1. Office of Systems Consulting February 2, 2006 Frank Schleicher, NUIT F-schleicher@northwestern.eduF-schleicher@northwestern.edu -- 7-3796

2. 2 What is OSC? An In-House Consulting Service –Independent –Access to NUIT Resources Information

3. 3 Specifically –Contract Review –Acquisition Support What is OSC?

4. 4 Contract Review Important Question: Who can commit the University? –IT takes a VP … to sign for NU NU Policy –Review of all administrative software purchases –NOT desktop, NOT shrink-wrap –Includes independent development work

5. 5 Contract Review Contract Assistance with … –More favorable pricing and payment structures –Improved acceptance testing criteria –More favorable design criteria –Greater Security in handling sensitive data –Improved communication … serving as single-point-of contact

6. 6 Contract Review Presently … –Begins with Vendor “Paper” –Followed by NUIT Review –Returned to Vendor for their Review –Completed by NUIT Legal Review In the Future … –Standard NU T&C’s –Emerging practices

7. 7 Contract Review If you are involved in a contract process … Please Ask!

8. 8 What Else?

9. 9 Software Acquisition –Diversity of acquisition and development at NU Overlapping efforts Impact on existing systems History … –Past projects Lessons learned

10. 10 Software Acquisition Process … –Information gathering –Requirements definition Functional Technical –Exploration and Consensus

11. 11 Software Acquisition More … –RFP Generation, including RFP Templates Evaluation/Assessment documents Demo scripts –Vendor-Process Management Release of RFP Vendor conferencing Demo Scheduling

12. 12 Software Acquisition More … –Internal IT Assistance and Coordination –Decision Coordination Ours is a Process Focus –Negotiation

13. 13 Software Acquisition Purpose … –Obviously … to help the University make the best possible choice –To help you get the most out of your resources –To involve all the right people

14. 14 Frank Schleicher 7-3796 f-schleicher@northwestern.edu Q A &