are your challenges/requirements/preferences regarding supplier management software tools?
- How could supplier management software help you?
- Which features do you require from supplier management software?
- Which already-implemented software tool could your organization use for a supplier management system?
Do you have any other challenges/requirements/preferences?
- What?
- Why?
- How?
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Zusammenfassung
Mittels einer umfassenden Rahmenvereinbarung vereinfacht und beschleunigt die Universalvergabe die öffentliche Beschaffung. Sie reduziert die Notwendigkeit öffentlicher Vergaben auf wenige Rahmenvereinbarungen. Die Universalvergabe ist für alle dem deutschen Vergaberecht unterliegenen Organisationen interessant.
Übersicht
Die Universalvergabe ist ein Konzept zur Vereinfachung und Beschleunigung des öffentlichen Auftragswesens in Deutschland. Sie ist eine flexible Rahmenvereinbarung, welche den einfachen Abruf eines breiten Leistungsspektrums ermöglicht. Der Auftraggeber beschreibt die Leistung eines Wiederverkäufers welcher einen Leistungskatalog mittels einer Vielzahl von Lieferanten bedient anstelle alle Leistungen selber zu erbringen. Die Universalvergabe birgt zwar rechtliche Risiken, die Chance eines sehr flexiblen Einkaufs überwiegt aber bei weitem.
Herausforderung
Klassische öffentliche Vergaben inkl. Rahmenvereinbarungen sind eine komplexe Angelegenheit. Insbesondere die Beschreibung des Leistungsgegenstands mittels der Leistungsbeschreibung ist häufig eine langwierige, starre und riskante Angelegenheit. Die durch den Auftraggeber angefertigte Leistungsbeschreibung widerspricht diametral dem heutigen Vertriebs- und Einkaufsprozess bei dem der Auftragnehmer entweder eine zuvor definierte Leistung liefert oder mittels seines ausgeprägten Marktwissens zur Anfertigung der Leistungsbeschreibung beisteuert. Die klassische Leistungsbeschreibung und damit die klassische öffentliche Vergabe mit ihrem hohen Detailgrad und dem Ziel der rechtlichen Absicherung der Vertragspartner wirkt innovationshemmend und trägt wesentlich zur schleppenden Digitalisierung der öffentlichen Verwaltung in Deuschland bei.
Ansatz
Die Universalvergabe ist ein Ansatz eine umfassende Rahmenvereinbarung über eine Vielzahl von Leistungen zu schließen. Die Universalvergabe reizt das deutsche Vergaberecht mit dem Ziel einer einfacheren und schnelleren Beschaffung aus.
Die Universalvergabe ist anders strukturiert als herkömmliche Rahmenvereinbarungen:
- Der Wiederverkäufer als zentraler Ansprechpartner liefert Leistungen eines breiten Lieferantenportfolios anstelle die Leistungen selber zu erbringen. Der Wiederverkäufer vereinfacht die Transaktion von der Idee bis zur Lieferung, bedient sich aber bei der Lieferung/Leistung seiner Lieferanten anstelle ausschließlich eigenen Personals und Materials.
- Das breite Leistungsspektrum des Wiederverkäufers und seiner Lieferanten stellt sicher, dass der Auftraggeber nur einen Wiederverkäufer mit dessen Lieferantenportfolio je Themengebiet (bspw. Informationstechnologie) benötigt. Das breite Leistungsspektrum sorgt für einen Leistungsabruf über vergleichsweise wenige Wiederverkäufer als Partner je öffentliche Organisation.
- Das einfache Preissystem des Wiederverkäufers schafft maximale Transparenz. Zudem beschleunigt das einfache Preissystem die Bewertung der Bewerber/Bieter während des Vergabeprozesses erheblich.
Vorteile
Die Universalvergabe besitzt einige Vorteile, welche sie von klassischen Rahmenvereinbarungen unterscheidet:
- Die schnellere Beschaffung beschleunigt Projekte der öffentlichen Verwaltung erheblich insbesondere wenn man berücksichtigt dass sich ziemlich alle Leistungen auch extern beziehen lassen.
- Die einfachere Beschaffung sorgt für einen geringeren Ressourceneinsatz in der Fachabteiung, der Einkaufsabteilung und der Vergabestelle.
- Die maximale Wahlfreiheit ermöglicht den rechtssicheren Abruf kompatibler Leistungen bei gleichzeitiger Wahrung der Produktneutralität im Vergabeprozess.
