Integra Systems, Inc. recently asked one traditional IT integrator how do your differentiate yourself from company x.?
Answer was…well we have x number of years of healthcare experience and we are the highest level partner of a major networking company around…interesting.
Well there are about 1,000 different organizations out there pretty much doing the same thing with the same “message”.
Installing wired and wireless networks has become a standard based commodity.
The issue is how do you differentiate one firm from the other and really validate if this “integration firm” knows what they are doing? These integrators note very large, large, and small are it seems trying to build more and more value by using the value statement of “boiling the ocean”. The messaging it seems from this marketplace is that we can do everything from WLAN, to networking, RFLS, DAS you name it. The end organization may not sometimes have the background to differentiate one integrator that is marketing themselves from the other..and as the end result just may go to the “low bid”.
That is the challenge. Same messaging it seems and in bids it just may sometimes just boil down to pricing.
Integra Systems, Inc. was involved in a luminary goverment project in the past couple of years where the so called “integrator” sold themselves as the ones that could make “magic” happen in terms of “wireless”. The problem is there is this area called the laws of physics. As a result everything had to be taken out and “re-done” the right way.
I would challenge any organization that intends to contract with a IT integration firm in 2013 no matter the size is to ask some hard questions.
How will you measure the economic value?
What is unique about your firm through demonstrated experience that you will lower the risk for design, deployments and integration?
Describe and validate your margin for the project?
Do you have the hard experience of understanding the nuances of WLAN medical device deployments?
Is the firm able to scale to meet the domestic and international deployment requirements with the right resources?
Are you up to speed in terms of overall technology understanding, have the right technical resources, and will help guide us to make the right investment decisions to enable our business requirements?
Finally they should be able to differentiate themselves with a true ROI and pro-forma and put these hard numbers out with their proposal.
