Quantitative and Qualitative Criteria

1- I would consider both quantitative and qualitative criteria and weigh both equally. For the qualitative criteria, I would emphasis on first long term relation with supplier provider, since Harley is looking for supplier and a partner, relying on third party to do future maintenance, development, redesign requires a strong continuous relation with the them. Second: training &technical support approach is very important, having the best system with best functionality and compatibility worth nothing without skilled and prepared users to use that system. And technical maintenance from system provider is also critical point. Third: enabling the SMS, the goal of having the system in the first place is to support and enable the supplier management strategy directed by Mr. Berrymans to achieve the company's vision of 2003. Fourth: Architecture compatibility: with existing system is crucial we saw in the case how the team avoided a supplier that has a great functionality because it wasn't compatible with the current and future IT Architecture requirement .FIFTH: Implantations/education/change management methodology. And of course over all functionality

Web functionality:

I WOULD INCLUDE: adaptability to new technologies it's very important that the system will be able to adapt to new technologies emerging such as innovation in capacity and computing power. And also Scalability of the new system to handle increase or decrease in demand, consider what happened to JetBlue because their system couldn't scale as needed. Security: the company has a decentralized IT architecture, what are the security features offered by each provider?

2-in my opinion if the company will start IT architecture &infrastructure from scratch and there will be no problem integration with the legacy system provider 1 will be my selection, as Mr. Cotteleer said the company is looking for IT supplier and a partner and provider 1 has similar corporate culture as Harley Davidson, although it scored 93.4% on functionality it rated high on most important qualitative factors, for example provider one evaluated high on implementation /education/change management methodology /training and it was integrated part of their offer, also they rated high on long term relation, manufacturing experience, understanding Harley 's requirement ,Training approach. I know provider 2 scored high on functionality and on qualitative criteria as well, but being very formal and Hierarchical corporate personality is not consistent with Harley's corporation and most importantly provider 2 provides only writing training documentation without emphasizing on assessing organizational needs and preparing people for change, I would not pick provider 2 because in my opinion great systems worth nothing without prepared people to use them. Another thing I notice important mentioning the functionality score was made by the software companies evaluating themselves, so the team should not look only on that score. And as Mr. Pues mentioned that implementation is when real work starts and that they have to be comfortable with whom they work with. Provider 1 was able to quickly provide a work-around solution when their functionality didn't match Harley demo script. Provider 1 was very good about making sure that they engaged each team member on where they fit.

However in case integration with legacy system is an issue and provider 3 did IT projects with Harley Davidson and will be better with integration and implantation, I