- Die maximale Flexibilität ermöglicht moderne und innovative Bedingungen im Einzelabruf.
- Mittels mehrerer Lose führt die öffentliche Organisation langfristig nur noch eine Vergabe alle vier Jahre durch.
Rechtliche Bewertung
Die Universalvergabe scheint mit dem deutschen Vergaberecht auf den ersten Blick nur schwerlich vereinabar zu sein. Wenn man aber die relevanten Gesetze und Verordnungen nachliest, finden sich nicht viele Argumente gegen den Ansatz. Urteile der Vergabekammern und Rechtskommentare sind häufig alt und/oder beziehen sich auf Einzelfälle. Rechtsanwälte mit Schwerpunkt Vergaberecht haben ein natürliches Interesse an einer hohen Komplexität und langwierigen Auseinandersetzungen vor den Nachprüfungsinstanzen. Insofern sollte die öffentliche Organisation bei der Wahl einer unterstützenden Kanzlei insbesondere auch auf die grundsätzliche Einstellung zur Vereinfachung achten.
Durchführung
Die Universalvergabe ist inhaltlich ein neuartiges Projekt, weshalb sich auch ein progressives Vorgehen beim Beschaffungs- und Vergabeprojekt empfiehlt.Dazu gehört eine detaillierte Business-Analyse und die Aufnahme der Anforderungen an den zukünftigen Auftragnehmer/Wiederverkäufer. Grundsätzlich kann die öffentliche Organisation mit einer Projektlaufzeit von sechs bis zwölf Monaten rechnen. Beachtet man, dass anschließend in den durch die Universalvergabe abgedeckten Themenbereichen keine weiteren Vergaben notwendig sein werden, lohnt sich eine ordentliche und gewissenvolle Projektumsetzung.
Die Phasen lassen sich grob wie folgt gliedern:
- Business-Analyse mit der Erfassung des Ist-Zustands und der Anforderungen an den Auftragnehmer/Wiederverkäufer und der Anfertigung der Leistungsbeschreibung
- Planung und Durchführung des Vergabeprozesses inkl. der Anfertigung aller vergaberelevanter Dokumente bis zum rechtskräftigen Zuschlag
- Transition/Transformation inkl. Aufbau des Abrufprozesses in enger Zusammenarbeit mit dem bezuschlagten Auftragnehmer/Wiederverkäufer
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DACH region
- Accenture
- ACP
- Adesso
- Akquinet
- All for One
- Allgeier
- Arvato Systems
- Atos
- Axians
- Bechtle
- BTC
- Cancom
- Capgemini
- Cema
- CGI
- Cogizant
- Computacenter
- Conet
- Controlware
- Damovo
- Datagroup
- Dell Technologies
- DXC
- Fujitsu
- GISA
- Hetzner
- Heymanns
- HPE
- IBM
- Ionos
- Itelligence
- Logicalis
- Lufthansa Industry Solutions
- Materna
- MSG
- NTT Data
- Profi Engineering
- Rackspace
- Sopra Steria
- SVA
- T-Systems
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Overview
The community-based organization is structured with communities in addition to a classical hierarchy. Communities are more flexible and dynamic compared to hierarchies or matrix structures. Organizational communities include people from across the organization instead of closely related teams only. Software tools like Microsoft Teams and wikis (e.g., Notion) work perfectly well with an organization organized by communities.
Project form
Section selection section
- Which kind of task do you want to do?
- Who's the interviewee?
- Is this a test form response?
Requirements analysis section
- What are your challenges/requirements/preferences regarding your organization’s structure (e.g., org chart)?
- What are your challenges/requirements/preferences regarding your organization’s internal cooperation and coordination?
- What are your problems/requirements/preferences regarding your organization’s internal information and knowledge management?
- What are your challenges/requirements/preferences regarding your organization’s speed of decision-making and execution?
- Are there any other relevant organizational challenges?
Community setup feedback section
- What’s your feedback regarding flexing your organization’s structure?
- What’s your feedback regarding sharing more information between teams?
- What’s your feedback regarding setting up organizational communities as a way to manage information and work more flexibly?
- What’s your feedback regarding setting up organizational communities in addition to existing organizational structures (e.g., hierarchical and projects)?
- What’s your other feedback regarding setting up a community-based organization?
Community setup feedback section
- What’s your feedback regarding flexing your organization’s structure?
- What’s your feedback regarding sharing more information between teams?
- What’s your feedback regarding setting up organizational communities as a way to manage information and work more flexibly?
