They knew they needed a new CRM. What they didn't have was a way to keep the decision in their own hands.

What we did

• —Defined requirements around how the brokerage operates, setting aside the generic feature checklist.
• —Built the RFP so every vendor answered the same scope and evaluation criteria.
• —Set out the implementation roadmap so the client could see what came after the decision.

The economics

A fixed advisory fee, agreed in writing before work began, and less than one percent of the total program it governed. The fee did not change with the platform selected, and would not have changed had the recommendation been to stay on the existing system. Getting the requirements right before vendor conversations start shortens the selection process and narrows the implementation scope. What a tighter brief saves usually far exceeds the cost of producing it.

The outcome

The client left with a strategy, an RFP, an evaluation framework, and an implementation roadmap it owned outright. Those documents carried it through two decisions, not one: selecting the CRM platform, and then using the same material to select the implementation partner who would deploy it.

What we would recommend

Requirements shaped under vendor influence tend to describe the vendor's product.

Define what you need before you take the vendor meetings, not after. Give every bidder the same question to answer, and make sure what you build stays useful past the platform decision.