Should You Make It Or Buy It? — 10 Insights to Take Away — Ep. 6/6
The goal is to tell you our story through the make or buy journey as a feature team at Doctolib. It’s meant to be practical and give you insight to at least convince you to ask yourself this question and ideally to accelerate your own make or buy journey by taking advantage of our experience. The story is divided into a series of episodes, one for each main step of our adventure. I hope you will find it interesting! Happy reading!
Here is episodes’ list if you want to quickly jump on the one you’re interested in:
Insight 1: RFI, RFP, POC and setup is a project.
So define your KPI, review them with your team, create the retro planning you want to achieve, define your stakeholders, inform them as soon as the project is confirmed and keep the information flow unbroken with proper governance etc. (article linked).
Insight 2: Establish a trusted relationship with the vendor.
During RFI, RFP, POC, communication must be crystal clear, there should be no gray area. You will be together much more efficient, you’re partners, you’re in the same team (article linked).
Insight 3: Be and make your team comfortable with the situation.
You’re here to deliver impact, you’re not a feature factory. Remind the team as soon as RFI starts that they need to be focused on impact. Try to avoid as much as possible human bias to stay on the path to take the best decision vs existing tool if there is one, moreover if it’s a tool developed internally! (scoring helps). Reassure them that you will have plenty of things to do with the new solution chosen to deliver impact! (article linked).
Insight 4: Do not underestimate the timeline.
You’re the captain but you need many folks to get the ship in port and you’re not in control of their timeline. So don’t be overconfident, it’s a multi dependency project so add extra time for every step you plan. Everyone will be happy if it lasts less time than expected! (article linked).
Insight 5: You’re the master of time.
Do not fall in vendor funnel, they will try to make you spend as much time as possible with them to convince you they’re the best, it’s their job to do so. Be strong to keep that position, the deadlines you set and your guidelines. E.g. have the output wanted from them including pricing even if they have little information, no call if you choose to do so, only asynchronous communication etc. (article linked).
Insight 6: Make your job easier, send to all the vendors the same docs.
You should always think of the analysis that you will make at the end. Find also the golden mean of vendors in the upper funnel but don’t get paralyzed neither, you can always add vendors during the process, they will be happy to jump in. To analyze RFP answers and compare vendors, find a score formula that is not overkill and that is easy to understand but strong enough to support your decision. If you have a purchase process you can follow at your company, use it! (article linked).
Insight 7: Be respectful of vendor time.
Most of them will work for nothing in the end and don’t forget you represent your company through the interaction with them. Also, even if the vendor spent 2 weeks with a team of 3 people to answer your grid, questions etc. you must be prepared to end the discussion. Give a proportional feedback to the time they invested. It’s the game! (article linked).
Insight 8: Procurement team is your best friend.
If you have the chance to have one 😉 They will help you to link with security, IT and legal and manage the pricing negotiation. It will save you a lot of time and you will learn many new things (article linked).
Insight 9: Cost is a driver but not the main one.
Remember about time to have the impact wanted, opportunity cost, maturity gap. They all should be part of your decision (article linked).
Insight 10: Buying a tool is one thing, making it impactful is another one.
Maybe the main insight I can give you. The main job begins when the tool is purchased: define the organization, migration plan, change management, how it fits with current process, new process, train the users to the tools, make them love it and exploit it as much as possible. It is like when you roll out a new feature, the real work begins! 😁 (article linked).
Bonus: some templates ready to use!
End of the series, thank you for reading, like a good TV series (I hope), there will be no new season so I hope you found it as interesting as it was to experience! ☀️If you have any feedback or questions, don’t hesitate to contact me at bottegal.brice@gmail.com , I will be happy to chat!
The purpose of the article is to present and share the work done by Doctolib’s tech team. The information contained in this article is provided for information purpose only (on an “as is” basis with no guarantees of completeness or accuracy) and does not constitute any legal advice, nor has a legal value. Therefore, it could not contradict in any manner whatsoever with any legal binding terms applicable to your relation with Doctolib
