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As the Chief Innovation Officer for a large scale enterprise, you probably spend your days seeking ways to improve your product with new features or capabilities and expand your product line with new game changing products, all while trying to meet budgetary constraints – not an easy task to say the least.
One of the best things you can do as a CIO is to look outside your current company’s efforts, and towards startups. Since the very livelihood of startups are at stake when developing new products, they tend to resort to unconstrained creative thinking that often breaks norms and results in the creation of new technology altogether.
At their very core, all startups want to create new technology that disrupts the market as much as possible, in a short time, and with the least amount of funding. Once they gain a few customers, their main challenge is often scalability and mass marketing – that is where enterprises come into play.
The fact that enterprise and startup collaborations are the ultimate win-win situation is a well-known one – so why is it that enterprises prefer to develop new products in house more often than not?
The problem with seeking external solutions for in house problems often comes down to the ease with which the new solution can be integrated into the existing ecosystem of the enterprise. The best way to ensure that a solution can be integrated into your ecosystem is by taking all the necessary steps in order to ensure that your RFP is accurate enough for the PoC to render definitive results.
The first thing CIOs looking for startup solutions need to do, is join the prooV platform. prooV is a game-changing solution that simplifies the way startups and enterprises connect and run PoCs and is the perfect solution for the CIO looking to introduce innovation and creativity into their enterprise for a fraction of the cost.
The basic functionality of prooV is simple – enterprises integrate once with their secure cloud system and from that point on, they can run as many PoC’s as they want simultaneously and without limitation, all while ensuring their ecosystem is secure.
When seeking a solution for a problem, it is important to clearly understand your needs and requirements alongside system limitations and tech specifications – this is the basis for your RFP and for your entire project. Regardless of whether or not you choose to develop your enterprise in house or just want to reduce time and costs by using the prooV marketplace, you will still need to understand your functionality needs, capabilities and exact specifications in order to ensure that the development team charged with solving the problem or creating the new solution can fulfill a PoC that is relevant and viable for the long term.
By not using the prooV system to launch PoC’s and find a solution, you will need to perform accurate market research and seek out potential vendors or internal employees that will be able to create your solution. If you choose to create the solution in house, you will likely need to expand your team or reallocate personnel into a new team. If you wish to work with independent software vendors, you will likely need to spend a great deal of time finding the vendors you believe can meet your specifications and only then discuss with them your KPIs.
Once you know who will be entrusted with creating your desired solution – your existing team, your external vendors or dozens of startups on the prooV platform, you need to create an RFP that is results driven in order to ensure your solution is a successful one. There is a common misconception that PoC’s and RFP’s do not go hand in hand when in reality, an RFP can have a direct impact on the PoC and therefore on your ability to scale a selected solution in a way the improves the revenue generation of an enterprise.
The goal of an RFP is to clearly explain your needs and provide all of the necessary information for your selected vendors, thus ensuring maximum efficiency and potential for success. If you are looking for a solution that is scalable and viable and meets your needs, you need to invest time creating an RFP that is clear and detailed. Beyond detailing your project and technical specs, it is important to include your overall company goals and your audience needs and pains in order to provide a comprehensive overview of the solution and its application.
Consider creating a document that details your requirements and their importance. You can also assign a weight valuation in order to asses the success of the project – an especially valuable strategy if you are depending on multiple vendors to submit solutions and need to evaluate them to find the selected one for your enterprise.
The benefit of the prooV platform is most clearly experienced once you have a ready RFP in your hand; it is here that you can truly gain the most as an enterprise CIO looking to create a solution that meets the most criteria at the lowest costs.
It’s important to understand that having your existing IT team meet your needs, will likely strain your available resources or put aside other equally important tasks, and may require hiring new staff full time to complete the task, send your RFP to vendors and select one based on their proposal and hope that their product can be modified enough to meet your demands.
Why not let dozens of startups easily integrate with your existing infrastructure, have them compete among themselves to create the best solution that is custom designed for your exact needs.
It’s a no-brainer – save yourself the headache and join prooV.
