Information Services Procurement Library


The Information Services Procurement Library is a best practice library for the management of Information Technology related acquisition processes. It helps both the customer and supplier organization to achieve the desired quality using the corresponded amount of time and money by providing methods and best practices for risk management, contract management, and planning. ISPL focuses on the relationship between the customer and supplier organization: It helps constructing the request for proposal, it helps constructing the contract and delivery plan according to the project situation and risks, and it helps monitoring the delivery phase. ISPL is a unique Information Technology method because where most other Information Technology methods and frameworks focus on development, ISPL focuses purely on the procurement of information services. The target audience for ISPL consists of procurement managers, acquisition managers, programme managers, contract managers, facilities managers, service level managers, and project managers in the IT area. Because of ISPL's focus on procurement it is very suitable to be used with ITIL and PRINCE2.

Benefits

There are four main benefits of using ISPL.
  • The customer can take advantage of the competitive market
  • Proposals of suppliers become comparable
  • The use of a strategy that really fits the situation
  • The contract can be used as a control instrument
These benefits are elaborated in the paragraphs below.
The customer can take advantage of the competitive market
ISPL helps the customer organisation to construct the Request for Proposal. It even provides the customer organisation with a table of contents. A very important part of the ISPL request for proposal is the elaboration on the supplier evaluation approach. The complete transparency of the supplier evaluation approach triggers the candidate supplier organisations to issue a really competitive proposal. As a result, the customer can take full advantage of the competitive market.
Proposals of suppliers become comparable
ISPL specifies the table of contents of the candidate supplier organisation's proposal. It also supplies the customer and candidate supplier organisations with one clear terminology. This makes the proposals of the candidate suppliers very easy to compare.
The use of a strategy that really fits the situation
ISPL provides the user with a really extensive risk management process. Based on best practices, it helps the management to design a delivery strategy that really fits the situation of both the customer and the supplier organizations. This is a benefit for both the customer and the supplier organizations because selecting a suboptimal strategy obviously brings along higher costs. The chapter #Service Planning describes the situation and risk analysis and the design of a service delivery strategy.
Contract as a control instrument
ISPL helps the customer and supplier organisations to set up a contract that specifies all critical aspects of the procurement. For example, the list of requirements, the budget and the delivery plan are all fixed in the contract. This provides both customer and supplier organisation with a very powerful control instrument. One of the benefits for the customer organisation is that the supplier organisation will be highly motivated to meet all the deadlines because otherwise the supplier commits contract breach. One of the benefits for the supplier organisation is that it becomes much harder for the customer organisation to change the requirements which would slow down the development process. In short, with ISPL there is a better control of costs and time-scales.

History

ISPL is developed and published in 1999 by a consortium of five European companies: EXIN and ID Research from the Netherlands, FAST from Germany, SEMA from France and TIEKE from Finland. The development of ISPL was part of the SPRITE-S2 programme that was launched in 1998 by the European Commission. ISPL is derived from Euromethod and based on the research of about 200 real-life acquisitions.

Structure

Although ISPL is a best practice library it does not only consist of books. The structure of ISPL is displayed in Figure 1. In this figure the books are represented by squares and the other tools are represented by circles. The basis is formed by four practical books, the IS Procurement Management Essentials. Additionally, a specific book addresses public procurement. Plug-ins to the IS Procurement Management Essentials are provided for specific needs and situations. Currently, three plug-ins are available for which there is a large market potential. A fourth plug-in on the acquisition of product software is currently under construction.
Follow the links below to get more information on the different parts of ISPL.
  • #Managing Acquisition Processes
  • #Specifying Deliverables
  • #Managing Risks and Planning Deliveries

    Meta-Process Model

Figure 2 illustrates the meta-process model of ISPL. This model can be used to easily link and compare ISPL to other Information Technology methods and frameworks. I will provide each process with a link to more information.
Define requirements
The definition of requirements is out of the scope of ISPL. For more information on defining requirements I would like to refer to the entry on Requirements management processes.
Specify deliverables
Both customer and supplier organisation have to specify the information and services they want to receive from the other party. More information on the specification of deliverables can be found in the chapter on #Specifying Deliverables.
Situation Analysis, Identify Risks, Select Strategy
The customer organisation has to conduct a situation analysis to be able to identify critical risks and mitigate them using an appropriate delivery strategy. More information can be found in the chapter '#Managing Risks and Planning Deliveries'.
Make decisions
During the execution of the delivery plan the customer and supplier make decisions at each decision point. This is the #Contract Monitoring phase.

Acquisition Process Sequence

This chapter provides a high-level description of the ISPL acquisition process from a customer-supplier-interaction point-of-view. Figure 3 illustrates the sequence of customer and supplier processes during the acquisition. The following paragraphs link the processes in Figure 3 to the theoretical information that is present in this entry and thus provide a link from practise to theory.
Make RFP
To construct a request for proposal the customer first needs to describe the acquisition goal and other requirements, and perform a situation and risk analysis. Using the risk analysis a delivery plan has to be constructed. More information on all of these activities can be found in the chapter #Managing Risks and Planning Deliveries and the paragraph #Acquisition initiation in the chapter #Managing Acquisition Processes. The request for proposal is a #Tendering deliverable.
Make proposal
The supplier company writes a proposal in which it clarifies how it can fulfil the acquisition goal. More information on proposals can be found in the paragraph #Tendering deliverable.
Select
The customer selects a supplier. The selection activity is an important step in the #Tendering process, part of the #Procurement process.
Negotiate contract
Customer and supplier negotiate the contract. Usually this means that the delivery plan is refined to a more detailed level. The information in the chapter #Managing Risks and Planning Deliveries can be used to update the delivery plan.
Make decisions
For each contract the delivery plan is executed. Customer and supplier make decisions at each decision point. For an individual contract the final decision is whether #Contract Completion is reached. The deliverables used in this phase are of the #Decision point deliverable type. The final decision of the complete acquisition process is the #Acquisition completion.

Managing Acquisition Processes

The ISPL Acquisition Process is the actual process of obtaining a system or service to achieve a goal contributing to business objectives and/or needs. It is one of the most important parts of the ISPL method. This chapter is a summary of .

Model

Figure 4 displays a model of the ISPL acquisition process. The acquisition process consists of three sequential process steps.
  1. Acquisition initiation
  2. Procurement
  3. Acquisition completion
These individual process steps are discussed in more detail in the paragraphs below.

Target domain and service domain

In ISPL the terms target domain and service domain are used quite frequently.
Target domain
The target domain is the part of the customer organization that is affected by the service.
Service domain
The service domain is the service organization that delivers the service, i.e. the supplier.

Acquisition initiation

The first process to be executed by the customer contract authority within an acquisition is the acquisition initiation process. It consists of two sequential process steps: acquisition goal definition and acquisition planning. The final result of the process is an acquisition plan reflecting an acquisition strategy, along with a clear understanding of systems and services requirements defining the acquisition goal. The acquisition initiation process is illustrated in Figure 5.
A more detailed description of the Acquisition Initiation phase can be found here.

Acquisition goal definition

The result of this step is a sufficiently clear understanding of the requirements to the systems and services that are the goal of the acquisition and the costs and benefits for the business and its various stakeholders. This process step consists of four activities:
  1. Define the target domain.
  2. Refine the definition of the acquisition goal in terms of systems and services requirements.
  3. Analyse costs and benefits.
  4. Analyse stakes and stakeholders.
The input of business needs is ideally provided by Requirements management processes.