- What’s your feedback regarding setting up organizational communities in addition to existing organizational structures (e.g., hierarchical and projects)?
- What’s your other feedback regarding setting up a community-based organization?
Community setup analysis section
- What are the criteria to set up a community?
- Which number of communities would be useful for your organization?
- What are some possible communities for your organization?
- How could your organization flex its structure with the setup of communities?
- Which mistakes should your organization avoid when setting up communities?
Community interaction analysis section
- What are the key activities in the future communities?
- What are the activities communities shouldn’t do?
- How should communities communicate internally?
- How should communication flow between communities?
- What other interaction design elements are relevant?
Hierarchy reduction analysis section
- What are the current challenges of the organizational hierarchy?
- Why should your organization think about flattening the organizational structure?
- What are the alternatives to flattening the organizational structure?
- How could your organization flatten the organizational structure?
- What positive/negative consequences could the flattening have?
Community leadership analysis meetings section
- What leadership do communities need?
- What would be the difference between your organization’s current leadership model?
- What should organizational leaders do to facilitate the community model?
- What should organizational leaders stop doing to facilitate the community model?
- How could your organization reduce the amount of hierarchical coordination?
Community management evaluation analysis section
- What’s necessary to manage an organization based on communities?
- What can individuals do to support the community model?
- What are the daily/monthly/yearly activities in a community?
- What are the overall daily/monthly/yearly activities for all communities?
- What guidance do people and managers/leaders need to make the community model successful?
Process form
Section selection section
- Which kind of task do you want to do?
- Which community are you referring to?
Community setup request section
- What kind of community do you want to set up?
- What’s the purpose of this community?
- Who do you propose as the community leader?
- What’s the state of the planning process for this community?
- Who supports this community’s setup?
Community setup analysis section
- Which community setup request are you referring to?
- Which information is missing?
- Why is the request (not) legitimate?
- What are the tasks of the community management team to supervise this community?
- Which other community could coach/mentor this new community?
- Do you approve this community setup?
Community work management analysis section
- What should be the community’s approach to team communication?
- What should be the community’s approach to work coordination?
- What should be the community’s approach to team cooperation?
- What should be the community’s approach to information sharing?
- What should be the community’s approach to work systematization & standardization?
Community meeting analysis section
- What worked well since the last community meeting?
- What didn’t work well since the last community meeting?
- How can the community members improve working together in the future?
- What are the practices this community could learn from other communities?
- What could this community develop together?
Internal community feedback section
- What does work well in this community?
- What doesn’t work well in this community?
- What are the topics you would like to discuss within this community?
- Which topics are over-discussed within this community?
- What are some possible innovations this community could develop together?
Community closure request section
- What are the reasons to close this community?
- Who supports this community’s closure?
- Who doesn’t support this community’s closure?
- Which community will overtake the content of the community to be closed?
- Which community will overtake the tasks and responsibilities of the community to be closed?
Community closure analysis section
- Which community closure request are you referring to?
- Which information is missing?
- Why is the request (not) legitimate?
- What are the tasks of the community management team to support this community closure?
- Which other community has to be informed about this community closure?
- Do you approve this community closure?
Communities management feedback section
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend your organization’s community management team to others?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend your organization’s community management team’s responsiveness?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend your organization’s community management team’s innovation capability?
- What works well with the community management team?
- What doesn’t work well with the community management team?
- What do you need from the community management team?
- Which information (e.g., guidelines) should the community management team produce?
Communities restructuring analysis section
- Which communities do you want to restructure?
- What makes a community restructuring necessary?
- Which communities do you want to separate?
- Which communities do you want to merge?
- Which communities do you want to assign a new topic?
- Which communities do you want to close?
- Which communities do you want to set up?
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Overview
Forms and tables are useful tools to structure information as part of process and project tasks. They are simply structured, easy to understand, and quickly built. Forms and tables ensure that people in organizations include the necessary information to complete a task without further questions back and forth. With Google and Microsoft including forms and table tools in their collaboration suites, organizations don’t need to procure and implement additional software to systematize and standardize their work.
Form structure
Section selection section
- What’s the corresponding forms project?
- Which task do you want to do?
- Who is the interviewee?
- Is this a test form response?
Challenges elicitation section
- Which processes/tasks are most work-intense for you?
- Which process/project tasks take up too much time?
- Which tasks have your team tried to streamline? How?
- Which process/project task would you like to develop a form for?
- Which spreadsheets do you currently share with other people?
