Technology buyers often ask, “How do you know which vendor to trust? They all say they have the best product.”

Of course, all vendors say they’re the best, although they rarely, if ever, define what that word means for them. Award-winning, industry-leading, state-of-the-art, and on and on. These statements are all different flavors of authority claims, designed in the hope that technology buyers will suspend their own judgement in favor of the vendor’s. We find no fault with this, it just is.

One key idea we stress with our clients is execution. Without effective execution, nothing else matters – not features and functions, not quality claims, not years of experience, nothing. Because, without effective execution, no business value is created, no matter how wonderful the product appears to be.

Most recognize that while there are usually multiple product options, there is rarely one “perfect” product. Typically, the execution challenge is almost never about the product. Far more often, the challenge lies in the vendor’s ability (or that of their service partner) to work with the client and overcome all too common execution issues, such as…

• resolving project conflicts about goals, measures, money, governance,
• building a comprehensive consensus on project expectations and measures,
• recognizing and managing critical dependencies across groups,
• finding the right people to fill critical project roles, and
• managing “off-track” project performance, especially with the most powerful and least involved clients.

In our vendor selection process, we require candidates to explain, in precise detail, how they address these common execution challenges. The goal is to enable our clients to test vendors’ capabilities and claims, rather than simply trusting them.