Sign the Contract
It is assumed here that you are contracting with a single supplier for the purchase and implementation of your system. Our infoKit on Contract Negotiation covers the additional complexities of third party involvement. We recommend that the contract should include the following schedules:
A list of the customer requirements that the supplier is undertaking to meet. This may be taken from your ITT but it is likely to require some amendment if there are areas where the supplier is unable to meet the requirements as originally stated. It is particularly important to include the specific agreements about areas where the supplier has promised to meet a requirement with a future release of the product.
An outline plan that highlights the key implementation milestones. The plan is bound to be subject to change but you should start with an agreed baseline and adopt formal change control procedures to handle deviation from the plan.
A payment schedule that references the milestones. A piece of software is of no use to you unless it can be delivered as a working solution in your environment. Where you are partnering with a supplier on implementation, it is reasonable to pay against delivery of agreed objectives rather than simply pay up front. This is particularly important in relation to implementation consultancy which can eat up a large proportion of any implementation budget. Staged payments give you some leverage in the event that the consultancy does not deliver the expected results or overruns the agreed budget. Read our article on managing consultancy input to projects.
