The Spend Matters team uses several sources of information to create the RFI criteria, ranking weights, organizational buying personas and publications in relation to SolutionMap. These include:
- Analyst team interactions with providers and end-user customers over time
- Relevant Spend Matters’ created reports, in-depth provider reviews and research sources
- Providers’ RFI inputs and support materials
- 90-Minute solution demonstration (which needs to be renewed every 12 months or when a new product release occurs)
- Customer survey responses based on references supplied by providers as well as initiated by Spend Matters
- Clarification calls conducted by analyst team as needed
- Quantities of customer inputs are reflected on the SolutionMap ranking graphics through the color of the provider ‘bubble’ (see ‘How to read the ranking chart’)
- Analysts conduct phone review with each ranked provider to discuss their scoring versus the analyst scoring to allow for debate and clarification