Selecting Your Software Vendor in 30 Days

A guest post by Phil Turton, founder of Viewpoint Analysis

First, a thank you. I'm grateful to the team at Galde for inviting me to write for their readers. Galde has built its name on getting a first Palantir use case into production in 60 days, so it felt like the right home for a post about the step that comes before delivery: choosing the vendor in the first place.

Here is my argument in one line. Selecting your software vendor should take weeks, not months, and 30 days is a realistic target for almost any technology purchase.

The world has moved on. Has your procurement?

The way we buy software was designed for a different era. When a new ERP or CRM meant racks of servers, perpetual licences and a three-year implementation, a long and cautious selection made sense. You were placing one very large bet, and getting it wrong was expensive and hard to undo.

That world has largely gone. Most enterprise software is now delivered as SaaS. Much of it is priced by subscription or by consumption, so you pay for what you use rather than for everything up front. Implementations that once took years are now measured in weeks or months, and partners like Galde deliver working use cases in a matter of weeks.

Yet many IT procurement processes still look exactly as they did twenty years ago. A long market review, a hefty RFI, a 200-question RFP, months of demos and a decision that arrives long after the business need was first raised. The technology has sped up. The buying process has not.

If the risk of each decision is lower and the time to value is shorter, the selection process should be shorter too. Selecting software in a month is not reckless. It is simply in step with how software is now bought and delivered.

Why speed to select matters

Every week spent selecting is a week the project is not being delivered. And every week the project is not delivered is a week the business case is not paying back.

That cost is easy to miss because it never appears on an invoice. Nobody sends a bill for six months of value you didn't get. But it is real, and it compounds in three ways:

• The project stalls. Long selections drain momentum. Sponsors move on, priorities shift and the original problem gets reframed so often that the requirements no longer match it.
• Value is delayed. If a new platform will save time, cut cost or open up revenue, a three-month selection is three months of that benefit lost for good.
• Competitors don't wait. While you are still scoring RFP responses, a rival that moved faster is already live, learning and improving. In markets where AI and data are changing what's possible every quarter, that head start can be decisive.

A long selection does not reliably produce a better decision, either. In my experience, the extra months mostly add more meetings, more paperwork and more opinions, not more insight.

Who are Viewpoint Analysis?

Viewpoint Analysis is a technology matchmaker. We sit between the buyers and sellers of enterprise technology, and we were founded in 2021 with one aim: to speed up technology procurement.

We run selection processes for businesses of every size, from the mid-market to subsidiaries of very large groups, and across every industry, including manufacturing, retail, logistics, construction, pharmaceuticals, professional services and financial services.

What we help clients buy matters less than how we run the process. In recent years we have run selections for everything from CRM, route-planning software, finance solutions, and a multi-million-pound IT outsourcing contracts. The common thread is usually a buying team that needs extra hands, or one that doesn't buy technology often enough to have a well-worn playbook.

Our team comes from enterprise technology sales. We know how vendor sales teams work, what motivates them and how to get the best out of them, which turns out to be a big part of running a fast process.

Rapid RFI plus Rapid RFP: the best of both

When buyers first hear about our Rapid RFI and Rapid RFP, the reaction is often the same: why doesn't everyone do it this way?

The Rapid RFI is a fast, focused look at the market. It takes you from a broad set of possible vendors to a credible shortlist without the months of paperwork a traditional RFI involves. The Rapid RFP then concentrates on that shortlist only, driving out a preferred vendor in as little as two to three weeks.

Our 30-Day Technology Selection takes the key elements of both and streamlines them into a single process. One month, from a standing start to a preferred vendor. It may well be the fastest selection process in the industry.

How the 30 days run

Our commitment is simple: 30 days or less, from a standing start to a preferred vendor. We run everything between those two points, so your team can keep doing their day jobs.

Week 0 - Inform vendors / Interview the team / Write the document.

Week 1 - Issue the Challenge Statement / Host the Customer Q&A call.

Week 2 - Responses received and vendor initial presentations hosted.

Week 3 - Shortlisting and additional questions published.

Week 4 - Final Submissions / Final Pitches / Team Scoring.

That is where our job ends. You then take up references, contract negotiation and commercial terms, usually with your internal or external legal and procurement teams.

What makes 30 days possible

People often ask whether 30 days is really enough. It is, provided a few things are in place.

• A problem statement, not a hundred-page document. We build the process around the business problem and invite vendors to show how they would solve it. That brings out their best ideas and stops the exercise becoming a 300-line feature checklist.
• Vendors who understand the deal. We explain up front what we are doing and why. A fast process means vendors win quickly or lose quickly, and most sales teams welcome that far more than a six-month cycle that ends in silence.
• A buying team that commits. We ask your people to give their time in short, concentrated bursts. It is more intense for a few weeks, but it saves a great deal of time overall.
• Sensible timing. Running a 30-day process across Christmas or the height of summer holidays is asking for trouble. If the calendar works against you, we run the same process with some contingency built in.

None of this is complicated. It just requires someone to own the timetable and keep every party moving, which is exactly what we do.

From decision to value, fast

The old assumption was that a careful decision had to be a slow one. It doesn't. With a clear problem statement, engaged vendors and a team that commits for a few focused weeks, you can select the right software vendor in a month.

Pair that with a delivery partner who moves at the same pace, as Galde does with its 60-day approach, and the gap between "we have a problem" and "we have a working solution" shrinks from years to a single quarter. That is the kind of speed that keeps you ahead of competitors rather than chasing them.

If you'd like to talk through a selection you have coming up, get in touch at contactus@viewpointanalysis.com or request a call.

My thanks again to Galde for hosting this post, and to you for reading it.

Phil Turton is the founder of Viewpoint Analysis