ARC STAR Supplier Evaluation and Selection Service
You are about to undertake a strategic decision, either selecting a product or supplier for the first time, or re-evaluating suppliers in the management of a long term relationship.
And you are likely here for one or more of many reasons:
You are looking for a proven evaluation process
You have a process but are unaware of the best criteria to use
You don't have the time, or you're looking for ways to save money
You are looking for ways to avoid conflict among your team
You need research information, a selection guide of sorts
You want to re-evaluate your existing suppliers to make sure they meet your changing needs
This is where ARC Advisory Group and STAR comes in.
STAR stands for "Solutions That Accelerate Results". ARC STAR refers to a family of ARC offerings that will enable you to identify and select STAR solutions that perfectly fit your needs. The ARC STAR Service for Supplier Evaluation and Selection is specifically designed for technology users and acts as a selection guide for evaluating alternatives. Available for many technology domains, this comprehensive solution set will guide you through the complexities of a strategic decision in technology selection. (See ARC STAR Available Solutions on the right.)
A major technology investment for any company will entail a total cost of ownership that can run into the millions of dollars over its product lifecycle. The goal of ARC STAR Service is to help ensure that you receive the maximum payback from this investment by guiding you to the solution that best meets your company's specific technical, commercial, and business requirements.
Even if you feel that you already have a good grasp of the available solution providers and have adequate supplier selection experience, the ARC STAR Service can reduce the time and effort required to identify all the appropriate technologies and suppliers, interact with the right stakeholders, manage the process both internally (your teams) and externally (the solution providers), and – ultimately – make this a fact-based decision. Often times, you are working in collaboration with another company. In those cases, you'll want an independent and field proven process, like ARC's, to be your selection guide.
Working with ARC will ensure your selection process is impartial, fact based, expeditious, thorough, and fair for all involved. The ARC STAR Service is a scalable offering that can be tailored to meet your needs based on your knowledge, bandwidth, and time constraints. We can deliver the toolset, and have our analysts as involved as you would like, to facilitate the process flow and management of information. In the end, you'll have made the best possible decision, and will have documented the process fully for team records and management signoff.
ARC STAR Service - Easy as 1-2-3
The ARC STAR Service delivers information and a methodology that guides you though the entire selection process, introducing you to one phase of the project after another, progressively disclosing more information to ensure your learning curve is minimal. As you complete one step, next one opens up. You can always revisit past steps to improve your inputs or alter your selection strategies.
Phase 1: Define Your Project and Identify Your Team
First phase begins with summarizing your project and defining your selection team. This tool enables you to begin the process of sharing research, making sure your team in up to date with the latest industry and technology developments. Every bit of information you enter into your custom ARC STAR Service will be saved on-line and available only to your team, and the ARC analysts assigned to assist you.
Phase 2: Identify Your Selection Criteria and Generate an RFI
This is where ARC domain experience begins to add value to your project. ARC Analysts have been researching most technology topics for decades. Based on this knowledge, ARC analysts have prepared comprehensive sets of criteria for many key topics to help you select the best solution available on the market. The selection criteria included with this service is a valuable starting point for your team. You have the ability to review it, add to it or delete certain items that are not relevant to your project. 
The pre-defined criteria will save you weeks of effort and will ensure you perform a well rounded evaluation, including all areas of importance.
When your team feels the criteria are complete, simply select the Approve Button to lock them down and generate an RFI questionnaire from this list, for suppliers to respond to.
Phase 3: Weighting the Criteria and Rating the Supplier Results
The most challenging aspect of any Supplier Selection process is making sure their solutions ideally meet your needs. This means your team needs intimately understand your needs, and agree to their relative importance in your current and future scenario. That alone is a monumental task that is fraught with confrontation, opinion, and emotion. So, how do you handle this scientifically? The ARC STAR Service manages the criteria weighting separately from the supplier ranking, and combines the two for final review and reporting at the end of the process. It also includes a tool based on the Analytic Hierarchy Product (AHP), that can be applied to both the criteria weighting as well as the supplier rating. This tool takes the variability out of the process, replacing it with a sound methodology that is applied equally and consistently by each member of the team.
Once the weighting and supplier results have been reviewed and properly tabulated, ARC STAR Service will provide an analysis based on Kepner-Tragoe® (KT) techniques. This combines the data into a final score, by supplier, that is then used to generate the supplier rating. In addition, you have the ability to review data at any time, and revisit decisions, viewing their impacts on the final outcome.
ARC STAR Service Features
ARC STAR Service is both a business process and a toolset that we have developed based on our experience executing dozens of supplier selection projects over the past 25 years. The ARC STAR Service combines in-depth ARC research with specific selection criteria for each category of solution technology domain, and a consistent selection methodology to help ensure that you make the most informed decision possible.
You can use ARC STAR Service to leverage all the expertise and research ARC has to offer in a way that will:
STAR Delivers three areas of significant value – selection criteria, a selection process and final documentation. It will:
- Manage the team and deliver research information as part of a STAR engagement
- Capture project definition for RFI creation and final documentation
- Capture the selection criteria and manage the weighting process
(team definition of criteria importance)
- Provide leading techniques for criteria selection and weighting (AHP)
- Manage the team’s “short list” definition and guide them based on ARC research data
- Generate the "request for information (RFI)" documentation (Project Scope and Supplier Questions)
- STAR offers a place holder for aggregating vendor responses consistently and logically
(for final documentation)
- STAR will help facilitate the analysis of supplier responses and rate them appropriately
- Perform the analysis of criteria importance vs. solution capability
- Leverage leading techniques for final weighting vs. criteria assessment
(Kepner & Tregoe (KT) analysis)
- Generate a report of the STAR Process results positioning the options for a final decision
- Store results and track for long term satisfaction and TCO results and generate the final report
ARC STAR Service Benefits
ARC STAR Service is delivered as an on-line and ARC hosted solution. This solution delivers an environment you are likely to be completely familiar with, Microsoft Excel, although delivered in such a way that there is nothing to install or manage on any of your team's computers. All that is needed to start the process is an ARC provided login.
A small investment in the ARC STAR Service will pay for itself with the savings in time during the selection process alone. However, the real return on investment comes from selecting the right solution for your company. You'll maximize your company's performance, agility, and competitiveness. In summary, ARC STAR Service provides you many benefits including:
Standardized Business Process
High Quality Solution Selection Criteria
A Proven, Fact Based Analysis Tools
Shorten Project Cycle Time & Save
For more information, or to arrange a demo of this service, please contact us.