- Which process/project task would you like to systematize and standardize?
- Which approach do you normally use to automate workflows?
- Which workflow would you like to automate?
Form development section
- Which information do you want to capture with a form?
- How do you interact with other teams through these process/project tasks?
- What do you procure regularly in relation to these process/project tasks?
Form testing section
- Which form are you referring to?
- What’s your experience with the developed form?
- How many times have you filled in this form until now?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend this form to others?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend this form’s usability to others?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend this form’s effectiveness?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend this form’s efficiency?
- Which other fields should the form developers include?
- Which fields should the developers remove? Why?
- Which other form changes do you recommend?
- How did you experience the process around the form?
- What’s your additional feedback about this form?
Form adoption section
- What do you need to regularly use this form?
- What do you require to keep using this form as the process input?
- What do you need to tell your coworkers about this form?
- What do you need to provide feedback about this form?
- What do you need to provide feedback about the corresponding process?
- What else do you need regarding this form and process?
- What else do you need in your life?
Form improvement section
- What do you want to add to this form?
- What do you want to remove from this form?
- What do you want to automate about this process?
- What other forms do you want to see?
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Overview
Information management is the core capability to reduce the organizational “reinventing the wheel” habit. Most organizations have implemented wiki, document, and other information management software tools but still don’t use the expertise of past activities. Culture, processes, and technology must all be implemented and continually improved to achieve the goal of proper information management. Because information management’s success is hard to measure, most organizations deprioritize this capability and waste a lot of money in the process.
Form structure
Section selection section
- Which kind of task do you want to do?
- Who is the interviewee?
- Is this a test form response?
Requirements analysis section
- What is information management for you?
- What works in information management in your organization?
- What doesn’t work in information management in your organization?
- How could your organization improve its information management?
Wiki adoption analysis section
- Why aren’t you using your organization’s wiki more?
- How could your organization use its wiki for more use cases?
- What are use cases besides typically writing text documents?
Wiki structure analysis section
- What’s your organization’s wiki structure approach?
- What are the strategic goals in structuring the wiki?
- How could your organization structure its wiki on the highest level?
Authoring approach analysis section
- Why should your organization write down more information?
- Why isn’t your organization writing down more information?
- How can your organization write down more information?
- What information should your organization start writing down first?
- Where could you store newly written information?
- How could you make newly written-down information available to your coworkers?
Writing topic areas analysis section
- What are the areas in your organization where you regularly reinvent the wheel?
- What are the most urgent topic areas to share information with your coworkers?
- Who has the time to write this information down?
Information strategy analysis section
- What’s the ideal format and structure for the information you want to write down?
- What’s the software you want to use to write and save the information?
- How can your organization test the newly written information?
Writing analysis section
- Why isn’t writing more interesting for you?
- How can your organization make writing more interesting for you?
- How could writing in pairs or in groups make it more appealing for you?
Quality assurance analysis section
- How can you collect feedback early in the writing process?
- How can you ensure a high-quality document when you have finished writing?
Publishing process analysis section
- Which software tool will you use to publish written documents?
- What’s the process of publishing written documents?
Legal compliance analysis section
- Which legal and compliance requirements are relevant for your organization?
- How can you ensure you meet all legal and compliance requirements?
Information research analysis section
- What kind of information is your organization missing?
- What are the challenges of researching information?
- Which information research practices can your organization use to add information?
Information sources analysis section
- How does your organization manage information sources?
- What are the challenges of managing information sources?
- How could your organization manage information sources better?
- What are some relevant information sources for our organization?
Knowledge transfer analysis section
- What are the limits of transferring tacit knowledge to written explicit information (in the wiki)?
- How can your organization communicate tacit knowledge between people?
- How can structured interviews help to exchange tacit knowledge between people in your organization?
Knowledge to information analysis section
- What piece of tacit knowledge do we want to transfer to written explicit information?
- Until which date should we record this information?
- Who will contribute to this information development by writing?
Information feedback section
- Which information do you provide feedback on?
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend this information to others?
- What do you like about this information?
- What still needs to be improved?
- How could the author improve this information?
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Overview
Organizations need leaders, and leaders need to develop. Leadership development isn’t a capability that is for HR only. Leadership development is a task all existing organizational leaders are responsible for, and one that all employees should have an interest in. It consists of understanding (future) leaders’ requirements and developing an approach to support them. The organization’s executives should oversee leadership development.
Form structure
Section selection section
- Which kind of task do you want to do?
- Who is the interviewee?
