The Four C's of Social Technology Vendor Evaluation

We do a lot of helping clients pick technology solutions for social media and online community efforts. It's a big challenge, partly because the requirements are always a little different for every project and partly because there are so many community tools and platforms out there.

Obviously, vendor assessment and selection is complicated, and it's important to get it right. Most of the formal assessment processes I've seen do a great job of differentiating between products on the basis of their feature sets. But in the social media space, there are many, many players, the landscape changes quickly, and many of the products out there do a lot of the same stuff. The effort required to assess all the viable options is prohibitive. So, you need a simple way to narrow the field.

The other day I had an epic consulting moment, spontaneously creating a framework for simplifying the vendor selection process in the middle of talking in a meeting. OK, so it's not the theory of relativity, and it might not be perfect, and someone else might have a better idea, but moments of clarity are rare enough for me that I'll go ahead and claim this one, and call it "epic." Here it is:

The Four C's of Social Technology Vendor Evaluation: Capabilities, Cost, Compatibility, and Customization

Capabilities:  This is pretty straightforward. Does the tool do what you need it to do? Does it have all the required features? And less obviously: Does it have the flexibility to scale to accommodate unforeseen future needs?

The challenge here is that in the social software space, there is a great degree of feature parity. The major tools do most of the same stuff. That's why you need the other three C's.

Cost: Pick a tool you can afford! But beware the hidden costs of cheap tools, like maintenance, scaling license fees, extra customization, and lack of scalability. While on the one hand it's tempting to pay good money for a tool you can count on, on the other hand don't forget to evaluate open source and custom options--vendor management creates overhead, and the costs can surprise you.

Compatibility: Be careful with this one. Unless you're working on a fully standalone service, you're likely to be integrating your social tool with other systems--if not now, then in the future. Make sure your systems can talk to each other.

Customization: Most white-label tools out there are very flexible and can accommodate a great deal of customization. But you need to think through who will do the customizing. Does your in-house team have the bandwidth and capabilities? Some social technology platforms are built on proprietary scripting languages. Paying for customization can get the thing built, but it can also add significantly to the total cost.

 

There you have it. I hope that simple (simplistic?) framework helps. If you have other approaches, please do drop me a comment and share.

If you need a list of vendors to start from, there are a number of them out there, including this helpfully-annotated one I stumbled across a couple days ago.

Comments

[Justin]

Great list, Ryan. Very useful.

But I can't help but think that there's another "C" that needs to be considered. In keeping with the theme here, let's call it "Collaboration," or the willingness and ability to collaborate and solve problems together.

In my somewhat limited experience working with social technology vendors, the ability to amicably work with a vendor seems a crucial piece when partnering to launch a site and sustain it for the long-haul.

Certainly this attribute is harder to gauge than quantifiable measures (such as cost and feature sets), but I speak out of experience: If your gut says, "I don't know if I can work with these guys," then follow it.

Maybe this relational aspect of vendor selection is folded into Compatibility (both technically and relationally) or Customization (again, fluidity in tech and demeanor), but if we preach--as we do--that the launch of any social media site is "just the beginning," any vendor you choose should be one you're willing to partner with, work with, be-on-the-phone with, argue with (I can go on) for a long time.

The last thing you want is to be stuck with a vendor that fits your cost and technical infrastructure, but is horrible to work with on a daily basis.

Again, great post.

[Ryan]

Yes! Five C's! Anyone else have more?