Software procurement and the bottomline: Why quantitative price information is making a comeback

When it comes to software benchmarking, the current market does an excellent job of comparing qualitative attributes of software solutions such as features and benefits. There are also companies and resources that have been available for many years that help software professionals make decisions about their software choices, IT performance, and business practices.

Companies that offer qualitative insights for software comparison include:

• Gartner helps customers understand different technology solutions and the technology ecosystem at large through in depth, lengthy research.
• Forrester provides independent analysis and price benchmarking of software vendor proposals and can advise and handhold procurement teams on how to negotiate top deals.
• Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA) delivers understanding of how business practices stack up against industry and peers, and how tech companies can optimize their business service. Although their focus is on financial fitness, they don’t provide an easy and transparent way of comparing pricing.
• The Hackett Group focuses on best practices while allowing users to evaluate business cost vs. productivity, and business strategies that drive demand and develop advisory insight.

Although many of these companies offer tools and services to help benchmark and compare software solutions and technology, their methods are qualitative research focused and they don’t always provide exact or even accurate price points. In other words, what they provide in terms of price transparency and pricing insight is hazy at best. Additionally, even if they do provide some price information, you often have to flip through pages upon pages of research before you find a single nugget of information on pricing.

When a company or organization is evaluating software solutions, they know where and who to go to for qualitative, feature/benefit analysis. But when it comes time to figure out whether or not you can actually afford the technology you’ve been evaluating, what’s the point in all that qualitative benchmarking if at the end of the day, you can’t actually afford it? That’s why price information is so important to your company’s bottom line. The bad news is that price information isn’t easy to find…that’s where Fairmarkit comes in. Fairmarkit is uniquely positioned to complement these qualitative features by focusing on quantitative benchmarking and raw pricing data. There are no other companies providing this service and we believe a company’s bottom line is what really matters at the end of the day. By helping our users find the best prices for their software solutions, we will ultimately help companies afford their desired software, improve internal processes, provide better services to their clients, and maximize IT budgets.