Best practices for your institution
While each university brings its own complexity, these best practices will help you recruit allies within your institution, understand your institution’s purchasing process, and shepherd the process from initial interest to acquisition, all while maintaining your timeline.
If faculty reviews or faculty hiring are just around the corner, you need the software purchase process to reach a timely resolution if your institution is to realize the efficiencies and time savings when those reviews or searches get underway.
The vendor partner you choose for this process should help you every step of the way to ensure the software purchase facilitation process is a straightforward path.
Championing the purchase of software for your faculty and team has three main steps:
Determine your institution’s process for software acquisition
Facilitate the approval process
Step one is the exploratory phase, where you’ll contact administrators and other staff to understand exactly how the purchase process works at your institution. You’ll likely find that multiple people and departments need to approve—or at least voice approval for—a faculty information system.
It helps to have allies embedded within these departments and offices—old colleagues and new acquaintances who can amplify your advocacy. Thus, step two is recruiting allies. These allies will help you avoid common pitfalls in the approval process.