Procurement Considerations

Current procurement methods for software as a service (SaaS) products are limited, leaving a Request for Proposals as a main method to buy booking software. Below are some considerations for deciding whether to buy including opportunities, threats, and costing. Opportunities or threats to buy options

Opportunities

Procuring a solution can allow IT branches to focus on other, potentially higher priority work.

Threats

The Accessible Canada Act requires that workplace tools and public facing services improve from WCAG 2.0 AA to 2.1 AA. Based on our accessibility review of private sector options there would be considerable work to layer on accessible features for any buy option. Given the need to collect at least a name and email address, information is almost always protected A. Assessing SaaS products for anything other than unclassified information can take a significant amount of time and resources.

Costing considerations

The primary cost drivers for procurement are the people needed to run and manage an RFP.

Up front costs:

Procurement officers and legal counsel to draft and run the RFP;
Research with front-line staff and end-users to understand their needs;
Business analysts, procurement officers, and researchers to create the RFP’s statement of work and evaluation criteria;
Outreach personnel to ensure companies are aware of the RFP; and,
Evaluation teams to assess the candidates.

Ongoing costs:

People operations costs to approve, manage or conduct the work;
Additional work a company or your team may need to do to meet user needs, security, accessibility, or bilingualism requirements.
Per user per month or monthly licences
Hosting costs (for licensed solutions)
Support services from the vendor