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Our Services to assist Bank's procurement and vendor selection

SERVICES

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The key to successful procurement is not what you know, it's what you do not know.

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Procurement for Enterprise software for a Bank's Finance, Risk and/or Regulatory transformations is highly complex, time consuming and very costly. Often junior consultants from the larger consultancies offer these services, however they are typically inexperienced, biased, very costly and timescales drift easily. The Bank is often left with a vendor that is not entirely fit for purpose or in-line with the overall strategy.

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Silver Summit offer 30+ years of expertise in requirements analysis, vendor due diligence, tender management, commercial agreements and legal negotiations.

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We provide independent, highly experienced and cost effective vendor analysis which focusses on the objectives of key stakeholders and executive management. Combining functional and technical reviews through to selection; advice based on key business, operational and management criteria; freeing up bias and key resources allowing them to focus on their job in hand.​​

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Being a boutique consultancy, we provide bespoke services that are completely tailored to the needs of the bank at a fraction of the cost.

What are the requirements

How to write a list of requirements that caters for all aspects of the business, technical, operational and cost needs?

Initial vendor due diligence

Let's get some meetings arranged to shortlist the vendors down to a manageable number - which vendors are suitable?

Managing THE RFP

Create and manage the RFP and take care of all the necessary steps to ensure the RFP process is successful and unbiased

selection

Ensure two finalists are fit for purpose both from a technical, operational and functional perspective but also make commercial sense and are legally sound.

Key services offered by Silver Summit

  • Requirements Definition: Assisting in defining clear business and technical requirements and setting acceptance criteria.

  • Market Research & Shortlisting: Identifying and researching potential vendors to create a qualified shortlist.

  • RFP Development & Management: Creating tailored Request for Proposal (RFP) or Request for Information (RFI) documents to solicit detailed vendor responses.

  • Vendor Evaluation: Assessing vendors against defined criteria, which may include live demonstrations/presentations and proof-of-concept (POC) exercises.

  • Contract Negotiation: Providing expert advice and support during contract negotiations to secure favourable terms.

  • Strategic Sourcing: Developing procurement and sourcing strategies to deliver value for money. 

What are the requirements?

​​Through a process of meetings with stakeholders, users and management of the bank, Silver Summit provides deep knowledge of market trends, new products and best practices, which can be hard for in-house teams to acquire.

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All due diligence and analysis is impartial aimed at identifying the best-suited solution/s and avoiding potential conflicts of interest or internal biases.

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The Silver Summit requirements gathering steps:

 

Strategic Alignment - Understand business strategy and interview key stakeholders: 

What is the bank's business strategy, objectives and desired outcomes of selecting a software vendor?

 

Define high-level requirements: 

Work with the stakeholders to establish specific needs from a business, technical, operational and strategic perspective:​

  • Business - features, functionality, usability, performance, scalability to address the needs of the main users of the new proposed solution

  • Technical - does the technology fit into the organisation. Integration will be key, does it have cloud anonymity, is the technology new/old, does it embed AI, how performant is it

  • Operational - upgrades, maintenance, as-a-service, security, single-sign on, etc.

  • Executive team / Board - strategic alignment, organisational fit, short/medium/long term objectives budget, ethical, sustainable, legal etc

  • Cost / TCO  - how does the vendor charge, does it fit with the banks' OpEx/CapEx model, does it provide cost benefit, what is the TCO, what are the maintenance and upgrade costs​

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Confirm project budget and sign-off requirements:

Ensure that the project has budget and the steps to sign-off and timings are known upfront

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Initial Vendor Due Diligence

There are a wide and diverse range of vendor options available for Finance, Risk, and Regulatory software. The emergence of AI-based solutions has led to new start-ups entering the market weekly. Silver Summit possesses extensive expertise to navigate the vendor landscape and will conduct initial market analysis to recommend an initial vendor list that takes into account of all the high-level requirements already gathered from the Bank. This avoids starting the tendering process with too many vendors and cuts the overall process down significantly.

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Once created, Silver Summit will advise on specific criteria of which will be presented and demonstrated by those vendors to all the relevant stakeholders of the bank. A further shortlist of vendors will be created and those contained will be formally invited to the banks' tender process.

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Research & provide initial shortlist of vendors: 

Use existing market knowledge and conduct market research to identify potential suppliers that match the defined requirements. 

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Initial demonstrations and presentations:

Initial vendor presentation and demonstration to bank's stakeholders. Key criteria to be scored and analysed thoroughly and feedback objectively provided back to the Bank's stakeholders.

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Shortlist RFP vendors:

Once the feedback has been provided to the stakeholders a joint decision is made to ensure all vendors going forward to the RFP stage are agreed and notices will go out to the unsuccessful vendors.

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Following these steps not only avoids detailed RFIs, it saves time and money which allows the stakeholders and procurement teams to focus on other business matters.

Managing the RFP

RFP:

Utilise the high-level requirements from the initial stakeholder meetings and compliment with learnings and feedback from initial vendor demonstrations/presentations. Also, take the high-level requirements and delve into more details with the stakeholders and relevant teams to ensure all needs are covered satisfactorily.

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Reaffirm budget and timelines:

Confirm again with the stakeholders that budget, timing and all business, technical and operation requirements are well known.

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Issue RFP to relevant vendors

  • Clearly manage all outbound RFP related communications

  • Ensure Bank's NDA requirements are met

  • Manage the timelines including time for questions and answers

 

Evaluation & Demos:

  • Collect and manage all RFP responses from the vendors

  • Analyse responses, conduct due diligence and coordinate detailed vendor workshops (including PoC as required)

  • Contact all relevant client references (accompanied by Bank's key stakeholders)

  • Production of detailed scoring mechanism based on specific requirements of the bank (and as agreed with the key stakeholders)

  • Propose shortlist of vendors for internal discussion and stakeholder analysis

 

Final Selection: 

Assuming all criteria are met by two vendors, continue to final selection. ​

Final Selection

After successfully running the RFP process and the detailed requirements are met by two vendors, Silver Summit guides the final selection and facilitates commercial and contractual negotiations. along with the Bank.

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Commercial Negotiation:​

It is important that the pricing and commercial elements are reflected adequately in the contracts and inline with the Bank's standard MSA/agreements. The following elements are typically included in this process, where the budgetary holder will either be directly involved or informed about each part of the process:

  • Best and Final Offer

  • Subscription pricing

  • Implementation pricing

  • Maintenance, change and support pricing

  • Warranties

  • Service Level Agreements (including service level credits, non-performance credits) and KPIs

  • Contract Term

  • Indexation

 

Legal Negotiation:

Once the commercial sections have been agreed, typically one vendor will proceed to the legal negotiation and one vendor will be held as reserve. The following elements are involved and usually Silver Summit and legal representation of the Bank will be involved:

  • Sharing of Bank's standard Master Services Agreement

  • Law of contract (i.e. UK Law) and arbitration courts

  • Liability clauses and insurance

  • Indemnities

  • Breach of contract and consequences (material)

  • IP rights and confidentiality

  • Warranties

  • Payment Terms

  • Quality standards and rights of usage

  • Dispute resolution

  • Termination Rights

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Silver Summit, whilst is not proposing to represent a Bank from a legal perspective, can advise and provide guidance to the Bank's legal team to assist the legal negotiation with the successful vendor. Silver Summit has written and seen many Enterprise vendor contracts and has both legal and commercial negotiation experience with contracts from $500k to $50m TCO (Total cost of ownership).

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