You’re at a party. A stranger approaches you with a coin held out in the palm of her hand. She tells you the coin is worth $100 and asks you to join her in a wager: if she flips the coin and it lands on ‘heads,’ you’ll pocket the coin and be $100 richer. If it lands on ‘tails,’ you owe her $50.1 What do you do?
This experiment is symbolic of the kinds of risks we accept every day, both in our personal and professional lives.
I’d wager that, as a decision maker at your company, you may be more conservative in taking business risks than you are with personal risks. This is especially true when spending your always-finite resources like budgets and time. You know that the outcome of a professional risk could have broad impacts on your colleagues, on your business operations, on your customers and even on your job security or that of your peers. These are not small things.
So, when it comes to making a decision about a game-changing project like selecting and implementing a new field service management solution, service leaders like you carefully weigh the risks involved in going with Vendor A or Vendor B. When it comes down to it, you’re on a mission to gather as much information as you can to make the right decision for your company (and for your career).
Weighing major purchase decisions
As a service leader, you employ several methods to weigh major purchase decisions: you calculate anticipated ROI, you review customer references, you evaluate solution capabilities, you may even add a sprinkle of intuition and, I humbly submit, you seek out third party or expert validation. It’s this latter method that we’d like to draw your attention to for a moment.
Expert validation
Expert validation describes objective evaluations by industry experts that show the competitive position of a field service solution provider. The results of these studies are often based on careful analysis of a vendor’s product breadth and depth, customer satisfaction, partner ecosystem, support services, value for price and vision. These studies provide confidence to decision makers like you.
At IFS, we strongly encourage customers, prospects and partners alike to seek outside validation when working to mitigate the risks in your service solution purchase decisions.
We believe that thoughtful consideration of these studies, along with other tools you employ, will skew the ‘best decision’ odds in your favor when that $100 coin is spinning through in air. I confidently call ‘heads.’
Sample references: IFS is a Leader in the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management, IFS is on the Constellation ShortList for Field Service Management, IFS has highest use case scores for Complex Service and Support in Gartner’s 2018 Critical Capabilities for Field Service Management report.
1 https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/14/are-you-a-risk-taker-take-the-quiz/
Gartner 2017 Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management, Jim Robinson, Michael Maoz, Jason Wong, September 2017.
Gartner 2018 Critical Capabilities for Field Service Management, Jim Robinson, Jason Wong, Michael Maoz, March 2018.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
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