- Is this a test form response?
Bad leadership section
- What are the signs of classical leadership?
- What are the signs of bad leadership?
- What are the alternatives to bad leadership?
Cuddling leadership section
- Why is cuddling important?
- How do leaders cuddle?
- How do your leaders cuddle?
- How do you find cuddling leaders?
- How do you enable leaders to cuddle?
Team-building leadership section
- Why is team building important?
- How do leaders build teams?
- How does your organization build teams?
- How do you find team-building leaders?
- How do you enable leaders to build teams?
Educational leadership section
- Why are learning and education important?
- How do leaders learn and educate?
- How do you learn and educate?
- How does your organization find learning and educational leaders?
- How do you enable leaders to learn and educate?
Process-building leadership section
- Why are processes important?
- How do leaders structure processes?
- How do you structure processes?
- How do you find process-building leaders?
- How do you enable leaders to structure processes?
Leader development section
- How do leaders learn?
- How do you select leaders?
- How do you educate leaders?
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Overview
Every organization needs continual innovation to adapt to the ever-changing environment. Radical, business model, and/or disruptive innovation can be necessary when other market players seem to threaten the organization to a degree that its existence is endangered. Innovation development frameworks build mental bridges and processes to ideate and test new customer solutions and business models. The challenging part starts after finishing the first stage, but the first stage is necessary to be able to get to execution.
Form structure
Section selection section
- Which kind of task do you want to do?
- Who is the interviewee?
- Is this a test form response?
Business model ideas section
- What’s your business model idea category?
- What’s your business model idea?
New business ideas section
- What’s your new business idea category?
- What’s your new business idea?
New market ideas section
- What’s your new market idea category?
- What’s your new market idea?
New professional services ideas section
- What’s your professional services innovation type?
- What’s your professional services innovation?
New outsourcing services ideas section
- Which managed service do you want to design?
- What’s your service design?
Competitive hotspot ideas section
- Which competitor(s) do you describe?
- Which type of weaknesses does your competitor have?
- What’s the competitor's weakness in detail?
- What could be our approach to developing a strength out of it?
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Overview
The organizational library provides books for employees. Employees read books to develop improvements and innovations for the organization. Many books contain good practices about various topics to help advance the organization. Individual team leaders and functional teams set the culture and the processes so that good practices can flow from books to teams, and throughout the organization.
Project form
Section selection section
- Which kind of task do you want to do?
- Who is the interviewee?
- Is this a test form response?
Learning requirements analysis section
- Which learning & development activities do you conduct? At what intervals?
- What are your challenges/requirements/preferences regarding the learning time investment of the employees?
- What are your challenges/requirements/preferences regarding learning content, formats, solutions, and tools?
- What are your additional challenges/requirements/preferences regarding organizational learning & development?
- What are your requirements/preferences regarding the book selection of an organizational library?
- What are your other challenges/requirements/preferences regarding an organizational library?
- What are your challenges/requirements/preferences regarding the book-lending process of an organizational library?
- How many books would you read per year?
Reader waiting list request section
- Why do you want early access to the organizational library?
- Which book titles would you like to see in the organizational library? Please include the author.
Reading culture analysis section
- What do you understand as an organizational “reading culture”?
- What are the benefits of an organizational reading culture?
- How could your organization create a reading culture?
Physical library design feedback section
- How would you design the room containing the books?
- How often and how long would you spend reading inside the organizational library room?
Reader kick-off feedback section
- What are your questions regarding the organizational library concept in general?
- What are your questions regarding the book-lending process?
- What additional feedback do you have?
Further rollout request section
- What’s your function?
- What’s your organization unit?
- Why do you want an organizational library?
- Why doesn’t the existing organizational library fit your requirements?
Process form
Section selection section
- Which kind of task do you want to do?
- Is this a test form response?
Book lending request section
- Which book are you borrowing? Please include only the book ID.
- In which month will you read the book? Please include the month with the format YYYY-MM.
Book replacement request section
- Which book is affected? Please include only the book ID.
- What happened? What is the current condition of the book?
New book request section
- Which book would you like to add to the organizational library? Please include the author.
- To which reader group do you recommend this book to?
- Please include their email address here for a short note.
Improvement feedback section
- On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you recommend your organization’s library to others?
- What additional feedback do you have?
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Overview
Many organizations struggle to get relatively simple tasks done with constantly high quality. Operational improvements are possible with quite simple tools like forms and tables. Forms and tables can show their effectiveness within simple operational processes that organizational stakeholders would like to improve. Generic forms for continual improvement demonstrate how forms and tables can track and archive operational information.
