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Championing the acquisition process from initial interest to purchase approval
You’ve decided your institution should adopt a faculty information system (FIS). There’s just one problem: the decision isn’t yours alone. Of course, your enthusiasm for the platform and its functionality is a great start. But to realize your goal of implementing at your institution, you’ll have to convince others of your vision.
But whose approval do you need? And what if they throw cold water on your idea? How can you get them to see the advantages you recognize? And how does the buying process at your institution even work?
These are all good questions. And over the many years of helping our 500+ customers implement a faculty information system, we have seen how institutions successfully navigate this process.
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
Recruit allies
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.
While each institution’s software purchase process will have its idiosyncrasies, at most institutions, you’ll need to achieve buy-in from these key departments and stakeholders:
Information technology
Procurement
Legal
Faculty
Administration
As you investigate the software purchasing process at your institution, you’ll want to ask key questions of each of these groups.
How does IT assess their capacity to support new projects?
What information does the IT department need before it can approve or support purchasing new enterprise software?
Does IT require forms to be completed by potential vendors?
Will the IT department need or want to be on a phone call with the vendor or have a demonstration?
How early in the discovery or purchase process do they prefer to get involved?
Who in purchasing will be responsible for overseeing this procurement?
Does the purchase price exceed thresholds requiring the use of specific purchasing mechanisms?
Are there existing frameworks or consortium contracts that could also be used?
What information is needed to justify a sole-source procurement?
Does purchasing require that new vendors complete a registration process?
How long does purchasing usually take to review and generate a purchase order?
Who will sign the contract?
Does contract review happen concurrently with purchasing review?
How long does legal contract review typically take?
Who will need to review the contract?
Do representatives of the faculty body need to approve the purchase?
If so, how does the faculty vote on decisions, and how can you arrange information sessions or demonstrations to persuade faculty members and stakeholder committees of the value of the software?
Who within the administration must approve the purchase?
If the software purchase is not in the current fiscal budget, how does one identify funding to support the purchase?
What are their evaluation criteria for approval?
You may also want to answer these general procedural questions as you research the purchase process:
Is there one approver or multiple approvals needed?
Are there written policies related to the acquisition of enterprise or faculty software?
What office, department or stakeholder group is most critical to a successful acquisition?
What part of the purchasing process tends to cause the most slowdowns or problems?
The answers to these questions should help you understand the overall acquisition process, and allies who have gone through similar processes may be able to help you navigate.
Your efforts to understand the faculty affairs software acquisition process likely revealed the key decision-makers and steps. You may have even discovered a few individuals who share your enthusiasm for a faculty information system. These individuals will be your allies across campus as you begin to advocate for purchasing the software and services.
The greatest resistance your team will encounter may not be over the cost of the system. What may trouble key decision-makers and stakeholders most is something more existential: the prospect of change. Faculty, administrators and information technology staff within your institution may be apprehensive about learning a new system or have concerns stemming from past platform rollouts.
You’ll need champions who understand these fears and can allay the concerns of their peers. Often, you’ll assemble these strategic allies:
This is someone who is familiar with the faculty affairs processes you’re looking to digitize with the faculty information system. This person can verify that the new system will meet your practical needs. This is often someone in a manager or coordinator role in the academic leadership offices (Faculty Affairs, Provost, Dean), but it may also be someone in the library, HR or occasionally IT.
Regardless, they must relate to the faculty perspective and be ready to address faculty doubts.
This person has the visibility and the authority to show the whole institution the value of the change: how it will both improve institutional outcomes and make work life easier for all parties concerned.
Often, this person is the Provost or an Associate Provost. Identifying and recruiting a strong executive sponsor early on in this process is essential for faculty, staff and peer administrators to embrace the transition.
This is someone in IT with the familiarity and the authority to ask the right questions and solve potential technical roadblocks to implementing of the new faculty information system.
This person can fairly assess the resources required to support a successful implementation.
This person should be able to convey confidence that the new platform will enable improved operations.
This is a faculty member who knows the advantages of the system you’re considering and whose enthusiasm for the product will inspire other faculty members’ support.
Ideally, all of these team members have time to participate in and lead formal demonstrations with your vendor partners, host informational sessions and informally advocate during day-to-day interactions with colleagues. In particular, live product demonstrations often prove highly persuasive because this will make apparent (and visual) the ease of use and advantages of the platform while providing an opportunity to ask detailed questions.
Getting buy-in as early as possible will set the stage for a successful purchase. In addition, stakeholder engagement should be all-inclusive, engaging faculty and administrators from all disciplines and giving them the opportunity to provide feedback and hear their worries addressed.
One powerful way to pre-empt dissent from administrators and faculty is to show that the new faculty information system will have an immediate impact. For example, if you want to purchase the Interfolio Faculty Search module, share a plan and timeline for how campus stakeholders can use the new software for the upcoming faculty hiring season.
Or, if you wish to purchase the Interfolio Faculty Activity Reporting module, show how you can have the new system in place, with all faculty trained on its use, right before the new semester begins or the cycle of faculty input gets underway. Your forethought will give administrators and faculty members confidence that the new system will be implemented in an efficient and timely manner.
Interfolio can help you craft an implementation timeline combining the necessary time for the purchase process—information you’ll have gathered during step one—and the typical software deployment and training schedule for a successful platform launch.
If you’ve assembled allies and laid the groundwork to address change fatigue and fear on multiple fronts, the final step will be relatively easy. At this stage, your role is to monitor the final stages of approvals, including review of the order form and contract. You may also act as a liaison between your vendor and your institution to answer any late-breaking questions.
Since you’ve identified the right people in the legal and procurement offices, you’ll want to facilitate introductions and questions between the teams. We’ve found that touching base on progress is often necessary, as offices are usually overwhelmed by inquiries from across campus. Additionally, if you are trying to get a signature for a specific date, be clear about deadlines to your campus peers.
From our time spent working on campuses supporting such implementations, we can also reiterate the helpfulness of a call or meeting instead of emails, as sometimes it’s much easier to talk through questions and issues than tackle them by email.
Shepherding the acquisition process for a faculty information system is a great opportunity to develop relationships with colleagues across campus and demonstrate the ability to lead and build consensus.
Whether or not gaining a bigger role on campus is your ambition, the work of facilitating the approval process will likely be a memorable experience, with challenges that may prove rewarding in retrospect. Helping your institution secure a top-notch faculty information system will be an accomplishment you can savor every time you log onto the platform.