Form structure
Section selection section
- Which kind of task do you want to do?
- Who is the interviewee?
- Is this a test form response?
General order section
- Who receives the order?
- What’s the vision?
- What’s the mission?
- Who are the stakeholders?
- What’s the situation?
- What’s the intent?
- What are the objectives?
- What are the outputs?
- What’s the methodology?
- What’s the tactic?
- What’s the process?
General improvement section
- What’s the problem?
- What’s the solution?
- What’s the desirability of this idea?
- What’s the feasibility of this idea?
- What’s the viability of this idea?
- What are the disadvantages and risks of this idea?
General requirements analysis section
- What are the essential requirements?
- What are the desirable requirements?
- What are the optional requirements?
- What is not a requirement?
Consulting engagement analysis section
- What’s the need for change?
- Who sponsors the project?
- What’s the current situation?
- What’s the desired future state?
- What’s the problem?
- What are the recommendations?
- What should you prioritize?
- What’s the solution?
- What’s the action plan?
- How do you test the solution?
- How do you refine the solution?
- How do you implement the solution?
- How do you adopt the solution?
Consulting approach analysis section
- How do you provide the requested information?
- How do you provide the solution to a given problem?
- How do you conduct the diagnosis that may redefine the problem?
- How do you provide recommendations?
- How do you assist the implementation?
- How do you build consensus and commitment?
- How do you facilitate client learning?
- How do you improve organizational effectiveness?
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Overview
The organizational strategy process is important for every organization but shouldn’t complicate or delay operational improvements. Many frameworks and models can structure strategy but also drive the risk of over-analysis. Strategy design activities integrate with all other organizational functions and capabilities and serve as an input for them. The challenge isn’t to develop a strategy but to execute it effectively, efficiently, and sustainably.
Form structure
Question
- Which kind of task do you want to do?
- Who is the interviewee?
- Is this a test form response?
PESTEL analysis section
- Politics: What’s your evaluation of the government policy?
- Politics: What’s your evaluation of the political stability?
- Politics: What’s your evaluation of the corruption?
- Politics: What’s your evaluation of the tax policy?
- Politics: What’s your evaluation of the trade restrictions?
- Economy: What’s your evaluation of the economic growth?
- Economy: What’s your evaluation of the exchange rate?
- Economy: What’s your evaluation of the interest rate?
- Economy: What’s your evaluation of the inflation rate?
- Economy: What’s your evaluation of the disposable income?
- Economy: What’s your evaluation of the unemployment rate?
- Socio-culture: What’s your evaluation of the population growth?
- Socio-culture: What’s your evaluation of the age distribution?
- Socio-culture: What’s your evaluation of the career attitudes?
- Socio-culture: What’s your evaluation of the safety emphasis?
- Socio-culture: What’s your evaluation of the health consciousness?
- Socio-culture: What’s your evaluation of the lifestyle attitudes?
- Socio-culture: What’s your evaluation of the cultural barriers?
- Technology: What’s your evaluation of the technology incentives?
- Technology: What’s your evaluation of the level of innovation?
- Technology: What’s your evaluation of the automation?
- Technology: What’s your evaluation of the R&D activity?
- Technology: What’s your evaluation of the technological change?
- Technology: What’s your evaluation of the technological awareness?
- Environment: What’s your evaluation of the weather?
- Environment: What’s your evaluation of the climate?
- Environment: What’s your evaluation of the environmental policies?
- Environment: What’s your evaluation of the pressures from NGOs?
- Legal: What’s your evaluation of the discrimination laws?
- Legal: What’s your evaluation of the antitrust laws?
- Legal: What’s your evaluation of the employment laws?
- Legal: What’s your evaluation of the consumer protection laws?
- Legal: What’s your evaluation of the copyright and patent laws?
- Legal: What’s your evaluation of the health and safety laws?
SWOT analysis section
- What are your organization’s internal strengths?
- What are your organization’s internal weaknesses?
- What are your organization’s external opportunities?
- What are your organization’s external threats?
Organizational culture analysis section
- What’s your organization’s vision?
- What’s your organization’s mission?
- What’s your organization’s strategy?
- How do you define your organization’s operations from a cultural viewpoint?
- How do you define your organization’s leadership approach?
- How do you evaluate your organization’s teamwork?
- How do you evaluate your organization’s coaching and feedback culture?